Too Early for Feb Hatch-A-Long Thread??

[FortCluck]

I'm going to candle my eggs tonight or tomorrow night to see how they are doing. I'm trying to wait until all of my eggs have hatched from my January hatch.

 

[rascal66]

We do plan to start another batch of eggs, maybe more mid Feb.. so i might poke in here soon! Good luck to everyone else who is starting already chicks are just the greatest.

 

[FortCluck]

We do plan to start another batch of eggs, maybe more mid Feb.. so i might poke in here soon! Good luck to everyone else who is starting already chicks are just the greatest.

I'm probably going to be adding more eggs at that time too when my chicken start laying more eggs.

 

[LilyD]

I'm probably going to be adding more eggs at that time too when my chicken start laying more eggs.

I should have more for mid February as well ordered 2 dozen blue black splash hatching eggs from Brickhouse poultry plus should have more from my current birds.

 

[ShannonsChimkens]

Let's talk a bit about humidity. I was going through the incubation guides and was surprised to see humidity levels between 30 and 60% recommended for incubation. I usually dry incubate and don't add any water until I'm in the last three days and ready to hatch. Then I go up to 60-65% for hatch. What is everyone else doing. Back when I bought my incubator the booklet that came with it said that you wanted between 20-30% humidity for incubation and 50-60 at lockdown so it seems things are changing a bit. Interested in what everyone else is doing.

This hatch will be my test on humidity and if dry incubation might be the trick for better hatch rates on shipped eggs.

I hatched two batches of shipped eggs two weeks apart in November and beginning of December. Everything I read, at the time, said around 50% humidity. So I kept it very humid during the entire incubation. The eggs air cells were VERY small on lock down with both batches. Exactly 50% of them hatched. The rest were fully formed and died a couple days before hatch day. They were still in a bunch of fluid when I opened them.

The two new batches of shipped eggs were started with zero water added to the incubator. The humidity in the room their in stays between 20% and 30%. So far it’s proving to be better already, but the true test will be this Friday and Saturday. First half go into lock down Wednesday evening.

I will know here in the next week and a half if dry incubating ups the hatch rate on shipped eggs.

 

[aliciaplus3]

We run humidity around 25-35% for the incubation period, unless we are incubating small, light or porous eggs then we might bump it up to 40%. lockdown I like to see 60%+.
I agree that the color, size and where the eggs came from(shipped or not, or elevation) will make a difference as to what humidity will work best. We live at 6000 feet above sea level and in a very dry climate so where some folks can run without water to hit 30% we hit 10% or less without water... best advice I ever read was to watch air cells and adjust accordingly.

 

[aliciaplus3]

I'm probably going to be adding more eggs at that time too when my chicken start laying more eggs.

I was going to offer some extra barnyard mix eggs to you, then I realized that virginia is a far ways off and I am not NPIP .... oops. Maybe your girls will get in gear?

 

[FortCluck]

I was going to offer some extra barnyard mix eggs to you, then I realized that virginia is a far ways off and I am not NPIP .... oops. Maybe your girls will get in gear?

Yeah VA requires shipped eggs to be NPIP I haven't really found many on here who can ship me eggs.

I'm getting about four eggs a day, but that's about half of what I should be getting every day. I'm sure they will start back up soon and I'm hoping I can find my Polish eggs because she's hiding them on me

 

[aliciaplus3]

Yeah VA requires shipped eggs to be NPIP I haven't really found many on here who can ship me eggs.

I'm getting about four eggs a day, but that's about half of what I should be getting every day. I'm sure they will start back up soon and I'm hoping I can find my Polish eggs because she's hiding them on me

HALF wow wish I could get my girls to give me those kind of numbers.... out of 80ish plus chickens I get up to 24 a day currently. ok so maybe half or more are 2-6 years old... maybe this is my fault???? well 24 still looks MUCH better than the 7 I was getting at the begging of dec. Usually I add a light to one of my 2 coops but this year my GFI thingy was not having it! so natural light, or close to it, and the girls are comming back into lay now.

 

[FortCluck]

HALF wow wish I could get my girls to give me those kind of numbers.... out of 80ish plus chickens I get up to 24 a day currently. ok so maybe half or more are 2-6 years old... maybe this is my fault???? well 24 still looks MUCH better than the 7 I was getting at the begging of dec. Usually I add a light to one of my 2 coops but this year my GFI thingy was not having it! so natural light, or close to it, and the girls are comming back into lay now.

I haven't added any supplemental lighting and my laying chickens are between 8 months and 2 years old.

24 is definitely better than 7. I had a few days where I got none and I told them they were a bunch of free loaders