Egg Hatching 101: Day 12 Checking Humidity

Keeping an eye on your incubator's temperature and humidity level should be a daily task on your agenda. If either one gets too far out of whack for too long, serious problems can arise in the development of your eggs. You still want the temperature hovering around 99.6 and the humidity between 40-50%. During the last few days of incubation we'll want to increase the humidity to help with hatching, but for right now, this is right where we want to be.

We add water to the two wells located below the egg tray as needed in our incubator; yours may require a different method. I mentioned early in this series that we opted not to buy the expensive humidity gadget because we found that a large syringe works just fine in our situation. It allows me to quickly add water between the eggs right into the wells below without moving the tray and disturbing the eggs any more than I have to. It also helps keep me from getting the eggs wet.

The paper towels shoved around the eggs in the photo are to keep the eggs from falling over. You still want them to be pointy-end down, and since this incubator is on an automatic rocker, we want to make sure they are secure.

On Day 12:

Ribs are forming

Scales are developing on legs

→ See our entire Egg Hatching 101 Series up to this point here. ←

This post is part of a series about hatching eggs on The Farm at Beaman’s Fork blog.
Want to help support the farm? Please visit our online store or visit us
at the New Bern Farmer’s Market!

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