What is a Dry Hatch: Raise Your Hatch Rate  | Can Refrigerated Eggs Hatch?

Egg Incubation Process:

The Payne family came over, and they brought me some eggs: beautiful blue and browns. Some have a little bit of a green tint to them.

They brought me two 18-packs. So, when they brought them, I sat them on the counter and I left them there. A week went by, and I kept telling myself I needed to incubate those. They have black Australorp and Ameraucanas.

So, after about seven days, I thought, "Oh my gosh, I really need to put them in the incubator." So, I took them out and I put them in the incubator. Later that night, I told Matt and Christian Payne, "Hey, I put those eggs in the incubator. I'm  so excited. There are 36 eggs. I really need a variety for my flock."

And they both said, "Oh no, oh no." So, what they were yelling at me and telling me, "Oh no, you can't do that," is when they brought me the eggs, they were out of the refrigerator. They took them out and brought them to me. And I had no idea that they were refrigerated eggs.

So, 21 days later, we had baby chicks. We had 10 beautiful chicks.

Welcome back to Paragon Ridge Ranch. if you haven't already subscribed, take a second; go ahead and hit that subscribe button and then a little dingle bell, so you're alerted every single time that we upload new videos. Today we are going to put some eggs in the incubator: these beautiful eggs here.

These eggs right here are from Robertson Belly Acres. We were able to go over there last weekend, and we had such a blast. We went out to the coop, and these gorgeous eggs were in their coop. They asked us if we wanted them. "Well, yeah, we want them. They're gorgeous. There's green and then there's olive green with, like, well, some spots on it. And then there's a light brown that's kind of pink, and then there's dark brown, and then there's some that are kind of on the blue side and some on the minty green side. So, Rusty's eggs are beautiful. We're gonna incubate these today."

And then these eggs are more eggs from the Payne family. Kristian and Matt did not put these in the refrigerator.

So, let's get these set in our GQF 1502 Sportsman incubator.

"Okay, so we are going to take out our trays and we are going to put in some eggs. What I'm  going to do is I'm  going to do them in two separate trays. I'm  gonna put the Robertsons in one, and I'm  gonna put the Payne family in one. So, whenever they go down to the hatching area, the brooder, I will actually put them in a net that will separate them, so I know whose eggs are whose."

"So now all we have to do is put the eggs in.", "And then you just close—"

And you just let them be. Thanks for joining me as I'm  putting in the Robertson Belly Acres and the Payne family eggs. And I cannot wait. It's gonna be a long 21 days, but we're going to see exactly what their babies are going to look like.

Dry Hatch Method:

What I want to talk about today is a dry hatch. I've done lots of videos, and every time I mention that I do a dry hatch, I always get a lot of comments on my YouTube channel asking me what it is exactly and how it works. Some people don't seem to understand what it means, like the actual definition. So, here is the definition: a dry hatch is exactly what it sounds like. You put your eggs in the incubator, you make sure that they're 100.2 degrees, just like any incubator should be, make sure that they're rotating.

For the first 18 days, you do not add any water at all. No water. Pure definition states that once you go on lockdown at day 18, then you would increase your humidity, which would be adding water to make your humidity inside your incubator to be between 65 and 75 percent. I don't do that. The natural air outside around my incubator keeps the incubator about 35 to 40 percent at all times. I did not put one drop of water in for the whole 18 days, and I did not put one drop of water in from day 18 to day 21. I make it a completely dry hatch.

Why this works so well for me is because I could do multiple different stages or age levels of eggs in the same brooder, and then I don't have to worry about some being at a higher humidity  and some being at a lower humidity . I have been doing dry hatches for about four years now. I started with the foam incubators from Tractor Supply & Atwoods with the egg rotators inside them, and I would generally always remove the red caps, and I would also put a towel on so the red caps are to allow airflow, and then the towel on top is to keep the heat in. I know that sounds counterintuitive; however, before I went to a dry hatch, there was never a way to measure how much humidity  you could put in there. You put a little bit of water, it might shoot up to 80, and it can't be an 80% humidity level on a brand new egg, just can't do it."

"I read up on dry hatches, and I started experimenting myself. I was very successful when I was using those foam incubators, and then once I stepped up to the GQF Sportsman cabinet incubator, it was a breeze. I've never used water in here. As a water container at the top that you're supposed to fill goes on the top, and then the air fan blows the hot air over it and it hits that door and then it flows all the way down and it goes through all the trays. And that's how the humidity  works."

