My chicks are getting stuck inside the shell and look ‘shrink wrapped’, what is causing this?

The main caused of chicks getting stuck in the shells or appearing ‘shrink wrapped’ is the humidity has been too low during hatching time, or the lid has bene lifted during the last 3 days. 

If you have incubator without a humidity display add more water or use humidity pads or blocks to increase the surface area. But of course, don’t add to much! 

Check what you are setting your humidity to for the last 3 days and increase it by 5%-10%. If you are only setting it to 60% and your chicks are ending up ‘shrink wrapped’ then it needs to go to 65%-70%. If you are setting to 70% and experiencing this then try 75%. If you think the setting is correct, then check the display is reading the correct level. We would advise using the Rcom Digilog3 thermometer-hygrometer and placing it in the centre of the incubator at around egg height. Ideally it wants to be in the incubator for at least an hour before you take a reading, and the incubator needs to be of been running for at least an hour prior to putting the hygrometer in. This is also a good idea if you have a incubator that does not have a humidity display, as then you know exactly what level it is. 

Lastly why you should not lift the lid for the last 3 days. For those final days you need high humidity when you lift the lid you are letting all that moisture that has built up inside the incubatorescape resulting in the humidity level dropping. This is more common with people new to incubating as they rush to take the hatched chick straight out of the incubator. You do not need to remove the chick as soon as they have hatched if there are still other eggs that look like they may hatch, you can leave hatched chicks in your incubator ideally until the others have hatched or until the hatched chicks have dried out and fluffed up. 

Another good practice is to measure the egg weight loss and there is lots of useful information online how how to mesure the egg weight loss. 

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