Questions about poor hatch rates?

[BackyardAnimalsDucks]

I have hatched about 5 chicken batches and one duck batch with my janoel 12 incubator. Each time I used the automatic turner(6-9 eggs). My best hatch was one where I got 7 hatchs(9 eggs) with Easter Egger eggs. One died later on. With my ducks I did 6 and got 2 to hatch. The pattern with this is that I’ve never had one batch to have one hatch on the 20th, 21st or 22nd day(27, 28 and 29 for the ducks). Maybe a couple have pipped on the 22/29th day. I did have a separate hydrometer but it wasn’t accurate(temp reading at 75 degrees). So I have ordered a new one(A cheap 7 dollar lizard terrarium hygrometer)I did that because I’m most likely going to hatch a batch of 12 duck eggs with manual turning. I need advise on what went wrong. I guess the humidity was too high throughout most of the batches so what did that affect? Was the temperature not reading right the whole time?(I had it set at 37.5 degrees celsius) Do I need to higher it on my next hatch? It has a fan so maybe there’s no cold spots. I just need to know because I want some opinions to help me come to a conclusion.

 

[FoodFreedomNow]

So you had a separate thermometer and hygrometer, right? Displays on incubators are notoriously inaccurate (with a few notable exceptions), so I never trust the reading.

You may find this article helpful. Humidity that's too high during incubation can have a number of results, including late hatching, sticky chicks, and failure to hatch. My experience is that humidity on the low side has less of a negative impact than humidity that's too high, so ensuring that your hygrometer is accurate will be important - here's a thread on calibrating a thermometer.

Do you perform eggtopsies on the unhatched eggs to see how far they progressed? It can be very helpful for making adjustments to achieve higher hatch rates.

 

[JaeG]

It could be any number of those things. With humidity you can weigh the eggs to ensure they are losing enough moisture. I've found that much easier with my duck eggs than tracking the air cells.

If eggs don't lose enough moisture there isn't enough of a space in the air cell to sustain the chick in terms of oxygen until it can externally pip.

If your eggs are hatching a little later than they should the temperature must be slightly too cool. This also affects the amount of moisture an egg is able to lose. At lower temperatures they don't lose as much as at optimal temperature. You do need an independent, calibrated thermometer because what the incubator claims isn't always correct.

Incubators do tend to have warmer and cooler spots so rearranging your eggs periodically helps to even that out.

I don't have an auto turner in my incubator (it's very basic) but I've always hand turned and had good hatches.

 

[BackyardAnimalsDucks]

So you had a separate thermometer and hygrometer, right? Displays on incubators are notoriously inaccurate (with a few notable exceptions), so I never trust the reading.

You may find this article helpful. Humidity that's too high during incubation can have a number of results, including late hatching, sticky chicks, and failure to hatch. My experience is that humidity on the low side has less of a negative impact than humidity that's too high, so ensuring that your hygrometer is accurate will be important - here's a thread on calibrating a thermometer.

Do you perform eggtopsies on the unhatched eggs to see how far they progressed? It can be very helpful for making adjustments to achieve higher hatch rates.

Yes the incubator displays just the tempature but I’m getting a hygrometer so that will display tempature and humidity. Also I do open the eggs up to see how far they develop and they are mostly just spread out in the point at which they died

 

[Punkybrewster]

Try setting your janoel incubator at 38c. That is the factory setting. Sounds like your running on the cool side for that incubator set at 37.5c. I use a reptile thermometer with hydrometer taped inside so i can monitor through the plastic. My janoel seems to be accurate. Try keeping humidity between 30-45% until lockdown.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

What day did the chicken egg hatch on? Did chickens and ducks hatch early or late.
I'm a bit confused. We've mixed terms like hydrometer, hygrometer and temperature.
A hydrometer is for measuring specific gravity of a liquid, like that in a radiator or lead acid battery.
A hygrometer measures humidity.
A thermometer measures temperature.
A wet bulb thermometer measures humidity.
75% humidity would definitely be too high. 75F would be too low.

 

[Punkybrewster]

Yep. That was me.
HYGROMETER...not hydrometer!
Sorry for the misspell confusion.