[Piggerswiggers]

Evening all,
As the above says this is my first time hatching from my chickens. I quite enjoy the science bit so I've been weighing them regularly hoping to achieve the 13-15% weight reduction to ensure an adequately sized air cell. All the way along they've been on the heavy side and at day 18 most have only lost about 10% of their weight. My questions are - might I still have a successful hatch? best guess is fine unless someone has their crystal ball warmed up and ready to go. Is there anything I can or should be doing now to increase the size of the air cells?

Hoping some of you with your lovely experience can help me out
Cheers
Piggers

[Marches Farmer]

I put in eggs laid in clean shavings, leave them for 24 hours to warm through thoroughly, put the turner on and leave them alone for the next 18 days, remove the turner, add a little warm water to the trough and let them get on with it.  Every time you open the incubator you let in colder air and the humidity changes. 

[Womble]

Yes, at 18 days in, the biggest danger is changes to humidity as they start to get ready for hatching, before pipping internally and then externally.

As MF says, I'd just set the humidity for hatching, lock the incubator down and then let them get on with it. Good luck!

[Eve]

Have you candled them and are they alive?


Opening the incubator up to day 18 is fine, after all the broody gets off her nest daily too. But from now onwards you need high enough humidity and keep the incubator closed. Do you have a way to accurately read the humidity?

[chrismahon]

Too late to correct the air sack now Pigger, so as said set the humidity for hatching and leave them. You may be OK at that 10% figure, but if you get any 'dead in shell' you will know why.


We run our incubators 'dry' and correct with extra humidity if the sac gets too big for the day. Brinsea have a candling chart on line, but in my opinion the sac development drawn is too big. Seems everyone is using the same old sketch in their documentation.

[Anke]

For the first few years we always followed the recommendation (K Thear books) to keep the moisture in the incubator at just over 50% - with good results. Then last year we had terrible hatches with lots and lots of dead-in-shell chicks... so this spring I have run the incubator almost dry for the first 18 days (humidity was often at 40 or less), then upped the humidity on day 20 only to 75%. It worked well and we had 14 hatched live, and only three dead-in-shell/died while hatching and the rest infertile (out of 24 in total). As these were hatched over w/end 18/19 March, which is quite early, I am pleased with the result.

(But I didn't weigh the eggs at all during the incubation)

[Piggerswiggers]

Thanks all, I have candled and the six remaining (from 8 that went in) are alive. I've locked them down today with hopefully increased humidity and will be keeping my fingers crossed.
Thanks again for the advice.

[Marches Farmer]

Sue and Shaun Hammon, who've retired from running The Wernlas Collection, never used to add water to their incubators.  They said that with our maritime climate humidity wasn't an issue.

[Eve]

Sue and Shaun Hammon, who've retired from running The Wernlas Collection, never used to add water to their incubators.  They said that with our maritime climate humidity wasn't an issue.

That depends on where you incubate them and what time of year they hatch. In my centrally heated house the humidity is far too low until May.


I stick to the humidity and temperature guidelines and the hatching rate of our own eggs is consistently 90-95%. There was this one time when we used an uncalibrated incubator and didn't doublecheck the readings and it went wrong... *still curses hat occasion*