Need help troubleshooting incubation issues

[chickenmomma16]

I’m super new at incubating eggs. I have a Brinsea Octogon Eco I bought used 2 years ago. I’m ready to hatch some chickies!!! I did set eggs last year but had some issues. I set 2 batches with over 60 eggs total. Batch “A” had a mix of Ameraucana x Sex-link eggs and pure Ameraucana eggs. All the mix eggs developed and hatched on time and the 6 Ameraucana eggs that started to develop, 2 made it to day 21 but only one hatched 3 days late and he had some issues the first 48 hours but pulled through and was fine. Batch “B” had fertility issues, I had switched roosters between batches. Zero hatched.

I’m trying to figure out if it was my incubator or other reasons for my Ameraucana eggs doing so poorly.

One issue that could have affected them was I didn’t turn them very often, maybe 3x a day. I was working while I was quite pregnant and because they were in a different room I kept forgetting... oops. “Pregnancy brain” at its finest!

The humidity was okay if I remember correctly maybe a tad low but stayed constant until day 18 and the temperature fluctuated a tiny bit but stayed between 99.5 - 101

Could any of those issues mentioned above be enough to impact the eggs? But all my EE eggs hatched no problem so I’m pretty stumped with what happened to my pure Ameraucana eggs.




Help me fine tune my numbers too please!
I live in Washington, in my house the ambient humidity is 50-60% and the temp of the house stays between 68-73. When I put my extra meters in the incubator (with no eggs or water) the temp was at 99 (although the thermometer in the incubator said 99.8ish) and humidity was 10%. What should I aim for for my situation? Everywhere I read someone has something different that works. I could go nuts!



From the last hatch, one of the EEs

 

[feedman77]

I personally low humidity incubate.

Try to keep humidity 20 to 35 percent. Then raise to 70 plus for lockdown and hatch.

If ambient humidity is what you say in your house the humidity indicator in the bator is way off.

Temps are good may cause a day late hatch since a hair low.

Not sure on what humidity you aimed for on your failed batch?

That's
What seems to cause bad hatches in the past for myself. Since I went low humidity during incubation my rate has gone up greatly.

That's what I found that worked for my situation.

 

[chickenmomma16]

Thanks for the tips!
I’ll readjust the temps to a smidge higher. The humidity on both batches of eggs stayed between 20-30% I cracked open the completely failed batch of eggs and they were infertile. That rooster died suddenly a short time later so there was underlying issues with him.

As for the 10% humidity reading I’m getting, that’s with an empty incubator and no water in the troughs. With it full of eggs, that should raise it right? If I remember correctly It wasn’t running that low with eggs in there.

 

[feedman77]

It should raise it some as they will lose moisture