99% Humidity, still dimpling?

Well, our first egg from Persephone our Diablo Blanco female is on day 37 now.

We have two thermomter/hygrometer's in there, both digital. They are both reading 99% humidity, one reads 28.7c and the other reads 30c. We've had a third thermometer in there that read 28.7c so we know the temp is at that or close, either way both temps(28.7 & 30) are good temps.
Incubating in basically a "giant GEO". Photo of the incubator below, we have two GEO's but decided to simply use the inserts in a larger tub with perlite in rather than using the actual GEO's.


If any more info is needed, I can give it but I think that should be enough, right?

This is the egg in question when it was laid:


And this is the egg last night while candling to check it was still OK:


It's been dented for a while now and even with damp(not dripping wet) kitchen roll placed over it, it doesn't "re-puff"... A little bit worried about it. It looks healthy, right? I mean, compared to our two slugs that were laid by another female it definitely looks healthy. However, compared to our other three healthy eggs it looks... Well, unhealthy.

These were the two slugs from our Mack Snow Radar girl(she's laid four slugs so far but it's both hers and the males first season).



These are our other two healthy eggs from Persephone.



And this is our only other egg so far, a healthy egg from our Ember girl. She laid two, one slug and one healthy.


Just a bit worried about the severe denting on the one egg.

Any help is appreciated

Sometimes they start off OK and then don't work out. Severe denting is one sign of that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the humidity is off. I've had it happen many times. Set things up as ideally as you can, try not to candle the eggs constantly and find something egg-related to obsess about (I obsess about counting days and weeks since egg laid and predicting when next eggs are coming) so you don't obsess about the eggs. Tried and true after 10 seasons.
Good luck,

Aliza

I personally never even think about or measure the humidity in my incubation boxes. I measure the substrate (I use straight organic perlite) in a .8 ratio with water and have never had an issue. I also sterilize my perlite by putting the container in the microwave for 10 seconds or so and letting it cool off before putting it into the incubator. I would suggest making a new container, pre-measuring the substrate with water, stabilizing it and once it cools, leaving it in the incubator overnight and transferring the eggs the next day. Also make sure the temp in your incubator is 88 or lower as hot temps (90+) can harm the eggs so I like to play it safe and go with 82-88 in my incubators.

acpart said:

Sometimes they start off OK and then don't work out. Severe denting is one sign of that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the humidity is off. I've had it happen many times. Set things up as ideally as you can, try not to candle the eggs constantly and find something egg-related to obsess about (I obsess about counting days and weeks since egg laid and predicting when next eggs are coming) so you don't obsess about the eggs. Tried and true after 10 seasons.
Good luck,

Aliza

Click to expand...

Ah well, I'll keep incubating it anyway until it goes bad for definite. I'll just keep it away from the other eggs.

I'm obsessing about counting down the days lol. I always do!
Only candled them once to check them all over

DrCarrotTail said:

I personally never even think about or measure the humidity in my incubation boxes. I measure the substrate (I use straight organic perlite) in a .8 ratio with water and have never had an issue. I also sterilize my perlite by putting the container in the microwave for 10 seconds or so and letting it cool off before putting it into the incubator. I would suggest making a new container, pre-measuring the substrate with water, stabilizing it and once it cools, leaving it in the incubator overnight and transferring the eggs the next day. Also make sure the temp in your incubator is 88 or lower as hot temps (90+) can harm the eggs so I like to play it safe and go with 82-88 in my incubators.

Click to expand...

We use the same water/perlite ratio as you, it's already all measured out like that.

Temp is 82-86F(28-30c).

Keep things more simple and let nature run its coarse. I've never candle d an egg ever or checked humidity. The less you mess with them the better.

stager said:

Keep things more simple and let nature run its coarse. I've never candle d an egg ever or checked humidity. The less you mess with them the better.

Click to expand...

Things are about as simple as they can get. Humidity is easily readable without even taking the lid off the incubator(same for temperature) and I've candled once and it was because this egg was dimpling and I was worried since it started out looking so healthy. I simply candled the rest and the slugs for comparison.

There are two other reasons I can think of. First would be are holes in your deli cups? Are you using ones that have holes punched around the sides? If so I would switch to ones with absolutely no holes and just open them once a week or so to let fresh air into them. I use sandwich sized tuppwewares for my eggs since the sqare size gives me more room in my incubator than the round deli cups.

Secondly, I haven't had much luck using suspended incubation methods like GEOs or SIM containers in top heating incubators like Hovabators. They work great in my fridge style incubator but the suspended method seems to dry out the eggs in the ones with heating elements close and on top. You also want to make sure the substrate you have under the GEO tray is at least 1/4 inch below the tray and not touching the tray or the eggs.

Hope you can figure it out!

Sorry want picking on you. I've just found that the less you touch the eggs the better. And I use the suspended for my females but because I use a hovabator style I don't for males. At higher temps for males they dry out so I get better results just setting the eggs right in the medium

Sorry want picking on you. I've just found that the less you touch the eggs the better. And I use the suspended for my females but because I use a hovabator style I don't for males. At higher temps for males they dry out so I get better results just setting the eggs right in the medium

DrCarrotTail said:

There are two other reasons I can think of. First would be are holes in your deli cups? Are you using ones that have holes punched around the sides? If so I would switch to ones with absolutely no holes and just open them once a week or so to let fresh air into them. I use sandwich sized tuppwewares for my eggs since the sqare size gives me more room in my incubator than the round deli cups.

Secondly, I haven't had much luck using suspended incubation methods like GEOs or SIM containers in top heating incubators like Hovabators. They work great in my fridge style incubator but the suspended method seems to dry out the eggs in the ones with heating elements close and on top. You also want to make sure the substrate you have under the GEO tray is at least 1/4 inch below the tray and not touching the tray or the eggs.

Hope you can figure it out!

Click to expand...

We're not using the GEO's at all, we're using a tub with egg crate(the big rectangle one below) and that has only one hole which is blocked up by the digital thermometer/hygrometer probe. So no holes for humidity to escape through. Heating is all around the sides, not above or below. I'm honestly tempted to switch back to just putting the eggs on the perlite like we did last year... We had four eggs from a female(first season) and all hatched that way but this year we appear to have lost one of the previously healthy eggs already using this method.

stager said:

Sorry want picking on you. I've just found that the less you touch the eggs the better. And I use the suspended for my females but because I use a hovabator style I don't for males. At higher temps for males they dry out so I get better results just setting the eggs right in the medium

Click to expand...

No, no I know I was worried the way I'd worded it made it sound like I was candling them everyday or something but I'm not. In fact the only contact they've had apart from the candling above is to move them from the laying tubs to the incubator lol.
We have the temperature in the "medium" range(for a mixture of male/female) and I think the eggs must be drying out. Which is why I'm tempted to just switch back to our old incubation way as mentioned above.