Our Chicks are Growing Up!

Watch this video to see how much our chicks have grown!

We are starting to  notice our chicks’ fluffy appearance is slowly disappearing, and their fuzzy down is being replaced with feathers of a mature bird. Our chicks will soon be in the ‘tween’ stage! In chicken years, birds are at the beginning of the teenage stage around 4 to 5 weeks old.
Soon, our birds will no longer be called chicks. Instead the girls will be called Pullet and the young male chickens are called cockerels.  Their wattles and combs are also starting to grow larger and will be becoming a deeper red soon.  

Around week 6 we can start to introduce kitchen scraps to our chickens diet.  Some of Salt and Pepper's favorites are lettuce, tomatoes, and strawberry tops.  Click HERE to learn more about some common garden vegetables that are good for chickens.

Then around week 7 our chickens will be ready to go live in a coop outside!

Do you spy the turkeys and the Guinea?

Now that they have all hatched and are living happily together can you spot the three different types of birds?

Here's a hint: Click  for a video of the turkeys joining the other birds!

TURKEYS!

Our first turkey hatched over night last night and is cute as he walks around inside the incubator drying!

We also have another turkey that is working hard to unzip his egg right now!

Watch how the turkey tries to help his friend hatch so they can play together!

Keep an eye on the camera because there are several other turkey eggs that have pipped.  We are also hoping that the ducks will start hatching soon!! 

Checking Out Our New Home

Do our chicks have everything the need to survive?

Watch this video to find out all about our new home!

First Two Chicks are here!

Listen to  our first chick calling to his brothers and sisters to come out and play!

Here is a short video of our second chick as he comes out of his shell.

We have our FIRST PIP!

 Today one of our chicks has made a small hole in the outside of the eggshell. This hole is called the pip. Many chicks take a long break at this point. Once our little chick has taken a rest, then he will start to unzip the egg.   This means he will move in a circle to create a line in the egg until enough has separated that he can push himself out of the egg!  

He does all of this hard work using his egg
tooth.

Second Time to Candle

The first time we candled our eggs was on day 7.  Today is day 18 and so much has been happening to the chicks inside of their eggs! Chicken eggs take about 21 days to hatch.  Day 18 is the last time we will candle the eggs because we want to let the baby chicken get in the correct position inside the egg to hatch when the time comes. Here is a picture of what the embryo might look like inside of the shell on day 17.

Here are the pictures from our second and last candling.  As you can see in the pictures below most of the eggs are dark with only a small air pocket.  That is because the chicken embryo is taking up most of the space inside the shell.This egg however is mostly light, with only the yolk showing.  

These eggs are

not showing any signs of a chicken embryo growing inside so now is the time that we take it out of the incubator.

Here are the 14 eggs that we will continue to watch on the webcam.

Here is a video from our zoom during the candling process!

Second Candling Video 

First Candling!

Today is day 7 and we get to candle!  

Hmmmmmm, I wonder if our little baby birds, called embryos, are starting to grow and develop?  How can we find out? We wouldn't want to crack open the shell would we? 

No, no, no!  But if we could it might look something like this picture .

Candling is the name for shining a special bright light into the bottom of the egg inside of a dark room.  By candling our eggs we will be able to see the embryo, which will look like a dark spot, and some spider looking veins around it.  If there's just an outline of the yolk then no embryo is growing and developing.  Check out these pictures of our eggs from our first candling!

We made a chart to predict which eggs will continue growing and developing and will eventually hatch.  Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner are eggs that we could easily see the growing embryo.  Quitters are eggs that we could only see the yolk so there is no embryo developing.  Yolkers are eggs that we think are growing but aren't totally sure of, sort of maybes!

 Here is the link for the video from the zoom meeting between all the first grade teachers during the candling process:

Candling Zoom Video

Putting the Eggs in the Incubator!

I am labeling each egg with a number so that later we can keep track of our predictions on whether or not we think the chick is going to grow inside of the egg.

 Here are all the duck, turkey and Guinea eggs in the incubator.

Here are all the chicken eggs in their incubator.