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I have a rcom20 suro, It is great and does everything for you. But after getting all the settings right and putting 18 silkie bantam eggs in, which went down to 12 after candle.
Only one hatched out, all the other eggs had fully formed dead chicks in them, what a shame.
So what went wrong, all I can think is the humidity at the last 3 days,
To get the humidity up to 65% I pressed the + and - buttons together to alter it, so that made the setting now 65%, but because it was taking so long to reach that higher humidity, I then held the
+ key down for 10 seconds which makes the pump then keep pumping until it gets to the said humidity, So my question is, did I make the humidity go up too soon too quick, should I have left it to go up slowly on its own, is this why my chicks died? can anyone who has this incy help me out here, thanks,sue

Hi star I had the same problem 15 fertile eggs and only 4 live chicks the rest dead in shell I checked the temp with a medical thermometer & that was ok so I bought a hygrometer to check if the humidty reading was the same on the digital readout & it's 10% out so obviously the humidty was to high such a dissapointment. I have just put more eggs in with the digi readout at 35 % & the hygrometer says it's 45% they are cheap to buy mine was £3.99 might be worth a try

I've had an ordinary R.Com 20 for a few years and each time I use it I have to recalibrate both settings. So I have 2 hygro thermometers to recalibrate, the more expensive one (£18) is the one I tend to go by. I incubate at temp 37.5C, humidity 40/45% and last 2 days hatch at 37C and 60/65% humidity. Do you have to recalibrate the Suro?

Hi Meg, Yes I do have to recalibrate, I put the temp to 37 and the humid up to 65% for the last 2 days.

Hi, I am sorry this problem seems to be happening allot this season. too much humidity in your incubator could be the problem. as you say, it could have been puting humidity up too much: sometimes as you put the humidity up the temperature can drop. is the water being put in the icubator warmed first?
i do not know much on these incubators and havent heard allot about them.

Remember too much humidity is much worse than too little. if you turned the humidity up with three days too go, that could have been to early so next time, try to get it sorted with two days to go till hatch.

Hi thankyou for your reply.
The water is not in the incy itself, the new rcom 20 suro has a pump outside the incy, and a tube runs from that into a bottle and then into the incy on a pad, at the setting you put it, i.e 45% and the instructions say just to use tap water, you could be right though, Maybe putting the humid up 3 days before hatch was to early.

I've had so many guys emailing me and ringing me with this problem, humidity in the incubators, and i have to say, people worry far too much about it! My answer is, when a broody hen is about to hatch her brood, do you see her running frantically around the garden with a jug of water!?? No. All the years i have been hatching i have never once put water anywhere near my incubator unless MOST of the eggs have pipped already. Chicks drown in shell if they have no hole in it to breath trough. The first chick hatching will normally push up the humidity naturally enough for the rest to hatch. As climate change is effecting everything else, it is also effecting incubators. There is no need to pump loads of water into them unless the humidity is less than 25/30% AT PIPPING! |Most folks don't check their ambient humidity to begin with, this is the % of humidity in the place where the incubator is situated. If you live in low-lying areas, near a large water source, ie. a river, lake the sea or pond, there is normally enough humidity to incubate eggs perfectly well without adding water at any stage. It's really important that if you're going to incubate, you must check your ambient humidity first and adjust your incubators accordingly. Most good hydrometers will tell you the % needed, but will say on them, When PIPPED. Adding too much water will drown chicks and is far, far worse than not adding any at all.
JubesX

We never put water into ours either we have a hatching and a broody shed and there are hydrometers in the walls so that we know what the ambiant humidity is, this year we bought a humidifier for the shed and it is now set for a constant humidity of 25% this has proved so much better than the water containers in the incubators, even when the weather is hot and dry during the summer (so not very often in this country)the humidity stays at 25%.
One of the biggest problems we come across is that people have to open the incubator for a peep! This can be a big no no, unless the humidity outside is the same as the humidity in the incubator this can cause alot of hatch problems, you loose alot of humidity when you open the lid even for just a couple of seconds you can loose upto 10%.

Jay

I don't raise the humidity until at least one of the eggs has pipped......