Question about Incubating Wellsummers

[Fluffy-Butt-Farms]

The person I'm buying my Wellsummers from informed me that they do not hatch well at 99.5-100.5 degrees, without deformities...but she has found that incubating them at 97-98 degrees gives her an almost 100 percent hatch rate with no deformities.

Has anyone else found this to be accurate? They are going into a friends sportsman that has eggs already in it...(she addds eggs weekly) so it's not like she can just lower the temp for them.

Any comments?

 

[william9792]

i would almost bet that the person that you are getting your eggs from has a temp guage that is off a little bit and that is why they have to lower there temp in there bator. 99.5 is the temp that you strive to keep. what you need to ask the person that you are getting eggs from is : how many hours in the bator is it taking for you to hatch them? 504 hours is the perfcet number of hours at 99.5 deg. if it takes less then temp is to high, if it takes more temp is to low. and then you can adjust the temp on next batch and try one more time. but humidty plays a big roll in incubation too

 

[FenDruadin]

What william said--your egg supplier is probably running the incubator with a thermometer that is a couple degrees off. So if she runs it at a temp that says 99.5 on her thermometer, she's actually running it at 102 or so--which would produce fast, deformed chicks.

My thermometers--BOTH of them--run low. So for my first two hatches, I thought I was incubating at 99.5, but both were late hatches with slightly higher than normal problems and a slightly lower than expected hatch rate. So this time (my third), I have raised the temp by half a degree, and will measure the results. If the hatch is still a bit late and/or there are similar problems with the hatchlings, I will raise the temp another half a degree until I get it right. Then I'll know how far my thermometer(s) are off.

Which raises a question I'd like to know the answer to. How come they can make a medical thermometer with guaranteed accuracy to .1 degrees and sell it for $8, but you have to spend at least $20 to get a thermometer that measures air temp to that accuracy?