Hatch Results and Egg Refrigeration:

"My hatch rates are wonderful. I would say that my hatch rates are between 75 and 95 percent. And it's not due to humidity or the way that I'm hatching. It's due to the fertility of the eggs. Most of the time, I'm incubating other people's eggs, and I'm not quite sure how their rooster is, how friendly he's been, if their girls are being helpful, or if they don't have a good ratio of roosters or chickens. I just don't know other people without talking to them. Generally, when I get farm-fresh eggs, I don't have the heart to eat them. But that's another story. I always want to incubate them. I love to incubate a large amount of eggs, but I generally just give away the chickens. Whenever my girls are laying, I hatch non-stop for months and months, and I give them away. If I have an overabundance and no one's come over, I kind of give them as a gift as people come over, like 'You want some chickens?' Otherwise, I'll put them on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, and I sell them for about three dollars a piece.”

"Now, when I had some chickens that were a little bit more special to me, and I pretty much believe they're a little more special to people that are backyard chicken people, I did have crested cream leg bars. I had Marans in all the different colors. I had black copper Marans; I had splashes, and I had blues. I also had Polish. I had golden lace Polish; I had white crest black, black crest black, some splash, and then I had some frizzle Polish. The other one that I had was Bielefelders, so those are called uni-chicken. So, I had all of them. The Bielefelders were the most expensive, and I sold those for 25 a chick, and they always got a male chick, so it'd be a female and a male. The reason I did that is that you don't really need the males. Most people want females, and they're so rare in this area that it's just helpful. And then, of course, I'm  not left with all the roosters. But I'm generally a little bit on the easier side, so I usually give extra chickens to people just because you start talking to them and you fall in love with them, and you just want to give and be helpful to them. Most of the people that I've ever sold to, it hasn't been a lot; it's been far and few between in the last couple of years, but most of them have become my lifelong friends. They still call me or message me to ask me questions, and I'm  always here for them. If I know the answer, I will surely help them; if I don't, I'll help them try to figure it out. Chickens are really easy, but you have to have the right setup for them when they're babies, the right setup for them when they're adults, and then you have to make sure that you have protection."

"I want to talk about the eggs that were in the refrigerator. So, like I said earlier, our friends gifted us some eggs. They pulled them out of the refrigerator before they came to us, and they live over an hour away, so that makes sense why the eggs didn't show any moisture or little dots of water on the top. Plus, I just set them on my counter just thinking like I do with my eggs. My eggs always go on the counter; I never refrigerate them nor do I wash them until I'm  ready to eat them. So, I did a little research after hatching these 10 babies out of 36 eggs, and it is not impossible. It's something that doesn't happen commonly because most people don't try to hatch eggs out of the refrigerator. I just didn't know. it did say that it's a 50% hatch rate, so mine was less than 50 percent. The other eggs didn't develop or they started to develop and probably ceased in about four to five days. You can tell by the development on the egg when you look at it through your little egg light."

Normal Incubation Development:

"So let's talk about the normal incubation period for any eggs inside an incubator. The normal incubation time for a chicken is 21 days and for a duck is 28 days. Quail are a little different; they take 23 to 24 days to hatch. So once you put your eggs in and then they're at the right temperature and they are on a rotation, this is how it happens. The first two days, there is no development. Between the second and the third day, you're gonna see a heartbeat, some tissue development, and some blood vessels appear. Days four through five, the eyes, the elbows, and the beak start to appear. By the first week, they will almost have a fully developed beak; you could see the egg tooth, and their comb growth starts to begin. By the ninth day, if you candle your eggs, you'll actually see a bird shape while you're candling, and you're going to see some movement. Sometimes you can see the mouth opening, and you're definitely going to see some toenails appear."

