What works the best for you?

[judsenn]

Everywhere I read I get different answers on humidity for turkey eggs. My last batch was typically at 40-45% throughout the incubation and 60% for lock down ( I couldn't get it any higher than that no matter what I tried!!) So, my question is, what is your humidity at both incubation and lock down phases? And hatch rate? Thanks

 

[Souperchicken]

I just tried hatching turkeys at about 58% at lockdown and about 48% during day 1-17 with poor results(I had to manually hatch them, and some did survive) which I believe was due to humidity. Our incubator instructions said 55%-65% at lockdown, but after reading other peoples advice on humidity, I'm going to try get it up higher and see if that helps. I use a 1588 hovabator and the temp was constant, so I figure it must be the humidity.

 

[lynn1961]

Porters rare turkeys has a good article on hatching turkey eggs. I wish i had found the article with my first try. Did a lot better the 2nd time after I used their guide, as far as getting the humidity up, try using sponges, pieces of cloth, whatever you have on hand that you can place in the bottom of the incubator that can be saturated with water to help boost the humidity level up, try to resist opening the incubator and removing the hatched out poults until the hatch is done, you loose a lot of humidity when you open them up. My fist try there were 2 out of 5 hatch, the second try got 5 out of 7 so far, following the lower incubation tempature also seemed to make a difference, had chicken eggs in the incubator with the turkey eggs as fillers and to help the poults to learn to eat and drink, the tempature and humidity change did not seem to affect the chicken egg hatch, 6 out of 7 of them so far. tomorrow will be the last day for this batch to finish hatching. One more small batch to go, and then what ever the turkey hens hatch out in a couple of weeks from their shared nest of 14 eggs. Happy hatching !

 

[judsenn]

I just tried hatching turkeys at about 58% at lockdown and about 48% during day 1-17 with poor results(I had to manually hatch them, and some did survive) which I believe was due to humidity. Our incubator instructions said 55%-65% at lockdown, but after reading other peoples advice on humidity, I'm going to try get it up higher and see if that helps. I use a 1588 hovabator and the temp was constant, so I figure it must be the humidity.

What do you mean day 1-17, you shouldn't be going into lockdown until day 25 for turkey eggs. They take at least 28 days to hatch, not 21 like chickens.

 

[Souperchicken]

LOL! That's what I get for posting so late at night when I'm tired.
I was incubating turkey and chicken eggs together and was counting from when I put the chicken eggs in. Yes, it is 25 days for turkeys. Day 1-24 is what I meant. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[judsenn]

Haha. Well good...cuz I've run across dome ppl that though it was the same incubation time. So i was just checking. how does that work out for you doing both Turkey n chicken eggs together? I'm actually going to try it this time around.