chicks not hatching out help!!

[hopkinsontom]

i have a fully automatic incubator and on the last 2 hatch's i had quite a lot of the eggs reach the pipping stage and then not hatching the chicks are full term (ready to hatch), then they just seemed to not be able to hatch out very frustrating has any one see this or know what the problem is?

I wondered if the humidity wasn't high enough so i raised it by a little but to no effect

 

[Chuck]

My feeling is that your humidity is too high. Most of the instructions say 40 -45% for the first 18 days but a lot of us have found this too high. I run mine dry now until the first egg chips then up the humidity to 60-65%

I used to get poor results too until I changed. As your results are so poor I'd suggest you have nothing to lose, so experiment.

 

[hopkinsontom]

when you say dry how dry do you mean? my humidity instructions were 45% for turning days and 65% for the non turning i ran it slightly higher for the last 3 days i assumed the chicks were struggling because the shells were too hard i.e too dry so is this not correct?

 

[podstable]

I do the same as Chuck----I run it dry (no water added at all) even at hatching. I get much better results like that.Ros

 

[dorinda]

Me too -I run all my incys dry - I add no water all all - most of our incys are made abroad and the instructions come for users in that country - only exception I make though is for my still air incys - I do add water to them, 45% from beginning to end of the incubation

 

[foxy]

I run mine at around 35% then I only raise the humidity when I see signs of pipping. Then I raise to 65%. The biggest factor is then not to disturb, lifting the lid just once can have dramatic effects on the eggs hatching and they will dry out very quickly.

The other side if the coin is raising humidity too early when humidity has been running fairly high, then at the point the chicks are internally pipping they end up getting too wet resulting in drowning chicks or chcks that get "mushy" and large in the shell so cannot turn into hatching position. Chicks need to lose weight throughout the incubation process and this happens through evaporation through the shell, if the humidity is too high then the chick becomes too large at the hatching stage.

When you say they are struggling does the membrane look sort of shrink wrapped or do the chicks look wet?

 

[hopkinsontom]

the chicks seem wet, it sounds like i have been running the humidity too high, my incubator is an R com Suro king 20. it has a fan to circulate the air, what humidity would you recommend to run it at?

 

[dorinda]

I run mine dry - set the humidity at about 30 put water in the bottle or wharever you use all the same - the pump just won't need to pump (if you see what I mean) and then with the Suro I go up to 50 at pipping time. Out of all my incys the suro is the one I use for special eggs I've found it to be foolproof, but they do say to use more humidity than is nec.. good luck

 

[hopkinsontom]

thanks for all the useful info you have all been a big help if any one else has any ideas i would appreciate you sharing them thanks for all the help.