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

[GlicksChicks]

I would say that would have to do with the ambient temps you are incubating in. If very high ambient humidity your incubator may run at around 30% without adding water. If incubating in a very low ambient humidity % you will have to add water to get to 30%. Most folks that dry hatch is because they are in areas of very high ambient humidities, and their incubators humidity runs around that 30% without adding water or very little. Also, water surface area in incubator is what determines humidity % not the amount of water added.

I was lucky to get up to 30%. Most of the time my incunator ran round 25% and all turned out well.

I am speaking for my icubator and how it worked with dry vs. wet hatch, which is why I mentioned multiple times the kind of incubator I am using.

Mine ran around 25-30% at 100.5 F.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

Hope these help. I am also going to be incubating chicks for the first time soon! I wish you every success!

Thank you so much, I wish the same for you!!!! I live somewhere dry so the shoelace method looks like the one for me, however my egg trays are like touching the bottom of the incubator so I don't think there will be any room. Plus the holes in the sides of my incubator are so tiny and are just big enough to fit the tip of my water "squirter" thing in it. But, my incubator DID come with a pack of like 4-5 tiny sponge pieces, do you think I can use those instead of the shoelace? Oh wait- I do have a greenhouse attached to my house, what if I keep it nice and warm in my greenhouse???? And additionally I can hatch when it is hot outside, so do you think that will work?

 

[Traffie Chickens]

Hey all.....
Well I'm about to start my hatching in a few weeks (~2-4 more weeks) but I'm kinda on the fence about what type of hatch I should do. I heard that with wet hatching (normal hatch method) the hatch rate is lower and more chicks get splayed legs, whereas if you do the dry hatch method, the hatch rate is way higher and very little to no chicks get splayed legs. Is this true and have any of you done a dry hatch before? I am also hoping that with dry hatching it's simpler, because I'm just a beginner at this. And what exactly is the ambient humidity? Is it just the natural humidity in the air?
This is the video that I'm going off of.

And a random question regarding sexlinked chickens, they say that you can breed a barred female with a non-barred male to make a sexlinked chicken, so can the non-barred male be any breed I want that's not barred? Anything? So for instance an olive egger rooster and barred rock hen's offspring will be sexlinked? Easy as that? And I'm assuming that the males of all combinations will have dots on their heads?

Thank you!!!!

i just recently did my first hatch ever, and I wanted to make it as simple as I could, so I tried dry hatching! For me I had 3 out of 6 eggs hatch, none had any splayed leg. One egg died half way through incubation, one cracked, and the other one developed all the way but didn’t make it out. So anyway what I did was just no humidity for the first 18 days, and then I added water for the last three days. So anyway I recommend this to you, it was so easy and worked good!

 

[talkinboutchickens]

I definitely think so. You don't have to monitor water at all untik the last 3 days. During lockdown is when you add water, and with my Nurture Right 360 I only had to add water to it on day 18 and didn't have to add water since.
It also seemed that the chicks developed faster and hatched easier. The dry hatch, I think, mimics the natural hatching more closely than wet hatching.

I live somewhere dry so the humidity might not ever get up to a nice level, BUT I do have a greenhouse, and it can get pretty humid in there when it is hot outside, so do you think if I kept the incubator in there and increased the temp that the humidity would be at a good level?

 

[talkinboutchickens]

i just recently did my first hatch ever, and I wanted to make it as simple as I could, so I tried dry hatching! For me I had 3 out of 6 eggs hatch, none had any splayed leg. One egg died half way through incubation, one cracked, and the other one developed all the way but didn’t make it out. So anyway what I did was just no humidity for the first 18 days, and then I added water for the last three days. So anyway I recommend this to you, it was so easy and worked good!

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.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

I was lucky to get up to 30%. Most of the time my incunator ran round 25% and all turned out well.

I am speaking for my icubator and how it worked with dry vs. wet hatch, which is why I mentioned multiple times the kind of incubator I am using.

Mine ran around 25-30% at 100.5 F.

Just curious, how come with wet hatching the humidity has to be like 50% but with dry hatching it can be 30%?

 

[Traffie Chickens]

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.

Ya so I didn’t do anything about the humidity in the incubator for the first 18 days and we don’t live somewhere humid either. I was concerned about that too, but everything went well!

 

[GlicksChicks]

Just curious, how come with wet hatching the humidity has to be like 50% but with dry hatching it can be 30%?

That is a very good question that I do not know the answer to. All I know is that you get better air cell development with dry hatch.

 

[GlicksChicks]

I live somewhere dry so the humidity might not ever get up to a nice level, BUT I do have a greenhouse, and it can get pretty humid in there when it is hot outside, so do you think if I kept the incubator in there and increased the temp that the humidity would be at a good level?

Does the greenhouse stay around the same temperature and humidity all the time? You do not want big fluctuations during development.
The place I live is pretty dry so I was surprised for it to get up to 25-30%.

 

[Moon Daizy]

Thank you so much, I wish the same for you!!!! I live somewhere dry so the shoelace method looks like the one for me, however my egg trays are like touching the bottom of the incubator so I don't think there will be any room. Plus the holes in the sides of my incubator are so tiny and are just big enough to fit the tip of my water "squirter" thing in it. But, my incubator DID come with a pack of like 4-5 tiny sponge pieces, do you think I can use those instead of the shoelace? Oh wait- I do have a greenhouse attached to my house, what if I keep it nice and warm in my greenhouse???? And additionally I can hatch when it is hot outside, so do you think that will work?

I am no expert! But common sense would tell me the greenhouse might be a bit risky, as the temperature might fluctuate too much. Does it get really hot in there? We have a summer house (basically, a glorified shed!) which my husband uses as an office. It gets almost unbearably hot in there on sunny spring/summer days, but then really cold at night. I would recommend putting a bit of paper in your greenhouse and a reliable thermometer and hygrometer out there, and at various times throughout the day / evening make a note on the paper of the time and temp/humidity, before you decide to site your incubator out there.

Even if I was using the dry incubation method, I would aim for humidity of a minimum of 30%, and start misting the eggs / increasing the humidity from day 18 onwards to help them break out of their shells.

Keep us posted with how you get on!

My incubator will arrive today and my eggs will arrive next week !!!