Hello everyone and thank you in advance for any advice you may give 
I live in NE FL in Clay County. I am new to the whole incubation thing
I have two incubators. Not sure of the brands. I got them from a friend who tried to incubate once, failed and didn't want to try again. (This is where my hours of research became very handy! He just thought you put them in and forgot about them!) Anyways. For my first batch I started out with 63 eggs (half were from my flock and half were from the friend I got the incubators from.) 46 survived to Lockdown, and out of those only 28 babies survived. I opened the eggs that didn't make it on day 22/23 (after doing a float/candle test), and it seemed like half died around day 18/19 and the other half died the last few days. I kept the humidity around 40-45% up to day 18 and then 65-70% on lockdown til hatch. The air cells showed good development and the eggs were clean. Temps were consistently 99-100.
My question is this... I have read numerous articles about dry hatching and keeping the humidity level way down around 25-35% because we have such a high humidity level here in FL, then bumping it up to 65% on lockdown. I just put 56 eggs down yesterday from my own flock (I had a better success rate from my eggs on the last batch 20/30) and was wondering what everyone's opinion is as far as what my level of humidity should really be??? I really want to have a better hatch rate seeing as I plan on culling my flock next year and just keeping my own babies since I know they are healthy and happy chickens Any advice is GREATLY appreciated. Can't wait to see my new babies!
I live in NE FL in Clay County. I am new to the whole incubation thing
I have two incubators. Not sure of the brands. I got them from a friend who tried to incubate once, failed and didn't want to try again. (This is where my hours of research became very handy! He just thought you put them in and forgot about them!) Anyways. For my first batch I started out with 63 eggs (half were from my flock and half were from the friend I got the incubators from.) 46 survived to Lockdown, and out of those only 28 babies survived. I opened the eggs that didn't make it on day 22/23 (after doing a float/candle test), and it seemed like half died around day 18/19 and the other half died the last few days. I kept the humidity around 40-45% up to day 18 and then 65-70% on lockdown til hatch. The air cells showed good development and the eggs were clean. Temps were consistently 99-100. My question is this... I have read numerous articles about dry hatching and keeping the humidity level way down around 25-35% because we have such a high humidity level here in FL, then bumping it up to 65% on lockdown. I just put 56 eggs down yesterday from my own flock (I had a better success rate from my eggs on the last batch 20/30) and was wondering what everyone's opinion is as far as what my level of humidity should really be??? I really want to have a better hatch rate seeing as I plan on culling my flock next year and just keeping my own babies since I know they are healthy and happy chickens
Any advice is GREATLY appreciated. Can't wait to see my new babies!
