Troubleshooting incubation issues

[Naturalness]

Hey everyone, I'm new here and need some ideas of how to resolve the issues I'm having with incubation.

I've got a relatively cheap incubator from amazon.es - a rectangular design with rollers, forced air, bottom water tank. At first appearance it seems to be working reasonably well.

I've tried three batches of eggs in it now and generally when candlingon day 6-8 I can see most eggs are fertile, but when candling again later on day 15 usually only 2-3 out of 20 eggs have progressed, the rest have turned swishy. In the first two batches only 1 hatched each. The third batch is still in but I'm not very hopeful. Only two seem to be alive on day 17 now.

The incubator temperature seems to fluctuate slightly when looking at a separate thermometer - setting is 37.8 Celsius but my reedings vary between 36.0 to 37.9. while this isn't optimal, I'm uncertain if this could affect hatch rates to this degree. But my sampling method is crude and random.

Humidity was maintained throughout all hatches at around 58% with slight fluctuations. Ramped up towards hatching and survivors all hatched easily without any signs of stickiness or shrinkwrapping.
Turning is working perfectly as far as I can tell. Eggs are marked and can be seen turning and the mechanism is loud enough to hear it when it starts up.

Eggs came from different sources, my own flock included but also a friend's flock who regularly hatches her own eggs and from someone who sells eggs for breeding. The eggs were reasonably clean but not sterile.

The chicks that did hatch were healthy and strong, no signs of illness or deformity.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be?
I'm ready to buy a new incubator but if the problem lies elsewhere I'd rather not spend the money...

Thanks for your suggestions

 

[Debbie292d]

Hiya, and welcome again to BYC!

You said it has rollers. Does that mean it turns the eggs? Without knowing the brand, I'm a little stuck. We have two incubators here, NR360 and Brinsea 56EX.

Did you read the reviews? Sometimes on Amazon, those can be helpful too.

 

[Debbie292d]

Hey everyone, I'm new here and need some ideas of how to resolve the issues I'm having with incubation.

I've got a relatively cheap incubator from amazon.es - a rectangular design with rollers, forced air, bottom water tank. At first appearance it seems to be working reasonably well.

I've tried three batches of eggs in it now and generally when candlingon day 6-8 I can see most eggs are fertile, but when candling again later on day 15 usually only 2-3 out of 20 eggs have progressed, the rest have turned swishy. In the first two batches only 1 hatched each. The third batch is still in but I'm not very hopeful. Only two seem to be alive on day 17 now.

The incubator temperature seems to fluctuate slightly when looking at a separate thermometer - setting is 37.8 Celsius but my reedings vary between 36.0 to 37.9. while this isn't optimal, I'm uncertain if this could affect hatch rates to this degree. But my sampling method is crude and random.

Humidity was maintained throughout all hatches at around 58% with slight fluctuations. Ramped up towards hatching and survivors all hatched easily without any signs of stickiness or shrinkwrapping.
Turning is working perfectly as far as I can tell. Eggs are marked and can be seen turning and the mechanism is loud enough to hear it when it starts up.

Eggs came from different sources, my own flock included but also a friend's flock who regularly hatches her own eggs and from someone who sells eggs for breeding. The eggs were reasonably clean but not sterile.

The chicks that did hatch were healthy and strong, no signs of illness or deformity.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be?
I'm ready to buy a new incubator but if the problem lies elsewhere I'd rather not spend the money...

Thanks for your suggestions

One other question I forgot to ask is if you are using a different thermometer and hygrometer besides the one on the incubator. Those two incubators I have both run off by a degree and one runs low 2 degrees F. Govee is one of the great brands if you don't have any and like having an app on your phone to see what temp and humidity are.

 

[Naturalness]

Hiya, and welcome again to BYC!

You said it has rollers. Does that mean it turns the eggs? Without knowing the brand, I'm a little stuck. We have two incubators here, NR360 and Brinsea 56EX.

Did you read the reviews? Sometimes on Amazon, those can be helpful too.

It's one of the chinese models that use random vowels and consonants as brandnames... Yes, it turns the eggs and I marked them to make sure it was working.
My friend has the same model and hers works, but with Chinese fabrication and quality control I wouldn't be surprised if it were a technical problem. This is the model.

I just want to reduce the uncertainty, so I don't buy a 300 euro machine in vain. So I wonder is there any user error I've comitted? Or is it possible I have some kind of bacteria in the incubator that's killing everything?

