Humidity when incubating Marans eggs, increase, decrease, or same? - Page 2

Hello all I just returned from Nationals intent to learn about Marans. All the breeders that were at the Maran table told me that they do dry hatchs with the marans. And get good hatch rates I came home with 18 eggs and am going to try this with them. My 11/13 hatch was horrible got one baby out of six. Wish me well. I will let everyone in about 21 days.

I do dry hatches with my Marans but my humidity is normally around 32 to 43 in Florida without adding any water... On the last days I up it to 70 to 75%..

I can only speak from experience with my one Black Copper Marans hatch.   I set 12, 9 hatched.  My humidity runs about 45-60% days 1-18 and about 65-75% on days 19-21.  My babies did great with those levels.

mstricer, can you describe exactly what they mean by "dry hatch"? This seems to mean different things to different people...If you could share specifics that would sure help. I am determined to hatch some BCMs.

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I very new to this and I too still have questions, but low and behold I came across a web page (i suffer for a rare form of INEEDTOKNOWitis) while searching and I was satisifed with this page I hope it answer your questions, it did mine.


http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/51457/how_to_incubate_chicken_eggs.html?cat=7

We hatched out over 130 marans chicks this past summer,,first time as well.It is written the eggs should lose about 10-12% of their initial weight during incubation,so we weighed each egg before it went into the bator,,checked them several times,,and set the humidity at 45% for the first 14 days,then upped it to 50% the last week,,had very,very good luck this way,not that this method will work for everyone tho,,,,

Thanks. I have to assume it was my temperature issues in the last day of hatch that caused failure, in that case, as that is the method I followed. (This is what the manufacturer's directions result in as far as humidity.)

I am looking forward to being able to try again. My husband offered to loan our incubator to my son's class for a science project so it will be at least 3 weeks...

I'm just starting with the Marans, I had bought 6 eggs from bargin, I got one baby, At Nationals in Ohio I was able to purchase 18 dark eggs from a nice lady at Marans table Black copper and Blue Copper, and also purchased 3 chicks from a gentlemen who was showing his Blue Copper. 2 blue 1 black all clean legged. I am so excited about this project. The babies are so sweet and they sing a sweet baby song all the time it is so sweet.

mstricer,,spend some quality time with them,and they really tame down easily.