The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Housing, Health & Hatching
IDEAL humidity for lockdown
dixieland:
Awesome! We have a Buff that hatched from eggs that we brought back from Indy, so maybe he\'ll be Buff Indy----since you have Blue Indy!!!
vanalpaca:
My lockdown is Weds, small cabinet 3 shelf bator, egg turners, temps are somewhere between 101.5 and 99 according to my 5 thermometers....Humidity has been 45-50%.
39 eggs set, now looks like only 23 have chicks. Weighed several and they didn\'t change weight AT All. These are the Wellie eggs as I don\'t have Ameraucanas of my own to hatch until next season. They are super dark and difficult to candle (so middle of the night went down and did the flashlight and got some kind of an idea of which ones might make it).
Now it sounds like FEED might be the issue? I use DUMOR Layer Crumbles, 16% and get in the \'all natural\' Kalambach Layer Crumbles 20% most of the time. So what else should I be feeding my hens? And how much a day? They are penned.
This is just to get really good hatching eggs......
Christie Rhae:
I am far from a pro compared to the veterans on this board but.... I have hatched a fair amount of eggs. I only use the styro incubators so far. Can\'t wait to justify buying one of those big daddy incubators!
Anyhooo.. I add nearly no water at all the first 18 days. I just let the incubator run. Those eggs need to lose weight. If I see the humidity at 10% for a day or so I will add a teaspoon of water. Then when it gets close to hatch day I put water in the channels (styro incubator) and add a jar of water with a sponge half immersed. This gets the humidity up to about 65%.
With this method I have never had a chick die in the shell. All eggs that start to develop will hatch. The only ones that do not hatch are eggs that never started to develop for one reason or another.
Shipped eggs of course have dismal hatch rates just because they never even start developing. Eggs from my own pens have near perfect hatch rates.
vanalpaca:
These are my own fertile eggs. All had bull\'s eyes when I broke them open prior to saving eggs for hatching.
I added no water whatsoever and cabinet runs at 45%-50%. It isn\'t a big cabinet, about 24 inches high, 2 bulbs for heat and 2 fans for circulation. This is my second time trying to hatch from it. Last time I had 36 rockers and only 10-12 hatched.
I am a bit concerned that the eggs didn\'t \'dry down\' at all. They should have lost weight. But with electronic variables, it\'s just as possible that the digital scale is variable between weighings when we are talking grams. It just weighs to the nearest gram or 10th of an ounce depending on the switch. So just like the thermometers having a variance, I guess.
My next setting won\'t be until April. Unless I find some high quality Ameraucan hens to put with my Black, Splash, and Blue roos I\'m picking up in Indiana, I won\'t have any eggs to set this year of Ameraucana. I don\'t mind a short drive of 2 hours or so to pick up a nice quality hen while my chicks grow up......
angora831:
[If it is a feed issue you will see lots of burn-outs between days 14-18. Micro and macro nutrients should be considered for non-foraging birds. Everybody has their favorite, I like Kelp meal, but other things work well. ]
Michael, where do you purchase your kelp meal at? The sources that I have found online are all on the east coast and their shipping costs are pretty steep even for small amounts.
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