Our eggs have been incubating for 1 week. Today I candled the eggs while the class was at Art. This is when you shine a bright light through the egg shell in hopes of seeing what’s developing inside. I saw some blood vessels and a few shadowy figures which is good news! That means something is growing! There were 2 eggs with nothing happening which I disposed of which brings us to 15 eggs. There were some others that were hard to determine since their shells were darker. This image is similar to what I saw today.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Today we started incubating 17 new eggs that we got from Mrs. Swavely’s brother’s chickens. We’re hoping this hatch goes better. To eliminate some variables we are using Mrs. Swavely’s turning machine to turn the eggs for us. This means we won’t have any student “Egg Helpers” to turn the eggs 3 times a day. There’s not much we need to do except peek through the window each day to make sure the temperature stays consistent and add water to the tray every few days. If all goes well our chicks will start to hatch on Mother’s Day.
This saying is true…hatching chicks can be very unpredictable. Here’s an update for the week.
Monday (Day 20) I put all the eggs on a layer of wet paper towels. We stopped turning the eggs so the chicks could prepare to hatch. We kept the paper towels damp which makes it easier for them to hatch.
Tuesday (Day 21) A “normal” chicken gestation is 21 days. This is the day we thought we’d begin to see action for most of our eggs (we added 6 eggs a day late so they were only at day 20).
Wednesday (Day 22) One small white egg in the top right corner of the incubator had a tiny hole. As they day went on the hole changed into a crack about 1 inch long but nothing ever hatched.
Thursday (Day 23) 2 other eggs had small cracks. We could hear peeping from the chicks and throughout the day the cracks got larger.
Friday (Day 24) When I arrived at school I could tell that the chicks in 2 of the “hatching” eggs had passed away. They were no longer breathing or moving. The third egg had a chick who struggled throughout the day. It’s little leg popped out of the shell but it just couldn’t hatch. It seems cruel to not help a chicken hatch, but I’ve been told many times that if the chick isn’t healthy and strong enough to hatch on it’s own then it is not healthy and strong enough to survive. Normally I would assume our hatch is over on day 24, but I decided to take the incubator home to my house for the weekend to so I can monitor if we have any other hatch attempts. By the time I arrived home I could tell that our struggling little chick had also passed away.
This little chick peeped and tried all day to hatch.
Stay tuned….I hope to be able to post some good news this weekend. Both the children and I will be bummed if we do not have a successful hatch.
Update: I’m sad to say we had an unsuccessful hatch. We plan to try again when Mrs. Swavely’s brother can gather more eggs from his chickens. Stay tuned…
Jayden and Travis were the last students to take care of our eggs. We will use the egg turning machine over the weekend and then on Monday the eggs will rest as the chicks prepare to hatch.
