Silkie hatching a quail egg?!?!

[TimBaumann]

My button quail hen recently hatched one egg and kept sitting on two more which are both fertile but at different stages. One should hatch in about 5 days and the other might still take another 10. It seems like the quail hen stopped sitting. I have a silkie which is broody but has no eggs so I thought I might let her hatch the quail eggs. The only problem is that last time I let her sit on quail eggs she crushed them. I was thinking of maybe I could put some sort of wire mesh around the eggs to prevent the silkie from sitting directly on them. Then I'd have to turn the eggs by hand which would be fine. Do you think this could work or has anyone tried something like this before? If you have some other ideas on how to prevent the silkie from breaking the eggs please don't hesitate to share.
Thanks in advance

 

[GD91]

Incubation requires hen - on - egg contact so, no, that wouldn't work.

 

[TimBaumann]

Are you sure? I put the egg into a cut up ping-pong ball. It's been under the hen for the past 4 days and it is still alive and growing. Should hatch any day now if everything goes well.