What's going on here?

[MunchiesChicks]

I just wanted to chime in that I think the location (bathoom) is not good for your incubator.

There are big humidity swings in there, and 55% is quite high in general.. I am staying around 30-45% until lockdown. you want to have lower humidity so that the air cell in the egg grows larger (loses moisture).

"You begin by ONLY adding a small amount of water and keep Humidity between 28%-45% and adjusting as you weigh or candle depending on moisture loss."

I thought the same thing but surprisingly taking a shower doesn't increase the humidity but maybe 1% and I'm thinking it has to do with hot air rising from the vent holes all are unplugged keeping the humidity from entering the incubator. I believe having a draft would cause the flow of air to increase the rate the hot air is moved out of the incubator. I keep my house at 72 during the summer and 65-70 during fall and winter by ac and ceiling fans. The bathroom is the really only draft free area.

After watching for awhile I think it was the thermostat. I went bought one got it all set up then transferred the eggs and returned the egg killing incubator. Thank you for the humidity info. Mine had been stored for 9 days prior to incubation and some had already had big air pockets. I've dropped the humidity since and everyone is great except for one egg that has practically the same size air space at 7 days that it had at 14 days.

 

[Manningjw]

Which incubator are you using Viola? I find it very difficult to maintain 25-40% humidity. I am filling only the inside water chamber of my Hova-Bator and the humidity goes from 10% to 60%. I could fill less but that would mean filling many times a day and checking more than I have time to. Maybe next time I will put some sort of lid in the incubator to fill it and see what happens.

 

[Farmer Viola]

I have a farm innovators incubator:
http://www.amazon.com/Farm-Innovato...UTF8&qid=1381536534&sr=8-1&keywords=incubator

I had some trouble with humidity at first too.. I got the humidity right before I added eggs, by adding water to the chambers. When I later added eggs, my humidity spiked very high! at 70% the egg will not grow it's air cell fast enough (lose water weight) so I had to get it down.. I removed all the water.. it stayed high. Adding eggs increased the humidity from 50% to 70%.

What worked for me was removing all the water, soaking it up with a towel, and adding rice to the bottom of the incubator. I also moved my incubator from a bedroom which has a bathroom attached, to a bedroom without a bathroom (humidity was too high in that room [60% in the bedroom])

I also removed the vent plugs, at the recommendation of some experienced incubators here on BYC

heres a pic of how much rice i used

the bator is now hanging out at about 30% humidity. I am keeping it a little lower for 3 days to compensate for how high it was for 3 days.

GL!

EDIT:
One idea I have is to add water on something removable. put a small tupperware dish of water in or something. that way you can remove it if it's too high. it is difficult to remove it from the built-in water chambers.

also, the humidity is about the surface area of water. so remember that when trying various tupperware sizes. its not about how deep the water is, just the surface area!

 

[Manningjw]

The interesting bit for me is that the room the incubator is in the humidity is 60% but inside the incubator it drops a lot after it has heated up to the 98.5-100.5 temp it sits at. I have to add water to keep it above 20%.

Anyhow, what I have been doing is just adding about 15 ccs of water when the humidity drops below 30% and it's staying in the high 40-50 range, sometimes higher but it balances out when it goes lower than 30%. I am at work now so I will be interested to see how low the humidity is when I get home.

 

[MunchiesChicks]

Just remember it's the surface area not so much depth. My bathroom is about 38% humidity all the time. The south does mess with a lot of temp and humidity issues though.

 

[Farmer Viola]

The interesting bit for me is that the room the incubator is in the humidity is 60% but inside the incubator it drops a lot after it has heated up to the 98.5-100.5 temp it sits at. I have to add water to keep it above 20%.

Anyhow, what I have been doing is just adding about 15 ccs of water when the humidity drops below 30% and it's staying in the high 40-50 range, sometimes higher but it balances out when it goes lower than 30%. I am at work now so I will be interested to see how low the humidity is when I get home.

cool, keep us posted! 15ccs is very specific, it didn't take much to get you where you needed to be! TY for the info