I believe 16% is for waterfowl eggs. Good luck at lockdown!
I'll go with that, I was spot on for 13% at lockdown yesterday.
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I believe 16% is for waterfowl eggs. Good luck at lockdown!
Hi everyone just to update I got 1 chick from my hatch I hunted high and low for someone who had chicks that was willing to sell me some. I managed to get 2 when I brought them home my little 1 had collapsed I gave her glucose and water but she died 15 mins later I,m guttedSo I need to concentrate on my newbies.
So here is my finished hatch. I wound up with 8 good healthy chicks with straight feet and all hatched unassisted. I didn't get anything out of the turkeys but I still have them in the bator since they started at a low temp. When you pick the eggs up they feel like they have a poult in them so I'm not giving up. 6 of my chicken eggs didn't do anything, and I think it's because we had a really bad round of thunderstorms here at the house during their hatch, I've heard thunder kills hatching chicks, now I think I have proof. I'm not an eggtopsy kind of guy, so I won't have a report whether they formed or not. When I candled day 18 they all looked good. They will be getting flung towards the woods here shortly, and the turkey eggs I'm giving till Friday.
Here's the pics.
And the parents of these babies
Went into lockdown today (day 18), but some basics had changed. I read another treatise on weight, where it says 15-16% was ideal, not 13%. Hard to say who is right. If 16% is ideal, then today 13.7% would be ideal, and my average is 11.1%. So, again based on readings, I choose to start lockdown without changing the humidity, its still at 22%, the lowest I can get in my bator (if the house is higher, you can't get lower in the bator). I did take some other advice I read, I filled channel 1 and 2 of my bator with rolled paper towels, then put a layer of paper towels under the mesh, and another layer on top of the mesh...then laid the eggs on their side on top of that paper towel layer. The theory is, when I add moisture (which I will do when I see the first pip), I will get a lot of moist surface. Ideally, I'd have 2 bators, one for the ones that have achieved their weight loss, the other for those that haven't. You keep the ones that haven't had sufficient weight loss at low humidity, the others get lots.
Anyway, I currently have 34/41 in the bator, all that have failed failed because of being not fertile. I think this incubation is going to be 4 or 5 days long, as today's candling showed a huge range of maturity.
Only 4 more sets of 41 to do...lolz...;-]
Good luck on your hatch! What kind of bator do you have - will the paper towel on top of the mesh impede airflow?
Thanks!
I have a Hovabator 1544, Styrofoam. The mesh was sitting on the bottom on top of the 4 water channels, so no, I don't believe it will impede air flow. There is a circulating fan on the top of the bator, and nothing between the eggs.
No pips yet, so humidity is still @ house humidity...24%. I am so tempted to weigh and candle again, but I did it yesterday and the day before and everything seemed on track so I am resisting. I have accepted that one or more might pip overnight and I won't be there to up the humidity instantly, instead I keep checking hourly for a pip, and if I don't see one before going to bed then it will mean it just has to wait till morning. But honestly, given house close to the ideal weight loss I have maintained this setting, there's really no reason to expect early hatchlings.
Meanwhile, I have been working out all the logistics of my outdoor coop. I realized today that I have my food bin in the open in the 2nd coop, and only a single door between the two coops. So sometimes a layer will find its way behind me as I pass from the main coop to the chick coop (where I will put 3-4 week olds). That's not what I want. And today in the brooder when I feed the 19 nearly 4 week olds, they swarm me, so what happens when I do that in their coop outside...I open the food bin and it gets swarmed by these little guys...;-] I have some old pool fencing which I am not trying to rig up as a pen, so I come into the small coop, pen the little guys, and can then work on feeding them both. Fermented feed is great, but boy is it a pain in the butt.
Oh, and I have added sprouted oats to my feed mix. So now I have 3 5 gal pails of food being fermented/sprouted outside, and another inside for the chicks starter food. Oh to be able to free-range....
If it were me, (and you are way more "by-the-book" than I am, I'd split the difference before you go to bed and add a little more humidity. I'd rather protect the pip than have one get sticky.
I'm also not near as dedicated on feeding, although I do buy no-corn, no-soy, non GMO feed, plus fresh sprouts and veggies for snacks. I may ferment in the fall when it cools off, but even then they'll just get it once a day and free-feed the rest of the day. I do have grass/weeds in a part of my run though, and plenty of bugs!
Sounds like you will be doing a lot of hatching. How many permanent coops will you have?
You buy scratch n peck too? I think it's great food. Why do you say I buy sprouts? I sprout them on the windowsill. I do soak food sometimes overnight, but dry food works better for us, especially when we go on vacation and neighbors watch the birds. I hear fermentation buckets can get mold or turn bad in our hot summers, so they'll get it occasionally.
Sounds like you have a nice setup and I hope your hatch goes great!
Fantastic resultWell, noticed first pip this morning around 5:30am...and the first hatch came at 6:30am. So I soaked the towels and brought the humidity up to 80%, then opened the vent for it to drop a tad. So far today I have had 10 hatches. There doesn't appear to be any discernable pattern. I have hatches from eggs that were 1 day old, to hatches that were 6 day old eggs. I've had a 65g egg and a 48g egg hatch. I've had eggs that had 4.5% under-weight, and eggs that were 1.3% over-weight. Funniest thing this time is that so far 8/10 are yellow with pink legs, 1/10 black with black legs, and 1/10 that is yellow with a black stripe on his back with pink legs.