Has anyone tried dry incubation and does it work well? And a sexlink breeding question.

[talkinboutchickens]

Off the top of my head I can't remember which of the three potential "red" genes for baseline body color is used for Rhode Island Reds. It doesn't matter. The Barred Rock is baseline Extended Black which is dominant against any of the three baseline reds. Black is dominant so what you see if Black. It is very possible you will see some red leakage which means you might see a few red feathers but both boys and girls should basically be solid black.

My black sexlink has some red leakage:

It's almost more of a golden or yellow color though.

So in theory, since black is very dominant, if I crossed a barred rock and a pure black chicken (eg. black australorp or jersey giant,) then do you think the chick will be a PURE black chicken when it grows up with a white dot on the male chick's heads?

 

[NatJ]

So in theory, since black is very dominant, if I crossed a barred rock and a pure black chicken (eg. black australorp or jersey giant,) then do you think the chick will be a PURE black chicken when it grows up with a white dot on the male chick's heads?

If you make that cross, using Barred Rock as the mother and Black Australorp or Black Jersey Giant as the father, then yes the daughters should grow up to be black with no leakage of other colors. Sons should be black with white barring but no leakage of other colors. The barring gene is what causes the white dot on the head at hatch, so yes the sons should have the white dot for easy sexing, and then as they grow feathers they show the white lines (barring) in their feathers.

 

[NatJ]

Off the top of my head I can't remember which of the three potential "red" genes for baseline body color is used for Rhode Island Reds. It doesn't matter. The Barred Rock is baseline Extended Black which is dominant against any of the three baseline reds. Black is dominant so what you see if Black. It is very possible you will see some red leakage which means you might see a few red feathers but both boys and girls should basically be solid black.

Genetic mumbo-jumbo:

Rhode Island Reds are probably E^Wh (Wheaten) at the e-locus (recessive to Extended Black). Rhode Island Reds would also have Co and Mh (Columbian and Mahogany: Co to restrict black, and Mh to turn gold into red.)

Yes, the Extended Black gene from the Barred Rock would be dominant over the Wheaten from the Rhode Island Reds, but as you noted it allows various amounts of leakage.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

If you make that cross, using Barred Rock as the mother and Black Australorp or Black Jersey Giant as the father, then yes the daughters should grow up to be black with no leakage of other colors. Sons should be black with white barring but no leakage of other colors. The barring gene is what causes the white dot on the head at hatch, so yes the sons should have the white dot for easy sexing, and then as they grow feathers they show the white lines (barring) in their feathers.

So when they are fully grown will they actually be black with white barring? I've never seen those colors before.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

Genetic mumbo-jumbo:

Rhode Island Reds are probably E^Wh (Wheaten) at the e-locus (recessive to Extended Black). Rhode Island Reds would also have Co and Mh (Columbian and Mahogany: Co to restrict black, and Mh to turn gold into red.)

Yes, the Extended Black gene from the Barred Rock would be dominant over the Wheaten from the Rhode Island Reds, but as you noted it allows various amounts of leakage.

Would black be dominant over every color?

 

[NatJ]

So when they are fully grown will they actually be black with white barring? I've never seen those colors before.

Normal Barred Rocks are black with white barring. So if you have seen Barred Rocks, you have seen the color that males will be from a cross of black rooster/barred hen.

Would black be dominant over every color?

Almost yes. The Extended Black gene that makes a chicken black all over is dominant over all the other genes at that locus (spot on the chromosome.) At that locus, each other gene causes a particular pattern of black and gold. Extended Black does sometimes allow some leakage of other colors, and the genes to avoid the leakage may not be dominant.

But there are a few genes that affect black and are dominant: Blue turns black into blue or splash, Dominant White turns black into white (but can miss a few bits so the chicken is a Paint), Dun/Khaki turns black into a brownish-gray color, Barring puts white lines across the chicken. So a chicken with Extended Black can actually look white, blue, splash, dun, or barred, and pass both the Extended Black and the dominant modifier gene to its chicks.

Lavender and chocolate are recessive, so "black" (not-lavender) and "black" (not-chocolate) are dominant in those cases. Recessive white is also recessive, so "black" (not-recessive white) is dominant there too.

Talking about whether "black" is dominant can get confusing very quickly, because so many genes are involved in making a chicken actually black. A chicken that is solid black has Extended Black, but it also has not-blue, not-Dominant White, not-barred, not-dun, not-lavender, and so forth. I am calling many of the genes not-[something] as a way to indicate which gene is the other option. The common abbreviations would be bl+ (not-blue), i+ (neither Dominant White nor Dun/Khaki), b+ (not-barred), Choc+ (not-chocolate), Lav+ (not-lavender), C+ (not recessive white), Mo+ (not-mottled). The + in each case indicates that this is the form found in the wild Red Junglefowl ancestors of chickens, with the other forms being mutations of them (Blue, chocolate, etc, etc).

http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html
Have you played with the chicken calculator? The gene names and abbreviations I have been using will be a match for the ones used there (assuming I did not make any typos.)

