Room Humidity vs incubator humidity

[dand883]

Hi Guys,

I am very new to the incubation process and am just starting out with my first incubator being set up right now. I tried searching, but couldn't find anything that quite answered my question on humidity levels in the room vs in the incubator.

I know during the initial days the humidity should be kept around 50%-55% and during lockdown 65% (or up to 80% depending on the source you get the info from from).

My question and conundrum is this, in our area we're near the bay and it's very humid during the summer months, 60%-80% are common and the dehumidifier in my basement has shown around 60% for the past few days and there's rain in the forecast, so it's likely to rise.

That being the case, should i be putting any water into the incubator for the first 18 days? or just add it in once i get to lockdown? Do i need to run the dehumidifier in the same room to lower the humidity?

Anyone who has had the same situation and can help would be appreciated.

 

[Willow2253]

So what we are measuring during incubation is relative humidity. The relative humidity is a percentage of how much moisture the air can hold, and the warmer the air the more it can hold. So, if you have a room that’s 60% humidity at 70 degrees, that same air if heated to 100 degrees has a lower relative humidity. My advice for your incubator is to run it dry for a few hours and just see what it runs at. Then you can add water if necessary if your humidity is lower than you want it. If it’s still too wet without any water, you may want to run the dehumidifier.

 

[rotagen]

I'm a convert to the dry hatching method. Look it up if you haven't heard of it. I read an article from a pro who insisted it increased his hatch rates tremendously. Then I bought eggs from a local who always does her incubation this way...zero water until lockdown...and we live in a very dry part of the country. I tried it and got my best hatch ever, 95%.
Having said that, I wouldn't bother with a de-humidifier if it was me, but I certainly wouldn't add any water to the bator if your humidity stays that high, especially if there's lots of eggs in there...I may add a small amount during lockdown or maybe not...from my experience people worry way too much about the process...I've had crazy things happen and left the bator off for two 24 hour periods (kept changing my mind on last couple eggs)...and they still hatched. In my opinion most of the problems are "bad eggs"...unless your temps are way off...which is pretty rare but can happen.

 

[ronkonkoma]

I live on an island, and I have also switched to dry hatching. Right now without a drop of water in my incubator my humidity is 65%

 

[slbenter]

We live in Tennessee.....and the outdoor humidity is 94% right now. Inside the house it's in the 60% or so area. My humidifiers in the 2 incubators running now are set to 43%, and I struggled to get it to that range.
I plan to only increase the RH during lockdown.

 

[ronkonkoma]

We live in Tennessee.....and the outdoor humidity is 94% right now. Inside the house it's in the 60% or so area. My humidifiers in the 2 incubators running now are set to 43%, and I struggled to get it to that range.
I plan to only increase the RH during lockdown.

You must have air conditioning?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

The A-B line is an example. For our purpose we'd look at 70F and up to the 60%RH curve. From that point go directly right until 99 or 100F. Estimate the RH at that temp. Doing this with this chart gives you close proximity of what the resulting RH will be at any given temp from the baseline of RH in home.

60 RH at 70F would be approximately 23% RH at 100 F.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

23% RH of course is without any eggs in incubator. Once the eggs start to evaporate moisture the RH will increase over 25%. That's a good place to be. You'd want to up to hatching RH a few days early is all. Monitor air cell growth and likely you'd find around day 16 would be a good time to stop evaporation and up to 70% RH for hatching.

 

[slbenter]

You must have air conditioning?

Oh yes.

 

[luvmychixandducks]

Add me to the list of dry hatchers until lockdown. Nothing worse than doing a post mortem on unhatched eggs and finding fully developed chicks drowned in their shells because the egg didn't lose enough moisture early on to provide adequate air cell room.