Our hens usually have a 100% hatch rate whereas the best hatch rate we’ve achieved is (I believe) a 72% in the still air incubator. It is during those times that the moisture from the air can gather back inside the egg.Īdd to that the oils of the hen’s feathers, as mentioned by the author, and the fact that chickens cool down by soaking their feet in water when they’re too hot and you’ve got the perfect humidity control…it seems. A hen will get off of her nest at different points during the day to eat, drink and even dust bathe. The point is, that humidity from the soil is not a factor in this approach. Doing this, we believe, eliminates some of that stress and the chicks can easily hop down to the ground without injury, provided the floor is covered with soft bedding.* Chickens don’t like to sleep on the ground because of predation. I plan to use a hybrid approach, adding water as needed to keep ourĪctually, when one of our hens go broody, we take her and her eggs, place them in a nest box (with a bottom) and usually place them up off of the ground a foot or so. In fact, some incubation experts practice dry incubation where they seldom or never fill the wells at the bottom of the incubator. So it’s okay to let the incubator wells completely dry out for a day if you need to in order to get the average humidity down lower. No matter which method you choose, you should be aware that it’s the average humidity over time that’s important to your eggs, not the humidity at any given moment. This is the method I’ve chosen, so I’ll go over the specifics of the calculations in a later post. Which brings us to the final method of determining egg weight loss - weighing your eggs. Our new Brinsea Octagon 20 incubator will definitely help us in that regard, but there’s a big difference between 40 and 50% humidity and I’d like to know whether my eggs are losing weight at the proper rate. However, this technique requires a lot of judgement calls, and would be time consuming if you’re hatching more than a few eggs.Īnother easy method to get the proper level of humidity is to buy a fancy incubator with a humidity readout. A chart like the one shown here can be used to see if the egg’s air pocket is growing at the right speed. The second method is to pencil the size of the air pocket on the outside of each egg at intervals while candling. We live in a very damp climate, and I suspect that following the instructions last time around is part of what resulted in such a low hatch rate. The simplest is to follow the instructions and fill a certain number of wells with water, but this is a very hit or miss approach - humidity in your incubator is determined by the humidity outside the incubator as well as by the amount of water in the wells. There are a few different ways to get the right humidity in your incubator. If the humidity in your incubator is too high, then your chick won’t have the appropriate air pocket and will die soon before pipping. Over time, the air pocket in the egg will get larger as water evaporates out, creating a safe spot for your chick to breath in between around day 19 and the time the chick hatches. In order to hatch correctly, a chicken egg should lose 13% of its weight during incubation, and that weight is lost in the form of water evaporating out of the egg. Humidity is one of the most important factors determining your hatch rate, but, contrary to popular belief, high humidity is more troublesome than low humidity during most of the incubation period.ĭuring hatch, of course, you want high humidity in the range of 65% or more so that the chicks won’t get stuck in the shell, but the goal is 40 to 50% for the first 19 days.
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