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Everything else hatches, but I find full term DIS chicks when I open the BCMs after a few days. Do I need a higher humidity for them or a lower one?
From now on I'm going to start sanding and see if that helps. Figures I have about 30 of them in the bator for various hatches.
I use as low a humidity as I can during incubation, and then I up it as high as it can go during hatch. They can't take on water during confinement, in my opinion, but higher humidity can halt the evaporation. That's accomplished by using paper towels as described in my Incubation Cheater. My take is that Marans shells are less capable of evaporating and I have often found that the DIS are accompanied by a lot of liquid, so I decided to try the suggestion to sand them. It worked well, so I've used that method with shipped eggs thereafter, particularly with very dark eggs. I don't use it for my eggs from my flock, because it doesn't seem to be as necessary if they haven't been shipped.
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And where do you keep your humidity, during confinement for the last 2.? days?
In general, the Incubation Cheater method I use to increase moisture makes the humidity 65-80% but I quit using a hygrometer long ago- I just follow the method and don't look anymore. If I get really good evaporation in the beginning, I can see that the air-cells are very large, and I'll know that the prevention of any more evaporation during confinement will allow them to not only keep enough moisture to move internally, but most importantly, it keeps them from becoming glued, which will occur if the air is dryer in confinement...as I just experienced on my forgotten batch which hatched in the turner in fully dry air...
I'm very fond of paper towels in the channels, with another on top of the wire- this gets moisture wicking up into the one on the wire which has massive surface area for evaporation because both sides are exposed. In a still air, this does fantastic. I just sit the eggs on the wet paper towel and they do great. Sometimes the incubator is super-full and there are some on the wire and some on the towel- there is no difference in hatch rates, regardless of whether they touch the wet towel or not.
I prefer an LG for hatching, and I use a different box than the incubation period, so I don't have to worry about the temperature change as the egg are lowered from the turner height to the wire height. In times when I had to use the same box, I propped up the wire on bowls of water so that the eggs stayed the same distance from the heating element.
I'm very fond of opening the incubator when I oughtn't, so I prefer the LG to the Hovabator because the Hova doesn't have the little windows that can be opened for quick access without massively impacting the humidity and temp of the whole unit. This often means burns on the hands from the heating element, but I deserve that!
Overall, I have to say nothing beats the Rcom, because you can open it all day and mess with whatever, plus it truly is set-and-forget and no change needs to be made for confinement, BUT- obviously the expense is huge, and I have had chicks get stuck because the fan is pretty powerful.
I really need a Sportsman or some homemade cabinet, but I enjoy staggered hatches so much I have a hatch a couple of times a week...so that would be hard to mitigate.
I maybe just need a line of rcoms...that would be fabulous if I wasn't poor.
One BCM made it out with a little help, 2 were clear..hhmmmm... I pipped the top of the other 2 and they were wrapped tight in the inner membrane and so were 2 OEs, I decide to help them out, no sign of blood, be they had been in there too long. Ever try to give CPR to a chick? yeah didn't work, out of 14 I ended up with 1 BCM, 3OEs and the rest are BCM x Games. There's on OE that I got unwrapped, but I'm not sure it's going to make it. It's still absorbing the yolk a bit and breathing, but it doesn't look very strong.
Out of the two BCMs that were shrink wrapped, there was fluid in one and the other was completely dry. Those two eggs were in a carton and right next to eachother. Figures they were my darkest eggs. They looked to be 8's. Some of the girls are starting to really lay darker and one is starting to lat lighter. Don't get that since they mostly started up the same time and didn't lay all winter.
My broodie has an egg that is probably a 6 or 7 under her, so I hope it makes it.
Didn't do very good with selling chicks at the auction this week, so I guess I'll be using CL again. Been a while, but some need to help with feed costs.
Had to do the yellow polish on the head as they hatched, since I haven't gotten any wheaten chicks lately and they all look like BCMs till they feather out. Weird thing is my Davis girls lay some good sized eggs. The Games are so much smaller, but their chicks are huge when they hatch. I hope I have some pullets in the next couple of batches so I can keep some as layers. I really need to go to the processing class I was invited to, so I can process roos later too.
The OEs I get are really big chicks also, but again they look like BCMs. I get all feathered legs when they hatch out black no matter what breed of hen. I'll also keep a few of those later and breed them back to probably my black AM to keep the olive color going. What I did by mistake though was mark all but the BCM with yellow polish and now I'm now sure who my OEs are, but selling this batch anyway.
My grand total was 8 not including the one wrapped in the paper towel.
I'm using an LG as a hatcher. It always worked well until I started having all my hatching problems. I've been using your cheatsheet and I love it, but I'm still having problems with these BCMs. I'm just glad I haven't had any of those zero hatches since NYD hatch.
aww... sorry, I hope the chick at least lives a good life and is cared for but if someone has to steal it then I doubt that... funny, if someone didn't have the money and just asked me for a chick, I'd probably give them one as long as they had a plan for feeding and housing the chick. People just don't think to communicate before jumping the gun and stealing.
