Those Of You Who Incubate In An Air Conditioned House.....

BeckyLa

Songster
13 Years
Jan 11, 2007
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N. Louisiana
How do you deal with humidity???

I can't keep the humidity up consistently in my bator for 3 weeks because I must have air conditioning to live in this hot humid place. I've used styrofoam and cabinet bators with the same results. My hatches have been terrible and often those poor babies that do hatch are deformed.

What do y'all do???

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put a sponge in a little bowl of water this will raise it but it may raise it to high just be careful are you keeping the water holder, full .i also have to have ac and im getting about 75%
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I also have central a/c and I simply block the vent in the room where my incubators are. I have a therometer in the room and if it gets too hot (I'm in the sunny south) I uncover a portion of the vent - not all the way. I may have to cover/uncover the vent a couple of times a day but it's worth it to keep a constant humidity/temp in my incubator. I usually have a pretty good/consistent hatch.
 
What about closing the vent in the room like Dakinsmimi said, then running a regular room humidifier (you know, the kind you run when your kids are congested) in there some of the time to keep the humidity up?

Lori
 
Hi Becky,
I had trouble with that my last hatch.
What I should have done was add a childs room humidifier to my master bedroom closet. I use my closet because the temp. is regulated better in a smaller space.

Try that and I am almost positive you will do well.
Best wishes!
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Well, I tried putting it in a spare bedroom and closing the vents, but then I could not keep the temperature constant, the room would heat up and the bator would heat up. Did the same thing in the closet, same problem. These were my hovabators. So I borrowed a sportsman and moved it to my computer room, which is long with my computer at one end and the bator at the other, and closed the vent. Since the room is still open to the rest of the house I figured it would keep the temp more constant, which it did. But the humidity still was too low. So I hung wet wash rags where the fan would blow on them, in addition to the pan water with it's wicks in place, and this helped but it was not constant. It would be good when I'd go to bed and be too dry when I got up. So I tried the vaporizer blowing steam right in the fan hole where it draws air in. It was fine till it ran out of water, it only lasts a couple of hours, so it would be dry again by morning.
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When this last hatch finally came, chicks died cuz they couldn't break the membrane, when I realized this I helped several out, which are still doing fine a month later, others had curled feet, one has a bad neck. I had to put several down because I could not get their feet straightened. I am just so frustrated.
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Becky,

I'm not sure. I have mine in a spare bedroom with the vent closed but the door open. Of course mine is the still air bator but my humidity was staying very low 36% even when I would had water so I added wet cotton balls which brought it up to about 45%. The egg turner is new and the little thingies the eggs set in kept coming loose. So I changed out the egg turner to the old one and had to take some of the eggs out because there wasn't enough room for the water weasel and themometers. Hubby fixed the new egg turn thingies and I started another bator for the RIR eggs because they were free. I added more water to the reservoirs and now my humidity is at 69%!!!!! So I used cotton balls to absorb all the water out of it and threw the cotton balls away. The humidity is about 50% now. I wonder if having so many eggs in the bator caused the humidity to be so low?

You know you don't realize how things works the natural way with a broody hen here in the south with the humidity so high.

Good luck,

jackie

Good luck.
 
Jackie, I just don't get it. From what I understand......as the chick grows inside the egg, the moisture in the egg is reduced by evaporation, shouldn't this raise the humidity in the bator? So the more eggs in the bator the higher the humidity? I don't know. I'll be watching so please post how your hatch turns out. Thanks for your patience. I love hatching more than any other part of having chickens, but I just can't handle having to put down so many babies.
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Hi Becky,

Well I ended up putting the new egg turner back in the incubator with all the eggs. The old one kept jumping off track with my water weasel. Hubby secured all the little egg holder thingies. Now my humidity is back to 35% and that is with a couple of wet cotton balls. So I guess I need to put a little water in the reservoirs or a wet sponge.

My temp in the water weasel is hard to get up. It's about 97.9 for the last couple of hours so I've increased the temp a little. The them. just in there is about 100 degrees and the meat them I have through the top vent is about 102 so I'm still working on the temp and humidity.

How is yours going?

jackie
 

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