Yet Another Humidity Question ***Hatch Update***

[rhino533]

I've read tons of posts with many different answers. OK, I'm on day 19 and I just noticed my humidty was way to high. I started lockdown yesterday with the humdity at 80% and right now it's at 90% I had to open the small door to the incubator and take out the water completely. It's down to 82-85% and won't go much lower. I worry this is to high and may make a problem with the hatch. Will it cause any problems when the humidity get this high? For the first 18 days my humidity was 58-65%. Is this to high? It's hard to get it any lower because I live in a humid climate and the lowest I was ever able to get on my past hatches was around 54% but it was hard to keep it at that level. I never really had a really good hatch rate. My best hatch rate has been around 40% but so far out of 23 eggs in the incubator 2 were duds and the rest seemed to be ok. They're dark eggs so really hard to tell but I could see veins that look like webs inside which is a good sign. I'm hoping it will be a successful hatch rate this time. I'm just really worried about the humidity causing a problem. Any comments would be great and sorry for another Humidity Question. Thanks!!!

I'm using a homemade incubator.

 

[sixshooter60]

First off is your homemade bator made of styrofoam because i have noticed that with any of the bators made of styrofoam seems to absord the water a little thus causing the humidity to go higher . i do have a hovabator that i use from time to time and i only add little amouts of water at a time as it will rise more as it settles.. my homemade bator is made from a mini fridge and it takes lots more water to rise the humidity.. i know everyone has their own method for incubating with their temps and humidityf. I dont ever use that high of humidity for the 18 days. I like to use about 45 or so until lockdown and then i raise it to about 60 because as the eggs start to hatch the humidity will rise on its own due to the moisture inside the eggs.. of course this is only the way i do it and im sure if you ask 10 people on here you will get 10 different answers. but i would way your humidity is to high and has been to high from the start .imo... i have never tried the dry hatch method myself but have read of lots that do it with good success . i doubt i have been much help to you so i guess all you can do is wait and see what kind of hatch you get then you will know for sure..sorry i couldnt be of more help..

 

[cmom]

Quote:
I agree with this but I do more or less incubate using the dry method. It would definitely help if you could get your humidity down closer to 35% even if you incubate with no water during incubation. The eggs need to loose moisture and if the humidity is to high they can't and moisture will make condensation in the air sacks in the eggs and when the chicks pips the air sacks at lock down they can drown. I do bump my humidity up at lockdown on day 18 to around 75%. I have had hatches around 50% to 60% in the past but now my hatches are around 90% to 100%.

ETA: Do you have a fan in your incubator?

 

[rhino533]

Yeah Thanks for the reply. The inside of my incubator uses reflective insulation. The insulation is a type of soft foam about 1/4" thick. One side uses foil and one side without. The foil side is inside the incubator and The outer walls I use a plastic sheet 1/8" thick you buy at stationary stores. I glued the insulation (non foil side) to the plastic sheet and the screwed the sheets to the frame. The frame is PVC pipe. Works great. I used a type of tape (kind of like duct tape) to seal all the cracks inside and out. I bought a digital Thermostat from Ebay and have one 60w light inside. I have 2 thermometers, 1 that shows Humidity and the Temp and one mercury thermometer. I have 2 computer fans inside to circulate the air. The incubator is about 24"L x 24"W x 15"H

Back to my humidity problem. I think what happened was the inside of the incubator started getting wet and I just noticed it was pooling up in places, this is what made the humidity spike. I have a small emergency door I use if I need to open the incubator during lockdown. What I did was quickly dried the inside with paper towel and took all the water out even my container with water. The temp didn't change much while I did this and the humidity went down now to around 80-82%. I'll be happy if I can get it to 75-80%. Hopefully it all works out. 21 of my eggs at lockdown time looked great when I candled them. My next hatch I'm not going to add any water for the first 18days. I usually have a really small container with water through out the 18day period and then add a bigger container for the last 3 days.

I'll keep you posted. They should hatch Tomorrow or Monday.

 

[cmom]

Good luck...

 

[rhino533]

I've got the humidity down to around 78-79% so all seems well for now. Lets hope they will hatch ok!!!!

 

[rhino533]

Update. The hatch went pretty good. Out of the 21 eggs 17 hatched. wowow my best hatch rate to date. With all the humidity problems it still turned out to be ok. Out of the 4 eggs that didn't hatch 3 were almost out of the egg and they died before they could get out. They had cracked the egg top almost completely off and then just stopped. I checked an hour after they stopped and they were all dead. I could flip the top flap over to look inside that's how close they were to hatching. Do you think they got stuck? They looked perfectly healthy and all 3 died the exact same way. Does anyone know what might of caused this? The forth Egg was rotten.