If you set the first dropdown box to E/E you have a chicken that is pure for Extended Black. E/E^Wh is Extended Black carrying Wheaten, which is what a Barred Rock/Rhode Island Red cross would produce. The calculator does not model leakage of other colors, but I still find it helpful when I want to change genes and see what happens. A general "might have leakage" could be added to any solid colored chicken, unless someone has been carefully breeding them to not have that.

 

[Moon Daizy]

Yes, it does.... It can get really hot, but only like in the Spring and especially the Summer, so yes, it is probably not a good idea.....

Oh, so I can probably get a spray bottle from Dollar Tree. So basically misting the eggs on lockdown kinda substitutes the moisture that they would get from wet hatching, is that correct???

Ooh yay I'm so excited for you!!!!!!! What breed(s) are you getting and where from?????

Thank you

I chose Cream Legbar, so have 4 of those. My eldest daughter chose Araucana, so she has 2x lavender and 2x black. My youngest daughter chose Cuckoo Maran, so she has 4 of those! Hopefully all will go well!

I’m impressed with my incubator so far. There is minor differences between its readings and the separate calibrated thermometer/hygrometer in there. It’s turning the eggs fairly well, every 2 hours. They don’t all turn each time - I’ve found the longer, pointier eggs (of which we have 1 from each breed!) turn less well than the short, round eggs. So I manually turn those ones sometimes.

I’m doing dry incubation - mostly. I add water very occasionally to prevent it from going below 20%, but apart from that it’s staying in the range 20-30% naturally. I’m finding it loses more humidity overnight, so I am shutting the vent more last thing before bed, and opening it up first thing in the morning. It’s working fairly well so far. We’re early days yet (day 3) and we’re looking forward to candling the eggs in a few days!

How’s your journey going so far?

 

[killmak]

If your kids are interested in the egg development you can start to see development as early as 3 days. This is at 4 days.

 

[NatJ]

Did you do anything to control the humidity for the first 18 days, like did you just go with the humidity in the room? And does the humidity matter, like does it have to be a minimal humidity level or can it be any humidity level? I really hope that I'm able to do dry incubation in my area because I don't live somewhere humid.

I'm not the person you are asking, but here is one experience of my own:

I put eggs in the incubator, did not add water, and incubated them for one week. I did not have any way to measure humidity, and I did not do anything to try to change it. I did have an egg turner, and checked regularly to be sure it was actually working.

After a week, I candled the eggs, and compared the air cell size to a chart I found online. If the air cells were bigger than the one-week cells on the chart, I was going to add humidity to the incubator. But the air cells in my eggs were either the correct size or too small.

So I did not add water to the incubator, did let the turner keep turning eggs, and candled again at 2 weeks and at lockdown. Each time, the air cells were either the right size or too small.

For lockdown, I did add water to the incubator. I still had no way to measure humidity, so I just put water in all the places the incubator was designed to have water.

I got a fairly good hatch rate.

Checking humidity by air cell size is a method that has been in use for many years. If the humidity is too low (dry air), the egg will lose water too fast, and the air cell will be too big. If the humidity is too high (humid air), the egg will not lose water fast enough, and the air cell will be too small.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/air-sac-is-way-too-small-need-advice-please.1099126/
^This thread has an example of air cell sizes for eggs at various stages of incubation. Similar charts are available in many other places on the internet, and published in many books.

I have also seen charts for how much weight eggs should lose during incubation (weigh the eggs when you set them, then weigh them again at intervals, adjust humidity as needed.)

All of the different methods are really trying to accomplish two things:
--the eggs lose the right amount of moisture during incubation
--the humidity during hatch is high enough that the chicks do not become shrink wrapped (stuck to the shell.)

Some of those same ideas are in these articles:
https://www.brinsea.com/t-humidity.aspx
https://brinsea.com/Manuals/HumidityInIncubationEbook.pdf

I noticed that both of those articles, plus some other sources, said that too-high humidity tends to cause more problems than too-low humidity. That was one reason I started with no added water in the incubator. My other reason had to do with what is easiest: if the easy way works, I definitely want to know, so I can keep doing that!

I originally had almost no idea what humidity might be present in the incubator with no water. I knew the outdoors could be quite humid sometimes, and I knew that inside the house was often so dry that people had trouble with dry hands and cracking skin (the heating and the air conditioner both dry out the air.) Since the incubator was in the house, I thought it might have dry air, but I wasn't sure. Based on what I saw of the air cells, the humidity in my house really was high enough, and maybe even a bit too high, so I was glad I had not added water and made the situation worse!

 

[Poultrybonkers]

Splayed legs is genetic has nothing to do with hatch method. I never add water to my bator the forst 18 days bbut then i add it to hatch