One Chick hatched in the electric skillet! **UPDATE**

I thought I'd leave the eggs thru the weekend and toss them Monday...woke up to peeping at 1:30 am so I went to ask Mama Blue hen why one of her silkies was crying??? She growled at me her babes were sleeping and to shut up and go away!

I kept hearing peeping, started trying to figure out where it was coming from, asked Mama Blue hen if she had all her silkies or if one got away and was sleeping w/the dogs in or behind a crate???

Followed the peeping to the corner of the second dog crate, dogs not too happy w/me bugging them either, trying to sleep here...its the middle of the night...

OH! Better check the skillet!!! One Zipped and PEEPING! Better get it and the others out of the plastic ice cube trays!! Soon as it was lying on the towel, out it came! Either its an EE from my Black EE's or more likely, its one of Sir Blue's chicks w/the BLRW hens! (Blue is an Andalusian & he's w/3 BLRW hens and 2 RIR hens)

I don't think Black Beauty the EE roo is very upbeat in his fertilizing duties, only saw him w/one hen once in awhile...Blue on the other hand is very active!

Now to take pics and make sure the cats who've so far ignored the skillet of eggs won't be trying to knock the hood off or laying on top of it...once they hear something going on in there!

I never in a million years thought this would work...now I'm going to have chicks to raise in the house...besides the silkies and their messy mama...wonder if she's game for raising a few more??? I put eggs in the skillet from Blue Andalusian/BLRW or RIR, Brewster's BO hens (they'll be fertile, too!), and the Black EE's (turns out 2 hens lay pink and 2 hens lay green eggs).

WOW, dry incubation is VERY easy! awful hard to type aka talk this early in the am

Congrats. I am glad it worked out for you.

wow that's great.

and its healthy, too a pretty silvery blue-ish...its quiet now, fluffing up and sleeping next to the eggs as its dark in there...

If the biggest brown egg hatches, it'll be from my RIR new hen x BO roo

Yeah!!!!! I'm glad it worked for you! I few of us have been real close but, have had temp problems that killed the hatch. Watch those sleeves and make sure your thermometers are correct!

I remember as a child..my mom would put eggs in the oven..she knew what she was doing, because they would hatch. God rest her soul, I can't her ask her any questions and I can't remember much. I was about 9 or so. Boy..the memories!! How sweet they are.

i have read that hens can raise three times as many chicks as they can hatch. If the one that hatched in the skillet is close in age to the others, just slip it in with her under cover of night. Should do fine and take a lot of work and bother off of you without adding to hers.

Can you tell me the specifics of the dry incubation method?

Thanx.

Sorry to disappear, the internet company was doing upgrades all weekend, I thought at first I had a bad cord...

I inherited an 18 quart Nesco Oven Roaster from my son-in-law's mother when they moved from Alaska to Montana. I only used it to make things w/herbs/plants off the tundra.

Then I decided to put some eggs in it to test the method and fertility of my eggs. I put the knob on halfway between off and 200 degrees, put a half inch of water in the bottom container and then put the top container in, laid a towel folded double on the bottom of that inside container and then put two plastic ice cube trays in to hold the eggs pointed side down and tipped them from one side to the other 3x a day. No thermometer, no hydro/hygro thermometer, no fancy anything, just bare bones operation.

I felt the heat was the same as what the hens provided when I had the silkie eggs under them so taped the knob so it wouldn't move for any reason, wrote a sticky note inside that said: Do NOT Touch!" And for the last three days of the incubation period, on the first of the 3 days, we had to unplug the roaster as my sil was using a skill saw that was draining too much electricity and then I forgot to plug it back in until bedtime.

At that point I thought I'd just wait till Sunday evening and toss away rotten eggs. No candeling done, either, nothing I'd tried once before worked, which was only darkness and a flashlight.

I put 18 eggs in, nine of the eggs added to the first 9 some days after the original start date. I added the six because I really wanted BLRW/Andalusian and EE chicks. There are now 9 eggs still waiting to hatch. The water eventually evaporated and then I waited until the last three days and put a bowl of water in with two sponges to ensure no one drowned if I wasn't home keeping an eye on things.

It was a bit too dry but every egg hatched, I helped peel the shell for a few and kept the membrane moist by dipping a finger into the bowl of water and patting it on the membrane as I am afraid of too much humidity which was the problem I ran into when I used the regular method of incubating once before. This is only my second attempt at incubating and its far easier than filling water trays, fan going, wet bulb thermometer, automatic turners and a billion trays that I couldn't for the life of me figure out!

Today I put the chicks w/the mama hen and the silkie chicks and she accepted them right off, but later today I heard cries and ran in to discover she'd killed the white chick and was going for another chick. I put her in a cat crate and put a heat lamp up, took her back outside to the main banty flock she was from and tonight there is one smaller black chick that isn't wanting to thrive. If it doesn't start eating and drinking, it won't last the night.

I took pics today and will post, it takes a bit of time as I've got a slow connection and would have posted them earlier if the upgrading hadn't fooled me into thinking my cord was bad

Have to say, I don't have a clue what I'm doing and it worked, with a few mistakes along the way. Mama hen is doing well again w/the flock, too, there are young fully feathered chicks out there so she's not depressed or upset.

Quote:
Follow this link and you will find yourself in the learning center at the incubating index page. You will find many things there including the article on dry incubation.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/LC-howto.html#hatching