by Brenda
(Australia)
Hi
Hoping you could aid me as I am possessing difficulty with hatching live
chicks from our eggs.
The incubator is an air movement variety and we have checked the temperature numerous instances with a great good quality mercury thermometer and it appears excellent.
A single has hatched and is healthy and robust, the other people, some have gone to 21 days but didn’t hatch, had been completely formed, some only got as far as 6 days.
I have your trouble shooting guide we have checked most of the issues we can believe of and as of nevertheless we have no way of checking humidity and maybe want to get one thing to measure this hope you can help.
Regards
Brenda
MEG: Hi Brenda
1st, I would appear at the quality of the eggs you are employing. They ought to be less than 10 days old, and stored in a shady, awesome (not cold) location, pointy finish down, and tilted daily (e.g. in an egg carton with alternate ends elevated each and every day). Bought fertile eggs frequently have poor top quality control so that may well be your difficulty for the “quitters”.
Verify the hygiene of your incubator. All ought to be scrupulously cleaned among batches but foam ones are impossible to get actually clean… so contamination
may be an problem.
Is the temp dropping at night? Examine that. Also the humidity demands to be high for hatching (70%) and is the single largest mistake people make…
opening the lid also usually at hatching and letting the humidity out. Dried out eggs cannot hatch, so the bubbies die fully formed in the shell. Ideally
for chickens you should shut the lid at day 18 and not open it once more till the 1st chicks are 24 hours old ~ four days later. Make certain your humidity reservoir is deep enough not to dry out in the course of this time. When you do, give all nevertheless in there a rapid spray of warm water and replace the lid
for another 24 hours.
Hope that helps!
Meg