Oh I would so hatch those. Ask for forgiveness later, lol!!
I pulled these in and out of my fridge trying to decide to hatch them or not.
What hubby doen't know will not hurt him...
Trader Joes & Other Grocery Store Egg Hatching Club - Are you a Member
- Thread starter GardeNerd
- Start date
i have ONE more hatching question! i set my eggs on a thursday at noon. as far as taking them off the turner and upping the humidity...i was planning on day 18 being today...would it be tomorrow? i counted that thursday as day ONE. and if i was wrong in doing to today would it be a crucial mistake?
thursday, the day you set is day 0 hour zero. Day 1 is 24 hours later, so friday.
Thanks...so tomorrow up the humidity etc...good to know
They will have yolk in their eggs all the way up to day 21 when they leave the egg on their own. Have a great hatch.
If you set them on a Thursday, They will usually start hatching on a Thursday. Eggs begin incubating within an hour of setting them--There is a big bit of debate on counting the set day or not so I will not get into that again!
I like to set them for lockdown a bit later because of humidity issues--I have to add water after two days.
Lock them down on Tuesday.
Keep us posted!
Turning the eggs is less of a big deal the last week of hatching. I personally tend to transfer eggs from the incubator to the hatcher up to a week before hatching and they seem to do fine. A bigger issue is the drop in humidity the last few days when you open the top to add water. I'd try and figure out a way to add water without opening it up (I used to use a styrofoam incubator as a hatcher and used a funnel attached to a plastic tube which I stuck through a ventilator hole. You don't want to raise humidity unless you also drop the temperature. If you keep your humidity the same for hatching don't drop the temperature. Up until the last few days chicken embryos are more like reptiles and can stand some temperature drops but in the last few days they are more like mammals and cannot take chill very well. Bits better to start lockdown a day or two early than to try and shorten it. Back when I tried to start lockdown as close as possible to day 21 I lost a lot more chicks at hatching that seemed almost ready to hatch. Now I find that I usually have quite a few that hatch a bit early and those were probably the ones that I was killing. Some embryonic development can happen if the egg stays in the hen a bit longer, if the eggs are warmed under other hens that are laying in the same box, and when eggs are stored above 68F before setting. You will also find that some birds (especially smaller breeds) may hatch on day 20 and need lockdown a day early anyway.
so if i am to raise humidity to 65% (?) then what would i drop the temp to?
The book that I use for most of my information is an old book on commercial poultry production from back in the day before the Cornish X Rock broiler crosses and the main meat chickens were Rhode Island Reds and Plymouth Barred Rocks. There is a lot of government research using hundreds of thousands of eggs at agricultural research stations to back up their findings. They determined that, depending on airflow the ideal temperature for incubation with no variation would be 99 3/4F and 60% humidity. They also determined that if you set eggs at 100F with 33% humidity, 99F and 56% humidity and 98F and 70% humidity that all the eggs hatched at exactly the same time. You can make a chart and figure out exactly what temperature you need for your chosen humidity or what humidity you need for your chosen temperature. So 60% humidity is better for losing the right amount of moisture throughout incubation but a higher humidity is better for hatching as long as you drop the temperature to match. Airflow factors in which is why still air incubators have different ideal temperature/humidity combinations.
Oh, I just noticed in my notes that I figured out on a chart that 99.5F on that chart corresponds to 44.5% humidity and 98.5F corresponds to 63% humidity.
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