Dry Incubation

[skeeter9]

Has anyone tried the Dry Incubation discussed in the Learning Center? I'm just wondering if anyone has had good results with it compared to keeping the humidity higher.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

I just read about that myself and was curious. It seemed to make sense, but just doesn't seem to be widely used.

 

[skeeter9]

I know, that 's why I posted this question. It seems kinda strange that we haven't seen any discussion about it. If the auther has had so much more success with the dry method, then I wonder why I don't see anyone using it or talking about it here on the forum? I'm very curious to see if anyone has tried it and if they got similar results.

Lori

 

[gavbarker]

The lady who i rend some land off does her eggs dry i think and she always seems to get good results and shes being toing incubating for a long time but iv only started but i think it makes sence to have some water in there to make it moist other wise it would just dry them out too much i think.

 

[buc]

I am in my first year of hatching eggs (silver laced WY) .

I am currently running a simple still air bator, with no water to hatch the eggs.

They spend the first 18 days in a still air bator with a egg turner.

Anyways, my hatch rate is running in the range of 85-90 % live hatches.

I do candle the eggs at day 10 to make sure their is a growing chick.

 

[mandolinmama]

My husband and I have been reading alot on dry incubation and really feel like it makes alot of sense. We just put our eggs in the bator for our first hatch this evening.
When I set up, I went ahead and put some water in the bottom of our Little Giant and watched in horror as the humdity rose to 87. Hubby suggested that I dump out the water and see what happend so I did.
It took quite a while for the styrofoam to dry out all the way and for the humidity to regulate.
After a thousand trips to peek at it, the temp and humidity were just right.
Crossing my fingers here for a good hatch of the 18 eggs in there!!!!
I guess i'll have to watch it pretty close as far as humidity goes and add a bit if needed, but for now at least, we're runnin' dry with great humidity.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

mandolinmama-please keep us updated as the incubation progresses. I would really like to hear more about this method.

 

[fowlweatherfriends]

Hi, I used it and it worked great. I followed the article to the letter. Used a Little Giant still air, no turner. Everything that was fertile hatched. I had trouble with 2 silkies and helped them. 1 passed away, but it appeared genetically "off", it had 4 toes and I noticed it had 2 toenails on the one toe that should have been separated to make the fifth toe.

The other silkie I helped is doing just great (it had pipped in breech position). I read the article about dry incubation on this site and it worked wonderfully. The only hitch I had was trying to bring the humidity up. I filled the trays, added a wet adult sock, and then had to add a small, wet, childs sock to get the humidity between 70 and 80%.

I don't know how others do using the usual way, but it gave me a 100% hatch rate, or 98% if you take into account the 2 I helped, out of 18 eggs total.

Best whishes

 

[skeeter9]

Wow, Fowlweather, that's an impressive hatch rate!! Have you tried the higher-humidity method that most people seem to use? If so, how do your hatch rates compare?

Thanks for the info,

Lori

 

[AccidentalFarm]

It certainly is impressive. Makes the lesser expensive plain-jane bators look more appealing now. I was about to purchase the everything included model hova. Think I'll wait and see a few more posts before I decide.