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My first Marans Hatch was my first hatch in about 17 years. I had done dozens of hatches in my younger days and had a pretty good idea what I was doing, but I was using a new incubator that I hadn't play with very much. I set the temperature at 101 deg., but about two weeks into the hatch I accidently hit the wrong button when rotating the eggs (no automatic turners at the time) and the temperature went up to 102 deg. I left it as was because I feared I would do more harm than good trying to mess with the temperature. I had 11 out of 15 eggs hatch. Only 13 of the eggs were viable though, so I call in 11 out of 13 eggs. They were all on day 21. Two got stuck in there shells and after the other were done hatching we went in and rescued them. Our humidity was between 25-40% the first 19 days and 65 degrees on day 20.
The following year we got some egg from a breeder in another part of the state that we drove 3-1/2 hours to pick up and another 3-1/2 hour home. The breeder told us his last hatch was 16 out of 18 eggs and that he set them a degree higher than standard breeds. We hatched them at 100.5-101 deg and got 4 out of 8 chicks to hatch with humidity between 35-40% for the first 18 days. 5 of the 8 eggs were viable. One was fully developed, but didn't pip. One got stuck in its shell and again we helped it get unstuck.
Then we stared hatching other breeds. We turned the temp down to 99.5 deg and the humidity to 40-45%. We were getting 75-85% hatch rates and life was good. After about 10 hatches in a row it was time for more Marans. Our hatch rates were in the range of 25-35% range with the Marans. We tried dropping the humidity, increasing the humidity, rotating by hand, using the automatic turner and the hatch rates stay the same...then reading back through the records for the first two hatches I remembered that the other breed has said to hatch a degree higher and that our first hatch was way to high to begin with and went up to from there. So we went back to 100.5-101 deg F. and a humidity of 25-35%. That hatch resulted in 14 out of 16 eggs hatch and we didn't assist any of them (we weren't even home at all on hatch day). We were so happy with the results that when we put in a batch of eggs of a standard breed right after that (which we were getting 75-85% hatch rates at the other setting). That standard breed resulted in a 45% hatch rate.
So...lesson learned. All eggs are not created equal. I like to incubate bany eggs and dark brown eggs a little higher tempurature. Those shells are thicker and it seems to work for us. I use lower humidity on the dark brown eggs than I do a white/light egg breed. The white eggs must loose water faster than the Marans eggs.
I started last fall to mark the air sacs on the white/light eggs I was hatching and try to use that as my guide to water loss. Turns out that is easier said than done. I had no idea if I needed more humidity or less humidity. At the same time I also started weighing egg. Also easier said than done. I was putting one egg on the scale at a time and it only read to one decimal place on the scale so I could get enough resolution on the weight loss early on to know if what I was doing was correct or not. I do feel that monitoring the egg air sells and weight lost is a better method than using a set temperature and humidity every time, because every breed could be a little different, but the egg will always tell you what it needs with out the trial and error for 100's of eggs first. But, if you are in the learning curve of how to tell what the air cells should look like on every day of incubation you might consider some of the things that worked for me (i.e. 100.5-101 deg F & 25-35% humidity for the first 18 days and 65+ humidity on hatch day).
Note: I don't always have enough Marans eggs for their own hatch. When I am hatching with other breed my settings are 100 deg F and 38-42% humidity.
Thanks for the great info! So if I do have some other eggs with my Marans you suggest the higher humidity or still the dry hatch? I'm running an empty incubator right now and on right at 30% no water.
