My humidity conundrum--please help--

[FenDruadin]

I have an incubator full of 42 eggs. Half are ready to hatch this weekend and are sort of locked down. The other half are due May 10. This is the largest group of eggs I've had all at once before, and I'm realizing a basic problem: My water containers that are providing humidity have always been too tall for newborn ducklings to enter, but with the bator full of cartons of eggs, a duckling could easily stumble over the nearby eggs and into the water. I think I can solve the problem by covering the receptacles with hardware mesh. But then--the ducklings can easily reach the heating element & fan. That would be bad, right?

What do you do to raise the humidity without either wicking water onto the cartons that the eggs are sitting in, producing a drowning hazard, or producing an opportunity for contact with the heating elements? As it is, I worry about a duckling on top of the eggs being able to reach the element or fan.

Thoughts?

Thanks!!!

 

[RedfogsFlock]

We just did a hatch with ducks, and had 100% hatch! What we did to raise humidity was use washclothes. We folded them in fourths, and put one under each air vent hole. We were able to keep our humidity up at 80%, and when the babies moved around they never got hurt on them. When we needed to add water we just had to dump it through the vent holes in the top of the bator. Now we did have to keep our bator on a plastic tote cuz some of the water would leak through the bottom, so you don't want to ruin any tables or anything. We even put some food through the vent holes for the early hatchers to tidy them over till they were dry. The food landed on the clothes and got a little damp easy for them to eat!

 

[FenDruadin]

Thank you--that's a great idea! However, I can no longer make changes to the arrangements in there--BECAUSE I HAVE PIPS!!

I think it will be fine for now--it occurs to me that by the time they hatch (it takes ducks 24-48 hours to go from pip to hatch), there will no longer be much water left in the containers, just damp cloths, so it should be more or less okay. I'll just have to monitor.

Thanks for the feedback!!