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