quail incubation humidity

[Anika P]

Hi everyone, new here, but i been reading all the comments and found some great tips.


I was having an issue with keeping up the humidity... my average was 47%, at first but then i did something very simple:
I took one sheet of paper towel and poured some water over it to let it absorb (To the point that its wet but not dripping).
Then i rolled it a bit and place it inside the incubator.
This can bring the moisture up to 67%, which is something i wasn't able to achieve with just a bowl of water.
Works great.

I have about 40 quail eggs in my incubator (that i collected from my 9 already existing quails), so far hatched 7 with no issues whatsoever, luckily.

 

[cooper281095]

I have 12 eggs in the incubator and the temp is at 37.5 and have humidity at 40/50% how do I stop the humidity going any higher and decrease it back down to 40/50%. It recently been going up to 60/61% new to all this thanks.

 

[feedman77]

I have 12 eggs in the incubator and the temp is at 37.5 and have humidity at 40/50% how do I stop the humidity going any higher and decrease it back down to 40/50%. It recently been going up to 60/61% new to all this thanks.

Remove all the water. Pull out vent plugs.

If it still won't go low enough you can put rice in the bator to absorb air moisture.

 

[BradLimer]

So, I'm new at this. Can anyone give me an idea of how much water to add at a time? My incubator instructions suggest filling one channel, but that puts the humidity really high. Since I'm just playing around with it now, no eggs in it, I dumped that out and put in less, but it still reads 70%.

Also, if I am only putting in a few eggs the first time, does it matter where I place them inside the incubator?

 

[BradLimer]

Putting water into mine always initially raises the humidity up to around d 70%, but it stabilizes back to my goal of 50%-55% within a few hours. I try to go 75%+ during lock down.

 

[BobDBirdDog]

BobHope

I have put it out there that I often incubate my bobwhites at 60-75% humidity throughout the incubation process, but the common standard is 40-50% humidity during the first part of incubation. So if you read my comments it was not advice to the correct settings but more a comment of my success at such high humidity. Many folks worry about the slightest changes in humidity, refer to lock downs and and other, such as a surge of higher humidity. Thus I am simply trying to offer real examples to put their minds at ease and suggest getting their settings under control. But just in case and to make it clear to all,..... in all my preaching, I have never recommended setting the humidity at 75% as a common practice or standard.

75% it is not a standard setting of humidity among most egg inucbator's, and perhaps the higher 90% humidity you mentioned (at hatch time) is most likely an indication of what humidity can actually occur as the chicks start hatching out..

At 75% (on hatch day) when the chicks actually zips and hatches out of the shell, the chicks are wet and in that aspect the chicks start to dry off. It is this extra moisture (the drying off) that will temporary raise the incubators humidity to upwards and of as much as 90%.

Lastly, most all hygrometers (humidity gauges) are inaccurate and need to be tested and that taken in to account as well.

 

[birdmandan]

Considering that so many members have had good hatches with variable humidity settings, perhaps humidity is not as critical as we thought. There is clearly a large tolerance for humidity levels.