No, no no! Humidity down to 40% DURING hatching

[Maria G]

I feel like I am jinxed... last time the power went out, this time I wake up and find that the humidity pump has gone dry. Stupid mistake not to check that the container had enough water, I don't know how I missed that.

Anyways - I got humidity back up after some home-made engineering with the pump. Everything was ok wen I went to bed 5 hours, so at worst they have had too low humidity for 4 hours.

Is the whole hatch wrecked now? About half of the eggs have pipped, and one has made a small hole, but not started zipping, the rest are still unpipped.

Do you think there is any hope? Anyone experiencing something similar?

This is my son's hatch, and he was going to earn the money for the leftover chicks that we sell... so saaaad right now...

 

[Maria G]

Just some extra info: I set the humidity to 75% now to make up for the lost hours. Normally I dry hatch at 35-40% for the first 18 days, then 65% for the last 3 days. Maybe I'll turn it down to 65% after breakfast. It is 5 am here now, so I should probably go to bed, not sit up waiting for someone to post an answer that might give me some hope

 

[kuchchicks]

Honestly I think you will be ok. How many chicks are pipped/zipped? Do their membranes look dry? If they do you can try to use a q-tip to moisten them or a little neosporin. The other thing you can do is use sponges. I went to the dollar store, bought a package of 6 and cut them into 4. I then wet them (not to the point of dripping, but not wrung out either) and place them inside. The nice part is that you can add and take away humidity very easily.

I run my hatches much like you. I run dry and then raise my humidity to 75%, but I am a medaler! Lol!

Good luck! All is not lost. Let me know how you do.

 

[Maria G]

Looking good! 9 hatched so far without problems, all healthy. So I guess the humidity loss didn't have an impact on anything else than my mental health... Jeeez, running around in a towel at 4 am in the icy laundry room, spitting yucky water from fixing the humidity pump, wires all over the place and pulse racing. I actually envisioned my last hours 50 years from now as a crazy chick lady, muttering about humidity pumps and hatching rates, with feathers in my wild grey hair.

Who knows, that might just happen yet....

 

[kuchchicks]

LOL! That's a great visual! I am glad that I am not the only one. My friends and family have called me the crazy chicken lady for a while now... they said the crazy cat lady has nothing on me! What can I say... Chickens are addictive!

 

[gpop1]

There's a lot of suggested ways to do things for the best results. When you hear chirping In the incubator (35-40%) you realize that

1/ you forgot to move the eggs to the hatcher
2/ mother natures knows your a idiot and planned for such a event
3/ scrubbing the turners is going to take a while

 

[Maria G]

Thanks for all the encouragement. In the end 23 out of 26 hatched, so the humidity disaster was no big deal apparently. I had to put down one chick (crooked neck and splayed legs) - it couldn't move at all and was clearly not going to make it. One of the later hatchers also looks a bit strange, and one just popped now - almost 40 hours after the first - this one also looks like it has some leg problems, but it is still drying off in the incubator. I'll see if I need to do something tomorrow about them, hopefully they straighten up by themselves.

What of great forum for us neurotics!

 

[kuchchicks]