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what kind of incubator, temps, humidity, days, lock down, details, details details...??? give up the details...
i hatched one serama so far, and it died... i messed up... someone told me to incubate them for 17 days... so i did... fayul...
Hi,
I've hatched quite a few shipped Serama eggs. I have incubated in a forced air hova bator, and also now in a home made wine cooler incubator. My temp fluctuates between 98.8 and 99.6 right now. I was getting a 0.5 degree range, but now that I have two egg turners, the temp fluctuates a little bit more. I also use 40 - 50% humidity during incubation, then as much higher as I can get it for lockown. I'm in Arizona, so we have almost no humidity in the air, so not sure if you would need it as high as I do. When I'm incubating both Serama and LF, I run humidity at 35 - 40%, or else some of the LF end up with rough navel. Since I'm doing shipped eggs, I let them settle big end up for about 8 hours, then I put them in the incubator with the turner off for the first three days. I stop turning on day 17, and most of mine hatch day 19 or 20. I haven't ever lost a chick (knocking on wood!!!) but I hear it is pretty common. I had a lot of help from the person here on BYC that I bought my first eggs from, so I'm sure that is why I have had pretty good luck.
I usually get between 50 - 60% hatch rates on my shipped eggs, but of course I have had a few batches where only one, or none have hatched. I have one right now in lockdown, but I don't think it will hatch. That group took 6 days to come in the mail, instead of the usual 2 days, even though it was shipped priority. I only had 1 make it to lockdown, and only 4 were still fertile on day 5. The one that made it to lockdown has a saddle air cell, and I think it won't pip right. All of the air cells in this group were really messed up.
I use a coffee grinder to grind up their food for the first two weeks. I also have full size crumble available for them to play with. By two weeks they can eat the crumble, but they all prefer the powdered starter. I just start changing out the powder less often at two weeks.
Oh, mine are in the wine cooler incubator until day 17, then I move them to the hova bator for lockdown.