Dry hatching

[Sihschris]

Someone explain dry hatching to me

Up until yesterday, day 18, I kept my humidity between 30-35. Yesterday morning, day 18, I added water to increase my humidity to 60-70. In about 8 hours, 6 chicks hatched. Over night I have a total of 13 hatch and the other 4 are pipping. How does this happen so early in low humidity?

 

[DemeterAD9]

What breed/species were you hatching? I’d be looking at temperature before humidity. A higher temp leads to an early hatch but can also leads to issues with the chicks like unabsorbed yolks. Also double check the day you set the eggs.

In theory, low humidity helps the air cell grow as it should (aka weight loss as moisture evaporates). Of course there is a balance where you don’t want it too big or too small. If the humidity is too low you run into issues like large air cells resulting in small chicks and/or poor hatch rate. If your temp is good and these are chicken eggs, maybe the low humidity resulted in large air cells which limited the space the chicks could grow and how much fluid they had to absorb before hatching, leading to them being “ready” to hatch early? But I would still expect some off chicks if that were the case.

 

[Airyaman]

Someone explain dry hatching to me

Up until yesterday, day 18, I kept my humidity between 30-35. Yesterday morning, day 18, I added water to increase my humidity to 60-70. In about 8 hours, 6 chicks hatched. Over night I have a total of 13 hatch and the other 4 are pipping. How does this happen so early in low humidity?

I have dry hatched all of my chicks with similar humidity levels. The earliest hatch of 32 chickens I now have was day 20.

But my temps were held at 99.5-100.0F. As @DemeterAD9 above stated, this is likely more to do with your temps (and perhaps breed, but I have a mixture of many breeds) than the humidity.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Happens to me all of the time with more "normal" humidity and under broody hens as well as in the incubator. There are different things that can affect whether eggs hatch early or late. Humidity can have an effect but not that big of an effect. How and how long they are stored before incubation starts can have an effect on when they hatch. I think heredity has a lot to do with mine consistently being two days early, whether in my calibrated incubator or under a broody.

But as the others said, for your eggs to all be that early I suggest you check your incubating temperature. Use a thermometer that you trust (probably a medical thermometer) and see what your actual incubating temperatures are. I think you will find it to be a little high.

Congratulations on a great hatch!

 

[Tex452]

I incubated my first batch of eggs ever, after watching multiple videos about dry hatching I decided to try it, I done the 100% dry hatch method, no water added at any time, the humidity inside the incubator ranged from 35-50%, mostly hanging around 40%, I didn’t candle my eggs until day 18, and that’s the only time I opened the incubator.
When the eggs started hatching the humidity started to climb, all the way up to 88%, I hatched 20 out of 21 fertile eggs, one died that I helped but should have just left it alone.
I’ll take a 90% hatch rate, I was pleasantly surprised with the results, I’m a believer in the dry hatching method.