Very small air cells on day 16 - Please help me save these babies.

[calichickies]

Yay! So happy you've made it to lock down with evidence of life in all of your eggs.
Isn't it amazing how much that air cell can grow at the very end. I guess they are 'bigger' then and consume more of their egg and so the air cell is able to expand (for lack of a scientific reason-- I'm no professional).

Good Luck! And sit on your hands!! I know the torture of which you speak.. Ha!

I just had a hatch that had it all... a chick that hatched in the matter of 20 minutes and one that took well over 24 hours... and felt the need to zip twice while I watched her. Accckkk!!

They know best!! Nature's fine design... and every hatch you learn something new and tweak your bator or your method just a touch to improve.
This is the world's BEST science experiment... and longest too... Ha! Because you never really get to the end-- and we are always learning with different eggs and bators and climates, etc.
I'm thinking supportive calming soothing thoughts for you over here...

And for the eggs I'm thinking HURRY UP AND HATCH WILL YA!!! Ha ha Ha!!

I'm so excited for you!

 

[Mister B]

I have a high humidity problem. I checked on the humidity a few days ago and it had spiked to 88%. I got it down to 57% this morning. I am at week 2 (14 days). Do I need to drop the humidity further? The air spaces look about he size of a quarter. I think that's a little small. I was thinking I could get some Damp Rid and put in there to dry it out more. What do you think? Do I need to dry more? I have a chest cooler home made incubator.

 

[BobbieJo81]

I have a high humidity problem. I checked on the humidity a few days ago and it had spiked to 88%. I got it down to 57% this morning. I am at week 2 (14 days). Do I need to drop the humidity further? The air spaces look about he size of a quarter. I think that's a little small. I was thinking I could get some Damp Rid and put in there to dry it out more. What do you think? Do I need to dry more? I have a chest cooler home made incubator.

Yes, def get the humidity down as much as possible..I mark my air cells at 7 days, 14 and 18 to make sure that they are getting large enough..try putting some dry rice or cat litter in the bator to draw out some of the moisture..I keep mine pretty low(try to stay at 40 or below) until lock down--

 

[Sylviaanne]

I had this happen to me, don't worry about upping humidity right now, goodness I've had so many chicks hatch without upping the humidity because they were left in the incubator too long and never got into the hatcher BEFORE hatching.

Increase the ventialtion. Decrease the humidity in the room and therefore the incubator. I'm assuming you have a table top model not a huge one. So use an AC to drop the humidity, and a fan inside the incubator. YOu can also us a fan to blow across the top to help draw out moist air-- someone suggested this for my situation.

THere is not a lot of time to get the moisture level down in the eggs. no matter how you set the eggs , sides or in egg cartons, there is too much moisture in the eggs.

Open all the vents. I put a fan under one of the vents on my LG and pulled moist air out very fast.

Only time will tell if you can get the moisture level down enough. GIve it a go!!

My incubator is a Little Giant with a fan and I put an auto turner in it. The temp is reading 100 and the humidity is 31% with no added water. It has been rainy here off and on for a week. Today is day 11 in the incubator. I just bought the LG with the fan and took the eggs from the old incubator to the new one yesterday afternoon. All the vents are open but I am worried about the air sack getting water in it and drowning the birds. Last weekend I had some eggs left from the last batch of eggs hatching so upped the humidity. I thought I could add more eggs after 22 of the original eggs hatched at 2 weeks in the incubator. To recap: Most of the eggs that hatched on the 9th and 10th, had started life under a hen but when she left them for more than 12 hours I brought them in and put them in the incubator the next morning. Anyways, when I realized that too much humidity could drown the newer babies, it was too late. I am looking for corrective measures to take now. I can sit the incubator on a box fan to pull some of the humidity out but wouldn't that chill the eggs? Or do you think that the humidity is ok since we have 10 more days to go?

Thanks, Sylvia

 

[catfish307]

Glad I found this info. I also noticed that my air cells were pretty small and I had high humidity the first 2 weeks. Hope taking all the water out will let the cells get bigger by this coming weekend.

 

[PippinChicken]

Years later and this thread is still giving hope On day 14 I felt like my air cells might be too small but wasn’t sure. I decreased humidity a tiny bit and rechecked halfway through day 16; there was little to no growth. Now going dry with vents open and hoping they’ll catch up a bit by lockdown!

 

[MissHenrietta]

Bringing back this thread! It’s so helpful - I’ve read every last post on here ..yesterday was day 15 for me and my air cells all seemed pretty small. I’ve compared them to the OP and they seem to be just about the same. Ive been running it at 52 percent humidity (as per the incubators directions - it’s a a Nurture Right 360), and my temp has been between 99.5-100 consistently. I have 6 eggs in my incubator. I drew out most of the water last night since I assume the humidity has been too high, ugh...it’s been running around 26-35 percent humidity all day and I intend to keep it that way until I’m into day 19-20, or until that first pip - does this seem like the correct thing to do?This thread is giving me hope, but I’m still stressing myself out; especially since we go into lockdown in 2 days . Any further advice is definitely appreciated!!