Hatch-Along - Setting eggs week of Feb 4th..anyone else?

[boyswithchicks]

Hi everyone....I am pretty new here too! I set 24 White Leghorn x Shaver eggs yesterday. It will be an interesting hatch because some of the eggs were two weeks old and I have never incubated eggs that old before. The eggs are a good size but are from first season pullets that are running with an unproven rooster so that will be interesting too.

This will be the fourth Dry Hatch in a row. The last hatches have resulted in really high hatch rates of over 90%. Where I live in New Zealand, at this time of the year, we experience high humidity in the air. The incubator is a Brinsea Polyhatch still air which I find is the best during times of high humidity. No matter how hard I try I can't reduce the humidity in the air successfully so I just run with what nature provides.

I will be interested to see how all your hatches go. We are approaching late Summer here now and have not had much rain for over five weeks. The pullets that result from this hatch will provide early spring eggs which is great.

 

[WillowChick]

Well I figured out what went wrong!!!! I asked hubby to pick up a hygrometer for this next batch because I was worried it might have been the humidity that was messed up. The hygrometer also has a thermometer on it. I couldn't figure out why the hygrometer said 82 degrees and my glass bulb thermometer attached to a plastic backing said 99.5 until I realized THE STUPID THING SLIPPED OUT OF THE BACKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the eggs were "incubating" at 82 degrees for 18 days... Not very productive.

I am so mad that our flock of 4 will have no babies because of this stupid thing!
(we got rid of our rooster 2 1/2 weeks ago, so I still threw 6 of our own eggs in the bator with my friend's yesterday, but not much hope)

 

[chicken pickin]

HI All,

I havent read through the thread yet but wanted to join. I just set 14 eggs in the bator. This will be my third time incubating and this time with some of my own flocks eggs. I set 6 Crested Cream Legbar eggs bought locally, the rest from my flock 3 Japanese Bantam, 1 EEx Marans cross(hopefully to make a nice Olive Egger), 2 Silver Laced Cochin x Dominique eggs, and 2 Silkie/EE eggs.

 

[TarheelBirdy]

Hatching in my classroom. We have 2 dozen Polish eggs ordered. They should be delivered on Wednesday or Thursday.
The incubator is set up with the fan circulating, the automatic egg turner ready, and the digital temp/humidity ready... My fifth graders could not be more excited! (Let's face it... their teacher is pretty stinking excited too!)

I absolutely LOVE hearing about classrooms hatching eggs. What a great learning experience for kids.

 

[TarheelBirdy]

Good morning,

Signing in for this Hatchalong! Incubator is sanitized, set up a and running, getting ready for the first batch of the season!! Hooray!!

This week I will be setting my first batch of my OWN Swedish Flower Hen eggs! Finally....after two years of planning and researching, I decided to begin a small breeding program and wanted three sets of really good quality birds. I decided on Swedish Flower Hens because I love their story, their coloring and demeanor, as well as the fact that each one is so different in their markings/coloring...I love the element of surprise with each one. So, last year I bought eggs from a local woman who has a Greenfire flock. Out of six eggs, I hatched five, got rid of one rooster and had my two pairs. Husband built me wonderful seperate cages for them, and here we are, a year later, setting eggs. Yay!!

We also love Silver Laced Wyandottes. We have one nice SLW hen now, and I decided to make those my third breeding group. I am in search of a rooster for my current hen. In the meantime, I have two batches that I will be receiving today and Saturday. Each batch is from high-quality breeders, one batch of 12 and one batch of 6. I intend to start a good breeding foundation with these, and when I grow them out, four pullets are spoken for by a BYC buddy. I am staggering the two batches by a few days so I can identify and band the separate batches for the purpose of comparing them, as well as pairing them up eventually for best breeding purposes.

Also, this will be my first "dry" hatch, although towards the end of the season last year, I was doing something similar - not really doing too much in the way of humidity until lockdown. I have done a lot of research and now a I know a lot more behind the theory.

So, I'll check back in when eggs have arrived and rested, and I set them. I've never really been organized enough to participate in a Hatchalong,

 

[watership]

I'm in! I set 9 ameraucanas on Sunday. This is my 4th hatch, I have a mini brinsea and can only set 7, and I typically get 4 chicks from each hatch. So this time I removed the auto turner, crammed in 9, and am hand turning like I did when I was a kid. I assume there will be a couple non-starters (shipped eggs), so I can put the auto turner back in after day 10... I think the novelty of hand turning will wear off by then!

 

[mendocinosunris]

Are you using a scale for tracking moisture loss or a chart for air cell sizes? That's the only way to go when it comes to humidity. When I first started hatching, I had a few failed batches because of incorrect humidity levels.

Yep, that's exactly what I DIDN"T do last time. And for some reason, I thought the humidity needed to be 45-50% during incubation, and then 70-75% at hatching. Please don't ask me where my poor brain got those numbers.
I've got the correct numbers around here somewheres...

So this time, I haven't put any water in the incubator yet. The humidity is hovering at around 40%.
I weighed the eggs before I started them, & will weigh them again in a week.

 

[cochins1088]

Yep, that's exactly what I DIDN"T do last time. And for some reason, I thought the humidity needed to be 45-50% during incubation, and then 70-75% at hatching. Please don't ask me where my poor brain got those numbers.
I've got the correct numbers around here somewheres...

So this time, I haven't put any water in the incubator yet. The humidity is hovering at around 40%.
I weighed the eggs before I started them, & will weigh them again in a week.

Those numbers are very common. Lots of articles say 50% and 70%, but those don't work for many people. That's what I started out with too.

 

[andertr]

Those numbers are very common.  Lots of articles say 50% and 70%, but those don't work for many people.  That's what I started out with too.

So you're saying not to have the humidity that high while incubating? This is my first time and when my water dish runs dry my humidity is about 25 but when I put a little water in it it goes up to 40. How do I level it out? Also my temp seems to say around 37.7 C which is 99.8 F, should I be happy with that number? My thermometer censor is right in the middle of the 4 eggs I have in there but I also have one on the wall just to make sure my readings are accurate. Another thing that worries me is that my temp did reach 38.6 C (101.5 F) last night because my cat figured she should sleep on the nice warm viewing window on top, was this warm enough to cause damage to the eggs?

I did candle the large white egg last night and I could see the yolk with a darker ring around it and a darker shadow around that. I compared what I saw to https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...g-candling-pics-progression-though-incubation. And it does look promising!!! According to this timeline I should be able to see veins tomorrow night. The other 3 eggs are too dark for me to candle, I may have to find a brighter light.

 

[AlienChick]

Your temp and humidity seems fine.
I keep my humidity on the 'lower' side (around 45%) and ONLY add water after it drops 20%.
There are people who never add water and their humidity stays in the 20's.
See what works best for your situation.