YO GEORGIANS! :)

Oh it totally will....

Welcome to the wonderful world of incubating chicks, lol!
Tell me about it. I mean, I think I never realized, though I stressed over my ducklings, I always knew that if something went awry I could go out in the yard and get more eggs, only time was lost.

But now! Well.
 
Okay, time for an LG incubator update, based on this new design.

I replied to Carcar80 yesterday and mentioned it is holding temp well. And it is. It sits by my USUALLY OPEN window, and deals with the drafts coming in and the temps changing from day to night, or from one day to the next. But it has held a steady 102 or 99, depending on what I actually adjusted it to. I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted it at 102 or 99 degrees, so I admit I kept adjusting it myself. But whatever I went for, it held.

HOWEVER, there is bad news. It is currently set up as my hatching incubator with no egg turner. So I filled up the four shorter water trays to make sure humidity was higher for hatching. THAT WAS A BAD IDEA. The new water trays have a lot more surface area than the old ones, so four was way too many. The humidity went up to the 70% range for a few days, and then finally back down to the 60% range. But it never went back down to 50% until I put a dry washcloth in there to dry up the water in one of the trays. During this time, I had eggs that were supposed to hatch. I lost 9 out of 11 eggs! And of the two that did hatch, one of those got completely out of the egg, and died afterwards with part of his beak stuck through the screen, into the water.

I cracked open all of the dead eggs, and every last one of them had a SUPER thick goo on the inside of the egg, like the membrane itself had absorbed too much water. I could just tell there was too much moisture coming in to the egg, and that's what caused the problems. I have nothing to actually measure the amount of moisture actually in the egg or it's shell - only the hygrometer to measure humidity in the entire incubator. But somehow I just knew. The water absorption was just way too high.

So I have since dried out the one tray, and it has stayed between 45 and 50 percent. That's right where I want it to be. I also haven't lost anymore eggs since then, but then none were scheduled to hatch until tomorrow either. I'm not sure how well that one will do, because it was in there for part of the time that the humidity was too high. But we'll see.

So temperature-wise, it's fine. It holds very well. And when the geese get here and they DO need higher humidity, it will work very well. Also when the turtle lays her eggs and I need to incubate those at 80 percent humidity, it'll be excellent! But be careful about how many of those trays you actually need to fill when it comes time to hatch out chickens.
 
The madness is getting worse.  I just submitted an order request for a pair of Cotton Patch Geese.  I may have to seek therapy.


Hey ABMADDOX!!!!!   I hope you're ready to share a sunrise over a glass of orange juice Sunday morning.   GA did tell you that we would be there at the crack of dawn, right?

She didn't but I'm up by 6 anyway. Maybe I'll cook breakfast for y'all. :D
 
It's no fun to mess with people when they just go along with it.
sickbyc.gif
Let's think more along the lines of 10ish. lol
 

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