Our chicks enjoying their new habitat!


     
 And more on the way!

Check out all of our Chicks!

Look at the inside of the shell after the chick has hatched!

These 5 chicks are all ready to live in their new habitat!

These chicks are staying warm in the incubator and waiting for their feathers to finish drying!

#1 has HATCHED!!

We had our first chick hatch this afternoon, and we just so happened to be there and capture a video!! Not only that, but there are several eggs with "pips" (little holes) where the chick is beginning to use its egg tooth to break out of its shell. The little chick that just hatched, started pipping yesterday morning, so it took almost 24 hours for this little guy to get out of the shell. So exciting!

Keep checking back - we are expecting more babies soon!

- FIRST GRADE TEAM

Day 14 - 2nd Round of Candling and New Learning!

Hello from Mrs. Thorne's class! 

It's Day 14 - our little chicks are developing their skulls, beaks, and claws. Their egg tooth, which is used to help them break out of their shell, hardens around this time, too. We've also been learning about how all animals have specific external characteristics to help them survive. Today we labeled the external parts of the chick, so watching these external features develop inside of the egg is super cool!

Yesterday, we candled our little eggs for the 2nd and final time. And WOW, it's crazy how fast they've grown! As you can see from our chart below, we continue to have mostly "Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinners", and most of our "Yolkers" became Winners, too! However, we did see a handful of Quitters, but we are staying positive and are keeping our fingers crossed that we will have LOTS of little chicks hatching out of their eggs! The duck eggs take longer to incubate, so we will have to wait on them :)

Do you see how the egg above is bright yellow? Yes, there is a dark spot, but that is just the yolk. We don't see any veins or any sign of a chick, so this egg was marked down as a Quitter.

But as you can see from the picture above, the little chicks that are developing within their eggs are starting to fill up their space! We see lots of veins, a definite dark area, and even movement - take a look at the videos below!

We can't wait to meet our little chicks :)

Stay tuned for more updates!!!
 

- Mrs. Thorne's Class

Day 7 - Candling Eggs

Today we got to see what was happening on the inside of our chicken and duck eggs! To candle an egg you hold the egg over a special light and look for development. As you can see we could see veins, the beginnings of a chick, and in some eggs we even saw movement! We had over 2 dozen eggs to candle and have less than 5 that we think are duds! We may be busy little mama hens in a couple of weeks!

Days 1-5

So far we have put the chicken eggs in the incubators and began to watch them carefully.  We are also watching a few duck eggs.  We have noticed that the duck eggs are bigger than the chicken eggs.  Some of the chicken eggs are white, brown, and even green.  We will continue watching the eggs for the next 16 days!