Please help a newbie to incubating - high humidity factory setting

[Muriel Werombi]

Hi All, and thank you for allowing me to join. I have purchased a cheap unbranded yellow-top 12-egg incubator and I'm giving it a 24 hour trial run with a couple of supermarket eggs. It is staying in a good temperature range, but humidity is 75 to 80%. From my research, this should only be for the final 3 days of incubation.

I have some water in the bottom tray. Should I take a deep breath and try to change the settings for humidity? Would love to buy a decent one eventually, but I have one (unreliable broody!) and this is all I can afford for now.

Many thanks!

 

[Pork Pie]

Hi and welcome to BYC. I'd try removing the water as that should reduce the humidity, before trying anything else.

Good luck
CT

 

[Blacklotus]

Play around with the water levels. Take it all out to begin with, and then slowly put a couple drops of water in.. start with 5ml, then go to 10ml etc etc, until you get it perfect most incubator instructions are wrong when it comes to adding the water that they say. I have a small 12 egg incubator too (Janoel 12) and it says to add 100ml at the bottom, and it was reaching into the 90% range when I did that. So I only added a small medicine cup with about 5-10ml of water in it and it stayed perfect.

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Hi

As you say it's a cheap incubator I would recommend getting a separate thermometer and hygrometer to double check your temp and humidity. I found out the hard away with a cheap incubator and cooked my eggs. I'm afraid these models often give out wrong readings so it's always best to double check with known to be correct thermometers and hygrometer.

Good luck

 

[Muriel Werombi]

Thank you so much everyone for your advice. The company got back to me, you can put water in it, depending on need (the humidity of your area). I think the lamp just dries everything out so a tiny bit of water, often, will be best - hopefully it won't be too high humidity in days 1-18!

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Hi

As you say it's a cheap incubator I would recommend getting a separate thermometer and hygrometer to double check your temp and humidity. I found out the hard away with a cheap incubator and cooked my eggs. I'm afraid these models often give out wrong readings so it's always best to double check with known to be correct thermometers and hygrometer.

Good luck

Xs 2 Any thermometer/hygrometer should be checked. Even brand new ones.

Thank you so much everyone for your advice. The company got back to me, you can put water in it, depending on need (the humidity of your area). I think the lamp just dries everything out so a tiny bit of water, often, will be best - hopefully it won't be too high humidity in days 1-18!

I don't use water in my wells before lockdown. If it's too low dry I add a wet sponge. Much easier to control with a sponge than putting water in the wells. I go by this method for humidity and knowing when to adjust. http://letsraisechickens.weebly.com...anuals-understanding-and-controlling-humidity