First of all, use little cups like these to manage humidity. It gets way too high with pouring water in the bottom like the manual says. Make sure you have a calibrated thermometer and hydrometer. This is very important, probably the most important thing. The factory set one on top is almost never accurate. What I do when I have too many eggs to fit in the turner or I want to turn them manually is I take some of that grippy rubber shelf liner, unravel some, trace the hatching tray (not the bigger tray, use the one that fits in the bottom) onto the shelf liner. Cut out a piece of the shelf liner and lay it on the hatching tray. Put the hatching tray with the shelf liner in. It should sit nicely in the bottom. Then take the 2 or 3 cups full of water and place them on top of the tray in varipus spots. Make sure the turning rod can't hit any of the cups or the eggs. This helps me manage humidity so much better. I like using the hatching tray for all of incubation because I can see inside to check the thermometer without removing the lid. If the humidity gets too high remove a cup, if it gets too low add some more cups. You can also put a little wad of toilet paper or little cut sponge pieces in the cups to help up the humidity. Use warm water. I candle my eggs every day or every other day. It doesn't hurt them and it's amazing to see. You can also notice of one starts to not look good, and you can pull it before it explodes. Make sure you don't drop any while candling though. Mark your air cells on the 5, 8, 12, 15, and 18th days. That's what I do. I like to have 5 lines to refer to on my eggs so I can see if they've adequately grown. Look at some air cell charts for duck eggs. Don't stress over them though. Make sure you turn the eggs an odd number of times per day, either 3 or 5 times. Never let them lay on the same side for two nights in a row. Keep a turnimg chart so you know when you turned them last. I like to cover my incubator with a blanket (everywhere but the air hole, leave it uncovered or the eggs will suffocate) to help control temp amd humidity fluctuations. Make absolutely sure the incubator can't fall. If you have cats keep them far away from it. There are too many horror stories of people or cats knocking down or unplugging the incubator. If that happens the outlook isn't good. Try to keep the humidity at 35-45% until lockdown, and keep the temp from 99.0-99.9. I use a digital thermometer from AvianWeb, it fits really nicely in there and it also reads humidity. You have to calibrate it though by putting it in a Ziploc bag and submerging it in a cup of crushed ice with a tiny bit of water. (mostly all ice) The temp should read 32 degrees. I don't remember how ro test humidity, it's a salt test, I don't remember how I did it though. There are lots of tutorials on that. When you get closer to lockdown I can give you some more tips. Good luck with your eggs. Sorry for any typos, I wrote this on my phone and autocorrect is horrible to deal with. I hope this helps for now. Here are the cups, a really nice candling chart, and how the incubator should look. I had run out of grippy stuff so I had to use a cloth. The grippy stuff is the best though. It also shows the thermometer I use. The chicks in there are guineas.
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