I should never have mentioned it as it is way more technical than you need. The dry bulb temperature is simply the air temperature. The wet bulb temperature is the temperature measured by an old mercury type thermometer with a wet cloth wrapped around the bulb so you are measuring the temperature caused by evaporation cooling. You read the humidity off of a chart. It is a very precise way to measure humidity. You do not need to be anywhere nearly that precise, especially when storing the eggs.
The 70% is the ideal situation. The huge hatcheries that do this commercially have climate controlled storage so they can do this. The vast majority of us do not have anything like this so we just do the best we can. With a lot of us, including me, that means storing them in pretty dry conditions. I understand I am not doing much of anything according to ideal conditions (temperature or humidity) so I limit myself to one week's storage and get pretty good hatches. As others have said, they store theirs in less than ideal conditions for more than a week and still get eggs to hatch. The further you are from ideal conditions and the longer you are storing them in those conditions the less likely an egg is to hatch, but some eggs are really tough.
There is a way where you don't worry about humidity during storage. The purpose of high humidity is to reduce the loss of moisture during storage. If you wrap each egg individually in a thin plastic wrap (we call it Saran Wrap) the moisture cannot escape. You do not want anything with glue or anything sticky on it, just a thin plastic wrap. Remove it before you start incubation. I don't bother doing this as I deal with more than 2 eggs a day and I don't try to store them that long. Your goal is to get two weeks storage so it may be worth it to you.
I don't remember him mentioning it in that article but you want to avoid temperature fluctuations. Eggs that cycle between warm and cool don't do as well as eggs held at a steady temperature. I'm not sure this is a good idea.
Thank you, I needed a good chuckle this morning. I can just imagine a broody hen standing up, fanning her eggs, and saying "OK babies, breathe".
It does bring up a good point. As the embryos develop during incubation they are living animals and need oxygen to breathe through the porous egg. The more they develop the more oxygen they need. During storage and during the first week or so of incubation that is not an issue, they are nor developed enough that they need it. But the closer they get to hatch the more oxygen they need. Incubator manufacturers should know this.
I'll say this again because I think it is important. During storage they do not need fresh air. later during incubation and hatching they do.
I don't know which incubator you have but it sounds like it has a fan. In an incubator without a fan, warm air rises. If you have a vent open up high that warm air rising will bring in fresh air. A fan circulates the air in the incubator but if you have a vent open it will also bring in fresh air. My incubator has a fan. I always leave the vent open from the start, that way I can stabilize humidity from the beginning and don't have to adjust later. My thermostat keeps the temperature constant whether the vent is open or closed but humidity can vary.
It may not be easy to maintain close to ideal conditions but an ice chest may not be a horrible idea since your goal is to store them for a longer period of time. You might want to practice though before you start for real, the more complicated you make it the more likely something will go wrong. You may need to learn some tricks to keep the temperature steady and relatively low. My concern is more temperatures and temperature swings than humidity but you can increase humidity too. Remember you do not want condensation on the eggs. During storage the eggs don't need fresh air, that's after they have developed.
I think I will have to try and measure the temperature in the hallway and how it develops over the day (and night). I've got a hunch it could be relatively stable. And I suppose, given the fact that I need to store the eggs for a week or a bit longer, it will be the safest method and a bit better than the fridge (although there, the stable temperatures, even if lower, are guaranteed, as well as humidity). The plastic wrap thing is a great tip, thank you! I will wrap them, put them in an egg carton and do the book angle thing for the turning. I think this should be ideal for roughly a week of storage. Thanks again!
). I was wondering what would you say is the optimal humidity in terms of % for storing the fertilized eggs? I will get a measurement with my humidity meter to see what the levels are in there.
