Setting 41 on 6-15, 7-8, 7-31, and 8-23 feel free to join in at any time

[sjturner79]

Sorry to hear about the poor hatch rate again , but at least not moving your other batch and starting the brinsea lot showed something about what is causing your consistently low hatch rates.
I had not thought of asking about your feed, though I knew it can cause problems, as I had assumed you would be on meat finisher with added calcium for you whole flock based on your goals.

Yes putting down eggs older than 10 days does reduce the hatch rates as well, so if you have them lay date marked you can find out at hatch time if that also caused an issue.

Hope you can get better than 90% next time.
I'm still working on getting my 0th generation for my project.

 

[RubyNala97]

Brinsea recommends 99.5. I thought higher temps were for still air incubators?

You might also try a small amount of water in one channel during your next hatch. Then your humidity pump will run less and use less water. Just a thought.

Sorry about your chick!

X2. I've already posted this. 99.5 is recommended for forced air.

 

[NTBugtraq]

Sorry to hear about the poor hatch rate again , but at least not moving your other batch and starting the brinsea lot showed something about what is causing your consistently low hatch rates.
I had not thought of asking about your feed, though I knew it can cause problems, as I had assumed you would be on meat finisher with added calcium for you whole flock based on your goals.

Yes putting down eggs older than 10 days does reduce the hatch rates as well, so if you have them lay date marked you can find out at hatch time if that also caused an issue.

Hope you can get better than 90% next time.
I'm still working on getting my 0th generation for my project.

My egg supply comes from my main flock of layers, so meat finisher would be inappropriate for them as far as I know. Do you feed that to layers? If so, what prompted you to do that?

GL on your 0th generation...;-]

 

[sjturner79]

I ran the entire hatch at 100.5F, which is what I thought was the ideal temperature. I did not use my spot check thermo on it to figure out what the temp was at the egg...with the brinsea there's no way to get a probe in there without leaving the lid loose. But that does make me want to go now to it and put the entire spot check in there to see what it says.

I just finished reading a paper from Oxford on egg turning, in it they ran their incubator at 99.5F through Day 18, then Day 19 @ 99F, Day 20 @ 88F, and Day 21 @ 90F. They don't discuss these temperatures in the paper as its not about temperature, but egg turning. I do think its interesting they'd vary so much during the final days.

I'm not sure where I found it , but there was somewhere that mentioned that the chick inside the egg starts to create some of its own heat from day 18, and the hatch temp chart for chicken eggs shows the can run like 3f warmer for the first 2-3 days but after day 18 that over 100.5 is danger zone dropping by .2 per day after.

Based on this I'm dropping from avg 100.2 at min to 99.5 at lockdown , and going to try and drop the temp slowly to 98 by the time I have my first zipper to try and reduce heat stress.
I'm on I think it's day 8 at min. Lockdown is 29 July for my current hatch, with eggs from 7 different flocks.

 

[WVduckchick]

NT, are the newly hatched ones thriving better than your last hatch?

 

[sjturner79]

My egg supply comes from my main flock of layers, so meat finisher would be inappropriate for them as far as I know. Do you feed that to layers? If so, what prompted you to do that?

GL on your 0th generation...;-]

I'm currently feeding layer feed as it's cheaper here and I'm in egg production mode still, with only a few that I'm hatching.
If I have a large flock of roosters or young birds, when they come off chick starter I switch to poultry finisher for everyone.

The reason I do this is because after doing a large amount of research I found that it has everything that that whole flock needs except for calcium. Since my yard is full of limestone and the water has calcite formations when you let it sit the hens gets plenty of calcium from other sources, so the use very little of the crushed shells or shellgrit.

That way it save on try to keep track of which feed is for which group.

 

[NTBugtraq]

NT, are the newly hatched ones thriving better than your last hatch?

Oh yeah, way better. They went into the brooder with the other 12 from my last hatch who are a week old. The combination seems to really be good, as the day olds quickly learned how to eat and drink from the 1 week olds. Wish I could always have such a combination.

I'm not sure where I found it , but there was somewhere that mentioned that the chick inside the egg starts to create some of its own heat from day 18, and the hatch temp chart for chicken eggs shows the can run like 3f warmer for the first 2-3 days but after day 18 that over 100.5 is danger zone dropping by .2 per day after.

Based on this I'm dropping from avg 100.2 at min to 99.5 at lockdown , and going to try and drop the temp slowly to 98 by the time I have my first zipper to try and reduce heat stress.
I'm on I think it's day 8 at min. Lockdown is 29 July for my current hatch, with eggs from 7 different flocks.

Well, I just discovered something interesting and a bit disconcerting. I put my Brinsea spot check thermometer into the bator. The bator is currently set for 99.5F. I left it for over an hour, and just checked. The spot check thermo says it is 100F at egg level, while the bator says its holding at 99.4F. I could understand the egg level temp being lower than the reading on the bator, but hotter?? If it matters, the humidity is at 79%.

 

[sjturner79]

I'm hoping this batch will give me the hen I need to cross my roo with to give an adequate start point for my project. There are only 3 eggs for it but I might get it. If not it will have to wait until I can set eggs again in February or March. After this batch I have to stop for the season as I don't have an air conditioned brooder so I won't be able to keep the chicks below 80f for long enough to grow to full size to handle the 125f summer days.

 

[WVduckchick]

Oh yeah, way better. They went into the brooder with the other 12 from my last hatch who are a week old. The combination seems to really be good, as the day olds quickly learned how to eat and drink from the 1 week olds. Wish I could always have such a combination.


Well, I just discovered something interesting and a bit disconcerting. I put my Brinsea spot check thermometer into the bator. The bator is currently set for 99.5F. I left it for over an hour, and just checked. The spot check thermo says it is 100F at egg level, while the bator says its holding at 99.4F. I could understand the egg level temp being lower than the reading on the bator, but hotter?? If it matters, the humidity is at 79%.

Good news on the chicks!

Where's the heater located on the Bator?

 

[sjturner79]

Oh yeah, way better. They went into the brooder with the other 12 from my last hatch who are a week old. The combination seems to really be good, as the day olds quickly learned how to eat and drink from the 1 week olds. Wish I could always have such a combination.


Well, I just discovered something interesting and a bit disconcerting. I put my Brinsea spot check thermometer into the bator. The bator is currently set for 99.5F. I left it for over an hour, and just checked. The spot check thermo says it is 100F at egg level, while the bator says its holding at 99.4F. I could understand the egg level temp being lower than the reading on the bator, but hotter?? If it matters, the humidity is at 79%.

Well that seems to show that the brinsea may not be all that much better than the newer run Chinese plastic models. They display and check the temp at the to of the incubator , not at egg level , and even with a fan you get differences.

How long has it been at that set temp and what day are the eggs on?