Is Dry Hatching really a thing?!

[soxirella]

It's day 19 and a couple have pipped. Hope they all come out well.

(Video removed)

 

[Susan Skylark]

I love dry hatching with quail, they seem to just pop out of the shell and are pretty vigorous at hatch, my little bubble incubator is a nightmare to control humidity on, it’s either 10 or 80%, and I have hatched successfully at both extremes, usually I just add a little water occasionally so it averages 30-40% but no biggie if it spikes or plummets briefly. Anecdotally I was running a dry hatch in my emergency back up incubator (main one died on day 7, wouldn’t get above 98) and I cracked 6/30 eggs as the floor was sloped and they’d roll into each other, the shells seemed pretty brittle on a dry dry hatch as compared to that 40 percent average, maybe it makes hatching easier? But certainly wasn’t a good combo with the emergency incubator (now back to emergency status!).

 

[soxirella]

The first chick just hatched some time back

 

[soxirella]

On day 21, I put a camera inside the incubator. Here is one of the highlights!

 

[soxirella]

The last chicken in the current batch has hatched and thanks to all of you who shared your two cents and all the praises and thanks to God.

I started with 32 - six were infertile. I discarded one by Day 14, unlike eight in my first attempt. Finally, off the remaining 25, 21 hatched. I had to help the last two though.

 

[Tex452]

This is my first attempt at hatching chicken eggs, I elected to try the dry hatch method, I candled my eggs on day 18, last night, and that’s the only time I candled them, out of 22 eggs only one was not fertile, the rest has a chick in them, and the air sack looks to be perfect?
I’ll know by this weekend how this method does.
My humidity has been from 35 to 50%, but mostly hanging around 40%.

 

[Tex452]

Day 21 is fixing to start, and better than half of my 21 fertile eggs have hatched, with more pipping, I did not add one drop of water throughout the process, the humidity got up to 85% while chicks were hatching.
They are very healthy, so much so that I’m afraid they might prevent the rest from hatching.

 

[Tex452]

I ended up with 19 chicks out of 21 fertile eggs, I helped one but shouldn’t have and it died, otherwise I would have had 20 chicks, my other batch went into lockdown Monday, only 8 of 22 eggs were fertile, my friend had 1 rooster on 27 hens and I was worried about fertility, of the 8 fertile eggs, 7 have hatched, and the 8th one is starting.
I used the 100% dry hatch method on both, I didn’t add one drop of water throughout the process, I’m very satisfied with the dry hatch method.