"Day 11 and 12, you're going to see more of the feathers forming, and the actual toenails will stop growing; the toes will be fully formed. By day 14, it's going to be completely feathered, not very much, and the embryo's head is going to turn towards the big side of the egg. By day 17, the amniotic fluid kind of lower’s, the head is kind of positioned between the legs, and they put their little wing over their beak. On day 18, the egg is ready to go into lockdown; the yolk sac is still on the outside of the body, so in the next few days, it's going to use that and it's going to draw it into its body and use that for nutrients. You're going to take it off the rotation and you're going to put it in the bottom of your brooder or that would be the GQF; you'll take out your rotation and set it on the floor of your incubator. And at this time is when people start to increase humidity  to 65 to 75 percent. if you're doing a dry hatch, you do nothing different. So by day 19, the actual chick is so big it's taking up most of the space; it's running out of amniotic fluid and the yolk is almost gone. By day 19, 20, 21, it's done with yolk and amniotic fluid, and it's actually breathing the air because there's a little air cell inside their egg. it's actually breathing the air and getting ready to be hatched. At this time you're going to see them start pecking the side of the egg, we call it pipping, they're going to start to go all the way around the whole circle and that's called zipping. Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes it takes minutes, but you will know that your chick is going to be hatched any moment. This is the most exciting time. In the past, I've    done some lives on my Facebook, years ago, it's been a while. I would live and I just set my phone in there by the incubator and just tell everybody I'm  going live to do a chicken hatch, and so many people loved it. They'd pull their kids into the living room, put it on the big TV, and I would just leave it on there for as long as I can without the phone overheating. So they would just watch chicken after chicken after chicken. So I'd go in there every five minutes, I'd run out and make dinner, go back in, run out and vacuum, whatever I've    got to do, and then I'd keep moving it to the next egg that needed to hatch. And it's just such a great thing to teach a child and to show them how life is created for chickens."

Chick Care and Brooder Setup:

"Now the work begins after they're hatched. So after the chickens are hatched, you need to put them in a brooder. A brooder generally has wood chips or hay or some kind of animal litter on the bottom. You have to have clean water, chicken food, and of course, baby chick food. Whenever I transfer my eggs, I do wait for the majority of them to hatch, so there might be some in there for a day or so more than 24 hours, but they're in 100.3 degrees inside my incubator. Wait for all of them to hatch, and then I move them over. So I pull them all out one at a time, and I dip their beak in the water, and then I just let them stand there by the water, and I grab the next one, I dip their beak in the water, and I let it stand there, and so now they know where their water is. Generally, they stand around and keep drinking, then they'll kind of flap their wings, they'll walk around, they're cute like little cotton balls running all over, and then they'll go and find their food. Sometimes they don't eat at first, sometimes they wait a few hours to eat, and that's okay because they are fine for two to three days because they had absorbed all that amniotic fluid and that yolk sac, so that time is when they usually ship them from the hatcheries is the first day or so because they don't generally eat so much and they don't usually drink too much water."

"After that, it's pretty easy; you just need to keep them fresh water, fresh litter, and fresh food every single day. You need to take care of them and watch them, make sure they don't get a poopy butt. You also need to have a heat lamp. They need to be under the heat lamp until they're fully feathered. Sometimes if they don't have appropriate heat and cold inside their little brooder, they will develop something called a pasty butt, I call it poopy butt. So from going in and out of being warm under the lamp over here, cold in the shadows, back to the lamp, sometimes the poop crests up on their bottom. So what I do is I take them, I run them under warm water on their behind, and I softly rub it all off. I know that sounds gross, but it's just what you have to do, and then I take a paper towel and I softly try to dry up all their feathers, and I put them back under the light. If that ever happens, you need to address your lamp, your lamp or your plate—I'm not sure what you want to use—you can use a heating lamp, which is not that safe. Lots of people's barns and homes burn down. Lots of people use heating plates where the chickens can go under. They have adjustable legs that move up and down, so as the chicken grows you can move it up, it's about an inch or so each time you move it up, and they sleep under there and they stay warm. I do both, it just depends on the situation or where I have them."

"Right now I have these in my garage, these are the refrigerator babies, and they're so cute. So this is in my garage, it is on a heat lamp, but it keeps them so warm. it's in the 20s at night, it's in the 40s and 50s during the day. I would hate to put these in the barn because they were just hatched. So, I'm  going to keep them close to me, where I can watch them, where I can control their temperature, and the heat lamp is not faced completely down, it's faced kind of at a 45-degree angle where it hits and keeps it warm, but they can go and get out of the heat."

"Once you have your brooder set up and you put your chicks in there, you are going to do fine. I haven't explained every part of this, and I'm  going to do another video on more of the chick care, the type of food that you should be feeding, maybe even putting some supplements in their water. For now, I just wanted to discuss the dry hatch method that I use, go through the developments of the chicks as they are incubating, and then talk about a little bit of what you need to do after they're done incubating, when they hatch and setting them up in a brooder. I'll bring you another video soon and we'll explain some more. Thank you so much for watching today; if you haven't already subscribed, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. You know you want to hit that dingle bell; that'll alert you every single time that I update a new video. And thank you so much for joining us tonight. Have a good one. Bye."