Dry incubation... how dry is too dry?

silkies4penny

In the Brooder
8 Years
Nov 23, 2011
96
3
41
Fayetteville, WV
Im running my incubator empty waiting for shipped eggs, My humidity is reading 16%. I was going to try a dry incubation for days 1-18, but I thought this might be too low. any thoughts? Im hatching 24 silkies from CJ's Silkies... dont want to screw these up:)
 
I try to keep my incubator above 25%, but have had it dip down to the teens. The eggs tend to lose weight a bit quick when the humidity is that low. You only want to lose ~13% of the eggs weight over 18 days.
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I have tried dry incubation. My area is already dry so it was less successful. I like 25 -35% humidity until lockdown. I just put 25 into lockdown. I had 42, many of them were shipped eggs. All that were good at day 10 went into lockdown so I am very happy. I would advise to look at your humidity in your area. Good luck!
 
I am in Northern CA and I use dry incubation. My incubator humidity is 20% with no water added. I do not use my incubator to hatch. When I move my eggs to hatch, my hatcher humidity is set at 35%. I have a decent hatch rate.

Lanae
 
Quote:
I only use dry incubation! My humidity sits between 16% and 20% and I hardly ever open the doors. Usually just once a week to place eggs in the hatcher and to put more in the incubator!
I have tried keeping the humidity around 25% but it was very difficult and I had to worry about keeping water in my incubator. Now I don't worry about the water and I have great hatch rates and one less thing to worry about!0

As for hatching I have a dish that I fill up every 3-4 days and it keeps it about 22-25%.

Nate
 
Great question... I was wondering, too.

For you that keep your humidity so low during hatch... you don't have any shrink wrapping problems???

I have had two hatches now. Both times the first chick to pip took more than 24 hours to hatch and both got a little shrink wrapped and needed help. Other chicks from both hatches pipped and zipped faster and didn't have any issues. I kept lockdown humidity pretty high trying to avoid the shrink wrap (75%). Most people say that higher humidity is useful for lockdown, so I'm really curious about low humidity for lockdown.

Humidity for me without adding water is around 16%. I'm going to try keeping it between 20 and 30% during days 1-18 and see how that goes. I weighed all my eggs, though, so I will adjust too, if they lose too muc weight.
 
I bump the humidity up to 25% or so for hatching and I rarely have any problems. Shrink raping is caused from opening the door causing a rush of cold air and letting the humid air in.

Nate
 
my last hatch I did about 25-30% for days 1-18 and 60% at lockdown, I had 6 eggs in lockdown and only one hatched and it was deformed. I think my problem was that the room my bator was in wasnt heated and changed temp too much, thus making my bator very hard to stay stable... and I took the chick out about ten hours after hatching killing the others by shrink wrapping them like a total noob...
 
I add water with a little hose during lockdown, the rest of the time I just open it and add water when needed. I candle on day 10 and 17 only, and just take one egg out at a time... shouldnt hurt them at all, and I have an automatic turner
 
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