New to incubating but not to chickens

[sirrobyn0]

I'm on the forums occassionally, but probably not often enough for most to recogize me so I'll just give a little background I'm in my mid-40's and I've been around chickens most of my life, but this year we took the leap and got into incubating, so we are new to that. We have 2 incubators a hova bator genisis, with fan and turner, and the other one is Janoel 12. The Janoel 12 is much smaller than the hova, and we have had at least fair success with the Janoel, but we have been having a terrible time with the hova bator. One round of hatchings we managed 2 geese and one duck. Another round we managed 14 out of however many the incubator holds, I think 40? This last round we fully loaded it, and hatched 5 chicks, one came out with a very serious leg deformity and another died just days after hatching. I don't know what I'm doing wrong with the hova bator, I've had the temp set to 100F, and kept the humidity as close to 50% as possible, then bumped it up to 65% at hatch time. I just don't get it the hova bator seems like a much more precise device than the Janoel, I would have thought it would be working better for me, but especially after this round with such low hatching and one clear major birth defect and a possible second (not 100% sure on the second) I've got to be doing something wrong. Hopefully someone can give some advice.
Thanks,
Rob

 

[Ihavesomechickens]

I would lower the temperature to 99.5 degrees. Besides that maybe raise the humidity a bit?

Also you have a possible typo at the bottom that’s, well, pretty bad. I think you mean birth and not what you wrote, but hey, if you meant that that’s cool too.

 

[Kiraeh]

0.5° is not enough to account for the poor hatch rates OP is seeing.

Are there any patterns? Are you losing eggs early/late/after lockdown/randomly all through?that seems like potentially pretty high humidity for incubation, have you tried a drier hatch? Are eggs in one part of the incubator hatching more often? Do you have a calibrated thermometer? Any way to detect temperature spikes? I just got an indoor/outdoor weather station thermometer on sale and it's amazing, you can set an alarm for high/low temperatures and check the 24hr range. A great backup if your incubator is unreliable and with the alarm there's at least a chance you'll catch a deadly spike before it becomes critical.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

I have a new Hova bator genesis, I have 2 other thermometers in it and it is running HOT! I keep turning the temperature down because it is running 2 degrees hotter. I lost eggs too until I caught it. You need to get at least 2 calibrated thermometers in there pronto.

 

[sirrobyn0]

I would lower the temperature to 99.5 degrees. Besides that maybe raise the humidity a bit?

Also you have a possible typo at the bottom that’s, well, pretty bad. I think you mean birth and not what you wrote, but hey, if you meant that that’s cool too.

Yes, that was a type-o, I've corrected it now.

0.5° is not enough to account for the poor hatch rates OP is seeing.

Are there any patterns? Are you losing eggs early/late/after lockdown/randomly all through?that seems like potentially pretty high humidity for incubation, have you tried a drier hatch? Are eggs in one part of the incubator hatching more often? Do you have a calibrated thermometer? Any way to detect temperature spikes? I just got an indoor/outdoor weather station thermometer on sale and it's amazing, you can set an alarm for high/low temperatures and check the 24hr range. A great backup if your incubator is unreliable and with the alarm there's at least a chance you'll catch a deadly spike before it becomes critical.

I'm really not very good at candling, but slowly getting the hang of it. For now consider my lack of skill and we'll just say we don't know when we are loosing them. As for the temperatures and humidity I've just been running with what the instructions said with the incubator, and what I have read in various other posts, but I am assuming that the display on the incubator is accurate. Not sure if I'll get a weather station, but I can certainly see how recorded data would be useful. I have not noticed one part of the incubator or another hatching more or less.

I have a new Hova bator genesis, I have 2 other thermometers in it and it is running HOT! I keep turning the temperature down because it is running 2 degrees hotter. I lost eggs too until I caught it. You need to get at least 2 calibrated thermometers in there pronto.

I think, though I'm still open to further ideas, I think you guys have nailed it with temperature. I was actually thinking before I posted this that one thing is we are wood heated country home, and this time of year we are not burning at all so the inside of the house sees temp swings with time of day. I kind of doubt it's much more than 10 degrees but if the incubator can't keep up, and if the display is not keeping it at the correct temp to begin with, I'm thinking that could explain why we went from marginal hatchings to terrible. I will get something calibrated to read temps, and possibly to read humidity as well. Thanks.

 

[Kiraeh]

Sounds like that's your most likely culprit.

That's ok about candling, you read a lot against overdoing it and with darker eggs you don't even get a lot of information. Even with medium-light brown eggs it starts to get dodgy.
It's incredibly cool tho, I'd recommend anyone to do one hatch where they have a few pale eggs and candle them every day, you learn so much.

 

[sirrobyn0]

Sounds like that's your most likely culprit.

That's ok about candling, you read a lot against overdoing it and with darker eggs you don't even get a lot of information. Even with medium-light brown eggs it starts to get dodgy.
It's incredibly cool tho, I'd recommend anyone to do one hatch where they have a few pale eggs and candle them every day, you learn so much.

Thanks for the info on the candling, I didn't really realize the shell color could make a difference but it make sense.

 

[Kiraeh]

Yeah I'd always read about it but my first hatch was all light/cream. This time I have some orpington eggs in with my silkie mix, they're a very average brown and damn. I can tell what's developing either way but in the silkies I can see all the veins clearly, I can see feet and eyes, every day there's a difference. The orpingtons without even being prticularly dark eggs are just - yep that's alive-.