Dry Incubation???

[agregg15]

Hi, I was reading about dry incubating chicks and I was wondering if I could do the same with ducks. I've heard that it works very well for chicks, but I don't know if it will work with ducks since the shells are more porous. Has anyone done this before? Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks

 

[Sweetfolly]

It depends an where you live and the ambient humidity. I live in central WI, and my incubator is in a somewhat damp basement. I dry-incubate ALL my eggs (duck, chicken, and quail) together right up until hatch-time. I don't have anything in my incubator to measure the humidity, no idea what percentage I'm incubating at, and I never even think about it unless the air cells in the eggs look a little too big or small when I candle them. It works great for me.

EDIT: Quick correction - before I took my humidity gauge out of my incubator over a year ago, I was incubating right around 30% humidity. This gave me great results for ducks, chickens, and quail. I think a lot of hatching failures come from having too much humidity in the incubator.

When I said "somewhat damp basement", I didn't want you to think it was 50 or 60% humidity or something like that.

 

[Oregon Blues]

Depends upon where you live. No water in my incubator gives me about 17% humidity. Probably not going to work.