Black Chick incubator help needed

Does anyone have a Black Chick 12 incubator. We have just bought one second hand and have not yet received the manual.
The eggs I have need to be incubated in a day or so or may be too old to be viable.

I have just switched it on and added water to the tray.

Any help appreciated.

[Valmai]

Ummm but how do you know its a black chick before its incubated
There are no bad questions only those that are not asked.

[Inger]

Have you checked out the company's website - presuming they have one. If a manual isn't on there website, there should be a phone number and you could ring and ask them to fax or email you a copy of the relavent pages. Hope your hatching goes well Spoook.

[spoook]

Valmai,I was hoping for some black chicks as we are rather over run by white one right now . 18 of them, and mum is teaching one lot to come up to the deck where she USED to get fed! They are all sitting there right now.... waiting!

Thanks Inger, they do not have the instructions on the site. I have made a good search of it. Looks like I will have to contact them.
I have had the incubator running all night, temperature is ok but the humidity needs to be 86% and attaining and retaining that is difficult.
I am a tad confused as the hygrometer has a scale for different types of eggs and it sets ducks to need 55-60%. All the info I can find tells me 86%. Now that is a huge difference .

[Inger]

No, since Auckland's natural humidity is high, 50% humidity for chook eggs would be fine. We have our incubators at around that humidity and the chicks hatch just fine. In the last 4 days of incubation you could spray the eggs with water and lay them on a wet paper towel and they will have enough humidity for the membranes not to dry out.

A Northland breeder I talked to said that a lot of the instructions for the humidity in these incubators are suitable for overseas and not necessarily for NZ conditions. Since following his advices we had far better hatch rates.

[spoook]

Mmmmmmm...... after more research I came across more info ...... wet bulb readings and dry bulb readings eh???? Now that makes sense.
So it looks like I am all set to add the eggs and....watch them hatch. Now that could be relaxing...........