Today We Said Goodbye...

Today was the last day we had our chicks in the classroom.  This afternoon I brought the chicks to Parky's Farm, where hopefully they will have a nice, happy life.  I was originally planning to keep the chicks a little longer, but we are getting so close to the end of the school year and things are just getting a little too busy.  Of course it didn't help that we were set back by 2 weeks with this project when we had to start over with a new set of eggs.  

So we only had our chicks for about a week, but it was amazing how attached I felt to them!  It was a little hard to give them up today.  I took lots of pictures and some videos of them over the last 2 days.  Unfortunately, the last 2 out of our 7 that hatched died this week.

Here are some more pictures:

I'm really going to miss these guys.  This was a great project, hopefully I'll be able to do it again next year.  I'm also hoping that we might get to see these chicks when we go to Parky's Farm for a field trip in June.

7 out of 24 - Not too bad!

We are all done with incubating our chicken eggs.  We had a total of 7 hatch out of our 24 eggs.  On Sunday, I decided it was time to get rid of the eggs that didn't hatch since it was almost a full week since our scheduled hatch day.  I would say that 7 isn't too bad since this was my first experience!  The kids were so excited each time a new one hatched.

Unfortunately, 2 out of the 7 seem to have something wrong with them.  They are still alive and they are eating and drinking, but one has some kind of deformity in his neck - he is kind of bent over to the side.  He had trouble hatching and we ended up with assisting him when it looked like he wouldn't be able to get out of the shell by himself.  The other one, which was our last one to hatch, has a chunk of membrane from the shell stuck to his back.  I tried to get it off of him, but he was squirming around like crazy and I had no luck.  Hopefully these two will turn out to be ok, but for right now they are alive. 

Here are some more pictures of our 7 chickies!  

We Have Chicks!

Last night we had our first chick hatch completely, and then when I came in this morning we had a 2nd one!  We also have 2 more eggs that are definitely trying to hatch.  Not sure about the other 17....

Here are some pictures!

I will post more pictures later!

~Ms. Julie

It's Finally Started!

On Monday we were at our 21st day of incubation, but we did not have any pipping yet!  We have been waiting patiently and this morning when I can in, I saw that 2 chicks have started to pip!  The students were so excited to take a look at them.  Since this morning I have noticed a few more that look like they are starting to pip as well - I have even heard some chirping and seen a few of the eggs rocking back and forth!  Here is one picture of the first egg I saw with a crack in it:

(It's a little hard to see, but if you look at the egg right above the thermometer there is a small crack in the shell.)

 

I will update again when we have more progress.  Hopefully by tomorrow we will have some chicks!

 

~Ms. Julie



We are in the Hatch Stage!

Tomorrow (Monday) is the 21st day of incubation for our eggs.  The eggs are not supposed to be turned during the last 3 days, so yesterday I went in and removed the eggs from the automatic turning tray and they are now laying flat in the incubator.

      

I also took the opportunity to candle each egg one last time to see if there were any that I should definitely get rid of.  Some of them I was not sure about, but there were 3 eggs that I did take out.  One showed no sign of growth, so I think it was infertile.  The other two looked like quitters - they started to develop but then died.  So my one student that was such the optimist and predicted that all 24 eggs would hatch unfortunately will not be right!  I took this picture of one egg that I thought looked really promising:

You can see that it is mostly dark with some visible blood vessels and a small air pocket at the very bottom.  I also thought I saw some movement in there when I was looking - I really hope I'm right!

Hopefully tomorrow we will see some chicks starting to pip.  It take about a full 24 hours for a chick to completely emerge from the shell, so I don't think we will have any chicks tomorrow (but hopefully by mid-week we will).  I'll post again with pictures if/when it happens!

~Ms. Julie