Nervous! 1st Time Lock-down Questions!

[O.C.Chick]

Wow! What an ordeal!

I've been struggling with this all day and FINALLY managed to get the humidity down to 65% and it seems to be stabilized. I hope! I have both plugs out, hoping that it will go down slightly by this evening. But if it doesn't go down, is 65% ok? I'm afraid to mess with it any more!

The problem was that the egg cartons had gotten damp again.

The water tray is SO flimsy and bendable that water had spilled out onto the high point of the water tray ridges, and then the egg carton soaked up the water and hiked the humidity. So, I had to take the tray out and dry it again. (I know the Hova-bator is a low end incubator, but you'd think that for $140.00 they could include a water tray that's a bit less cheap....Even frozen dinners come with better trays than this....Seriously!)

I'm hoping that all that fluctuation in humidity didn't kill any of the others! ...4:00 pm was my actual deadline for lockdown, which is right about now. (In CA)

And I am SO sad if I took out a perfectly good egg for no reason and then Killed it myself!!!

It really did look weird when I candled it, as I said it had an extremely large air cell and a weird dark area on one side that looked like a pool of dark blood. I'm pretty sure it is the same egg that I had posted a few days before (separate post) which I was worried about...thought it might have gotten stuck to the shell and started bleeding...Anyway, last night the air sack was about 3 times larger than it was in this picture:

When I took this picture on Tuesday, t was moving , but it looked really weird compared to the rest. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the dark area had a very distinct ring that looked like coagulated blood sediment....It didn't move around with the embryo.

So I guess what I'm saying is...Please tell me I didn't kill it, even if I did!!

Thank you both for your support! Have a good night.

 

[O.C.Chick]

Update: Humidity has stabilized at 63%

 

[FenDruadin]

O.C. Chick--you probably didn't kill it. But regardless, don't take it too hard. The hatching process is dangerous no matter where or how it takes place. Most eggs in the wild never make it to hatch and wild babies almost never grow up. That's why adults have so many--because survival rates are so low in the wild. Even if you "kill" a few along the way, the eggs & babies in your care have a better chance to survive than those in the wild.

And if it died from being removed from the incubator and cooling, it was a relatively peaceful way to go. There are worse ways to die.

And at any rate, it sounds like it was not quite right. It probably would not have hatched any way, and it was probably already dead. If you had left it in, it might have exploded and killed others. So you did what made the best sense to you, and it was a good decision, regardless of what anyone else might have done.

So don't feel bad. You're doing great!

 

[O.C.Chick]

Thank you! That does make me feel a little better! And I know there's a steep learning curve the first time. I've learned SO much!! If I ever get up the nerve to do this again, I'll have a better feel for it.

Have a nice night, and thanks for the hand holding!

 

[Cetawin]

Well these are the instructions I was given...and what I am following. I too go into lockdown tomorrow.

1. increase humidty to 65% - 75%.

Get a small gladware container and wet a sponge, put it in the gladware container and put in the incubator to help with humidty and also to help keep the chicks off the wet sponge.

2. I have a shelf liner over my wire floor in the bator...I have seen folks use paper towels also...just make sure air can circulate around and through whatever you are using.

Just remove the turner and lay them on their sides...if you have room to give them space inbetween the eggs, great.

Good luck withe them.

 

[Wynette]

Good day! SORRY I've not been checking in....been swamped!!

I always leave any suspicious looking eggs in, unless they are weeping or stinking. I had an entire hatch one time that the air cells were REALLY mis-shapen and wonky looking...I left them in, because they all were developing. All hatched without issue! So, you just never know on these things! It never hurts to just leave them in.

Wondering if Chooky has anything going on? My day 20 actually starts tonight at 7:15...I mis-calculated my days (I've never done that before!!), which explains why I've not seen anything going on yet!

I can't visualize the carton getting wet issue...I've had that happen when I put my sponge too close to the carton. I just leave my sponge out, I don't put it in a container (I used to put it in a small container in the corner, with a bit of water, but had trouble with newly hatched chicks knocking it over).

Can't wait to hear how we all do! Hatch time is SOOO exciting!

 

[O.C.Chick]

Thank you both. When I checked weight on three of the eggs yesterday, they had lost between 11% and 13.5%.

Wynette, what do you think about the 63% humidity as an average?

My humidity and temperature outside and in the house has been all over the map, due to these crazy fires everywhere in So. California. (We have no A/C here at the beach and usually just open the windows when we need to cool things down. So outside humidity is usually the same as inside the house) That's why it's been so hard to stabilize things inside of the incubator. I've been adjusting 4 or more times per day to keep things stable inside the 'bator.

 

[Wynette]

O.C.Chick :

We have no A/C here at the beach and usually just open the windows when we need to cool things down.

Oh......sounds wonderful!

On your humidity, it's such a hard thing to give feedback on because I think that climate has a lot to do with where you run your humidity. But, the weight loss method works in all climates, all conditions...which is why I use it.

To me, 63 is probably okay, assuming your humidity along the way averaged out to where they lost the 12-14% of their weight that they should have by day 19-20. You obviously are on "lock-down" from day 18 on, but if you chart the weight loss and know where it should be each time you chart, you know if you're on track or not. If you were on track with weight loss of eggs up until lock-down, I think 63 is fine...I'd run it a bit lower, personally, because as mentioned, as soon as I get a pip, my hudity skyrockets.

You'll know way more after your hatch, from how the babies hatch out, to their general condition - that information will help you decide how to run your bator next time.​

 

[O.C.Chick]

It's normally pretty nice and stable temperature-wise where I live, so we're pretty lucky and shouldn't complain! But, probably once or twice a year we have crazy hot dry weather and FIRES. We've gone from almost 100 (really hot for the beach) down to 80 degrees (normal/warm) today, and humidity from low 30's up to 68% today, so we're all over the map. Yesterday, the temp inside my house fluctuated from 70 up to almost 100...Because my house was built in the 1940's as a "summer house", it has an open-beam ceiling with ZERO insulation, and it literally becomes a sauna on hot days like these. Without A/C, it's SO hard to keep things stable in my incubator!

I've removed both plugs and I hope that makes the humidity go down a little, but it might make it go up since it's more humid in the room than in the Incubator. This is becoming a full-time job!!!

 

[O.C.Chick]

And Cetawin...Good luck on YOUR hatch!!!! Keep us all posted!