Moisture in the Incubator

The turkey eggs are about to hit day 21 in the incubator.  That means it's time to stop rotating them.

We've been keeping them at about 100° F and 50% humidity.
These are the guidelines we've gotten from a few different sources.  One of our friends, who have been very successful, said they don't worry about the humidity at all.  They don't have a hygrometer in their incubator even. 
Their success speaks for it self, but I decided to mind the humidity none the less.  My last (unsuccessful) run of eggs I had a hard time maintaining the humidity. 
This time I patched a lot of the holes with black electrical tape.  By using it at the bottom in particular, I was able to keep the moisture level up.  I also avoided the mess from missing the water channels. 
As with most Styrofoam incubators, mine has water channels.  Getting the water into them is not easy when you have an automatic egg turner.  Last time I seemed to get more into the base with its drainage holes and in turn lost that water all over the wooden filing cabinet in the mancave.  I also covered some of the upper holes.

In short, my veteran incubator friends are secure with "set it, forget it".  Me, I'm the nervous type.  I like seeing my temp/humidity levels every time I go to my desk. 
Below is the hygrometer we got from amazon to complete our incubator.
It's cheap, but pretty accurate.  I like the min/max function also.  It tells me how its been while I wasn't watching.

More tomorrow!  I'll let you know how the candling goes.

Candling

Today we took a couples minutes to show our son where his new turkeys were!  It looks promising so far...
Four of them looked like they might not be developing.   However all the rest have something going on,  including Henny Penny's egg that we pulled in.
More to follow,  but looking good!

Still holding at 101 degrees and about 40 to 50 percent humidity.

Henny Penny gets broody

Yesterday as I went to collect our usual tribute from Henny, I found that she was still setting on her egg!  
Well,  she gave me a look that told me she was not releasing this egg.   So I let her be and decided, "good for her. "
However,  later we heard a terrible ruckus.   Apparently our Franken - birds dislodged her from her perch!   She was upset to put it mildly.   Well, this morning I brought her egg into the incubator.  
We already have the turkey eggs in there,  but I figure the needed conditions aren't too different.
Here goes nothing!

Turkey Eggs- take 2

OK, our first batch of Turkey eggs didn't do so hot...

Not to make excuses, but it was our first attempt at them, we had just gotten the incubator, and we really didn't have a clue what we were doing!

Thanks to our friends Luke and Angela though who set us up with another batch of turkey eggs and gave us some good hints and advice...  Now we are ready to try again!

So this is day one.  I fixed up the air circulator in our unit.  The person who sold it to us had suspended it by shoelaces before.  We went with zip strips and we also plugged up some of the holes in the bottom of the unit that were making it impossible to hold water and retain humidity.

Here's a quick prayer that God blesses us with turkeys...