Chick- a- thon

All my personal friends know that I have been on a mission for the past 21 days.  We have been expanding our school family. We are hatching chickens.  Well, not me personally.  I have way too much to do to sit on eggs all day and night.  So I acquired an incubator from a parent, Anne, in our pod.  

If you know anything about hatching eggs (which I didn't) you know that the eggs need to be turned 3 times a day. This presented a problem.  Our eggs would be incubating over Spring Break.  Surprisingly, no one volunteered to come up to school 3 times a day to turn the eggs!  No idea why..... :) Anyway, our wonderful parent Anne got us an automatic turner for the incubator.  Then we were ready to rock and roll! 

We started with 37 fertilized eggs from a farm in a neighboring town- 12 Brown eggs which would hatch into Rhode Island Red chickens, 18 white eggs hatching into White Leghorns, and 7 little green eggs hatching into Easter Eggers!  Listen people- I had NO idea that different colored chickens laid different colored eggs!!!! I also never knew specific names!! I just thought chickens are chickens!! :) The incubator was set at 99.5 and now we had to sit.....and....wait.....

On day 15 we were able to "candle" the eggs.  We set up an overhead projector, cut a whole in a box and put each egg on top.  You can actually see the outline of whats developing inside.  By day 15, about 3/4 of the egg should be filled with the developing chick.  I am attaching a picture but it is not great quality.  Candling each egg allowed us to see into all the white eggs to make sure progress was being made.  The brown and green eggs' shells were too thick to see into :( A few eggs were not developing so they were discarded. 

      
The 21st day was a Tuesday.  This day was called HATCH DAY!  I am usually late to work.  This day, I was not late :)  When I walked in the door, I knew the peeps that I heard were louder than the tinny peeps I heard coming out before they hatched. (I forgot to mention earlier that on day 20 you can hear tiny peeps inside the egg) So, friends, I walked in on HATCH DAY to find 2 tiny wet chicks peeping away in the incubator.  1 tiny brown chick and 1 tiny white chick.........RELIEF.........


My intention for this project was to teach and learn about things concerning life cycles, living things, and chicks. There is no guarantee that any egg will hatch.  We assume, hope and pray that they are fertilized and wait nervously for HATCH DAY.  What if they don't hatch? How will I explain this to 80 5-7 year olds? What if they die? Should I get more/new eggs and start over? 
These questions rolled in my mind for 21 days and with those 2 tiny living things, all my fears went away.For the rest of Tuesday and most of Wednesday 11 more brown and white chicks hatched.  We were in awe every time we got the chance to see a tiny animal take its first breath of fresh air. Take a look....

It has been a truly amazing and educational experience for me. I believe it may have built some character in me as a few times I had to clean or adjust something gross.  If you know me, you know that I am not a big fan of gross things :)(Also a giant thanks to Anne for a lot of the dirty work) The end result of this project was sweet tiny chicks that will live with us for 1 week and then move to their permanent home at Nanny's Educational Zoo.  Its not too far and our students can go there and visit anytime.  Thanks for reading!
KBO