Now I'm confused.....!!???

NestingHillsSC

Songster
8 Years
Jan 6, 2012
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218
Tennessee
Reading about humidity levels. Everything I read including on here is different. Some say 50. Some say 85-87. Some say 60-65.
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What is it????
 
I'm new to incubating so others will better information but what are you hatching?
Chickens, turkeys, quail, ducks?

Are you just starting the eggs or going into lockdown?
 
you can go to the learning center tab at the top of tha page and go into incubating and hatching eggs. it says 50% for the first 18 days then 70-80% at lockdown (last 3 days). there is also a section that discusses dry incubation. personally dry is what i use and have had an 80% hatch rate lately. read up on them and basically its personal preference. hope that helps you out.
 
Personal preference. Right. So hard. I have read everything. I guess I'm going to have to see whats right.

I have a wooded bator I bought from a friend. I just set 5 duck eggs on the top shelf today. Setting around 2 dozen RIR eggs tomorrow. The temp holds wonderful at 99.5. I just worry about the humidity. I have a gauge I took out of my cigar box. Don't think it works that great. Going to ace or wal-mart today to see if I can get some better for the humidity.

For everybody saying how important the humidity levels are there sure are a lot of different opinions. Seems to me that's just what it is. LOL. Just an observation.

 
I'll take a stab at this ----


The 50 & 85-87 are basically the sane thing, BUT, 50 is percentage of humidity & 85-87 is a wet bulb reading , which is approximately 50% humidity
So normally you would run your incubator at 50% humidity on a humidity gage OR 85-87 degrees if your using a wet bulb.
It's normally recommended that you raise your humidity the last 3 days of incubation too provide more humidity to help the chicks hatch. those settings are 68 to 80 % humidity on a humidity gage or 90-94 if you are using a wet bulb which is equal to 68-80% humidity
There are a LOT of differing opinions on how much humidity you need both during incubation & the last 3 days. I've always used 99.5 - 100 during incubation & 90 (wet bulb reading) the last three days. The thing is, you have to have very accurate thermometers & an incubator that will maintain very accurate temperatures to make this work. Higher/lower heat or higher/lower humidity causes a lot of problems
 
ok for my first hatch i had my temp at 99.5 the whole time and i misted my eggs with a spray bottle twice a day and i had nothing to monitor humidity with. i had 16 eggs, 3 died at day 13 or so and 1 was fully formed but never turned and pipped, the rest hatched and are thriving. when i say personal preference im refering to whether you want to do a dry hatch or not. if you dont want a dry hatch then keep your humitidy at 50% and then 70-80%
 
I'll take a stab at this ----


The 50 & 85-87 are basically the sane thing, BUT, 50 is percentage of humidity & 85-87 is a wet bulb reading , which is approximately 50% humidity
So normally you would run your incubator at 50% humidity on a humidity gage OR 85-87 degrees if your using a wet bulb.
It's normally recommended that you raise your humidity the last 3 days of incubation too provide more humidity to help the chicks hatch. those settings are 68 to 80 % humidity on a humidity gage or 90-94 if you are using a wet bulb which is equal to 68-80% humidity
There are a LOT of differing opinions on how much humidity you need both during incubation & the last 3 days. I've always used 99.5 - 100 during incubation & 90 (wet bulb reading) the last three days. The thing is, you have to have very accurate thermometers & an incubator that will maintain very accurate temperatures to make this work. Higher/lower heat or higher/lower humidity causes a lot of problems
x2
 
I too dry incubate chickens, duck, geese, turkeys and believe me or not i have a 100% hatch rate on my own eggs and about 50-60% on shipped eggs.
 
I know it seems so odd that everyone has a different opinion on humidity, but it depends so much on where you live, the time of year, the way you heat or cool your house, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, that what works perfectly for one person can be dead chicks to another. There is no real true right humidity that works for every person.
 
I don’t know that I’d call it personal preference so much as that different things work for different people. You’d think that what is going on inside an incubator would be the same for all of us but from reading different posts on here that is obviously not correct. What works for some people is a disaster for someone else.

Sometimes in a few cases I wonder if something else caused the problem and the humidity just got the blame, though I am sure humidity is big part of it for many of us. And I believe the humidity does not have to be real precise. From what I’ve seen, a wide range will give me pretty good results.

I’ve read many different guesses as to what causes some of those differences. The one that makes the most sense to me is a difference in still air versus forced air. It would not surprise me if our height above sea level plays a part, with higher elevations having less air pressure. I’ve read other things even more strange, like maybe a hen compensates for local conditions when she lays the egg so you should only hatch local eggs. I don’t know why it is different for different ones of us, but I’m convinced it is different.

I’ve read so many different definitions of what dry incubation is that I don’t have a clue what it means when someone uses the term.

Background humidity plays a part too, I think. I’ve had eggs in my incubator for two weeks today. I use a Hovabator 1588. With the same reservoir filled, my humidity may be around 50% or it may be in the very low 30% range. When it was raining outside and the temperature was about the same outside as inside so my heater was not running, it was around 50%. When the dew point was 7 degrees and my house heater was running, it was 32% inside the incubator.

All I can recommend is to try to be fairly consistent with whatever you do so if you need to tweak it, you have an idea how to tweak it. That’s a reason to not use expensive eggs for your first effort.

Good luck!
 

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