 

[Debbie292d]

It's one of the chinese models that use random vowels and consonants as brandnames... Yes, it turns the eggs and I marked them to make sure it was working.
My friend has the same model and hers works, but with Chinese fabrication and quality control I wouldn't be surprised if it were a technical problem. This is the model.
View attachment 3636086

I just want to reduce the uncertainty, so I don't buy a 300 euro machine in vain. So I wonder is there any user error I've comitted? Or is it possible I have some kind of bacteria in the incubator that's killing everything?

When you consider we are putting eggs with tons of germs on them in our incubators, I don't generally worry too much about germs, but I do sterilize the incubators after each batch. I think you'd only have to worry about any serious egg-harming bacteria if an egg cracks and oozes or one explodes in there. If this last batch gives you a bad hatch rate too, are you able to send it back for a refund and say it was defective? It makes no sense as it sounds like you're doing everything right.

 

[Naturalness]

One other question I forgot to ask is if you are using a different thermometer and hygrometer besides the one on the incubator. Those two incubators I have both run off by a degree and one runs low 2 degrees F. Govee is one of the great brands if you don't have any and like having an app on your phone to see what temp and humidity are.

I used a few different thermometers to test the temperature, none have excellent precision, it's just what I had at home. The digital one showed temperatures varied despite almost constant digital display, sometimes a tiny bit high but mostly about a degree and a half Celsius lower (set: 37.8C, digital display 37.7C, reading on separate thermometer 36.0-37.9). These variations aren't huge especially considering that most thermometers generally aren't exact to a decimal.

But something certainly ain't right... 1 out of 20 eggs ...

 

[Debbie292d]

I used a few different thermometers to test the temperature, none have excellent precision, it's just what I had at home. The digital one showed temperatures varied despite almost constant digital display, sometimes a tiny bit high but mostly about a degree and a half Celsius lower (set: 37.8C, digital display 37.7C, reading on separate thermometer 36.0-37.9). These variations aren't huge especially considering that most thermometers generally aren't exact to a decimal.

But something certainly ain't right... 1 out of 20 eggs ...

It really doesn't make any sense especially since you've got eggs from different sources and candling shows them as mostly viable early on, so they're getting killed off during the incubating at some point. There are three main things they need most of all, which sounds like you have fine: heat, humidity, and turning. Ventilation is important too but I would presume if that one turns eggs, it's got a vent on it and a fan. Do you use distilled water for filling the water receptacle?

 

[Naturalness]

It really doesn't make any sense especially since you've got eggs from different sources and candling shows them as mostly viable early on, so they're getting killed off during the incubating at some point. There are three main things they need most of all, which sounds like you have fine: heat, humidity, and turning. Ventilation is important too but I would presume if that one turns eggs, it's got a vent on it and a fan. Do you use distilled water for filling the water receptacle?

I used distilled water the first two runs and then it was just getting ridiculously expensive since I have to use about 0.5l water a day to keep humidity up. We live in a very arid location... Now I'm using our untreated well water.

So my running hypothesis is there are fluctuations in one of the three parameters most likely the temperature, that I'm not catching but that apparently kill the embryos. Either that, or the feng shui of the house is screwed up
Or some killer germ that I have on my hands or haven't properly cleaned out of the incubator...

My next test will be with a bortowed incubator before I buy something new

 

[Debbie292d]

I would try see if you could send it back, but I know some return windows on Amazon are 30 days and if that's the case, you're well over that.

Borrowing an incubator is a great idea. I did that, and didn't end up liking the one I borrowed, thus bought the NR 360, then a few months later, the Brinsea.

You could also try find them on the Facebook Marketplace for your area. I found the Brinsea used that way as otherwise I couldn't have afforded it.

 

[Naturalness]

I went and took out the eggs that were clearly not growing anymore and opened them to see if there was any information to be gained. The interior of the eggs was mostly ok, that is, there was no terrible smell or discoloration except a bit of black in one egg. The embryos all had died around the same time, they were about 1cm large with big eyes. I imagine that's about 6 days?
Four eggs looked dark, so I left them in the incubator to see if any can hatch. It's day 19 now and I can't hear any sounds from the eggs so I'm not hopeful.

I hope it's a technical problem, in that case the solution is easy. The next hatch in the borrowed incubator will give more information...