5 Hatchings

Today we had 5 chicks hatch. The first to hatch started cracking a tiny hole at 8:00 AM the previous morning, and it finally hatched at about 1:30 AM the next day. At first we could only see a little beak poking out the small hole it had made. The chick gradually turned in the egg, making a long crack all the way around the egg. Once the chick had got the egg shell off it would wiggle until it was out of the egg. Once the chick was out it would lay and rest for a while. When all rested up the chick would try walking, most the time it would last only a few seconds before falling down though. The chicks were very curios, so they would peck the other eggs. Every chick did something either funny or amazing, one chick crawled back under its egg shell, another chick must have just pushed all it could because its egg shell burst open sending chunks of shell flying in all directions, and one chick was even doing backflips (because its balance was off and its belly was fat)! Once the chick's feathers were dry we put it in a box with a makeshift heat lamp and food. When all 5 chicks were in the box they started pecking each others face, and biting another's toes, some even cuddled up with each other and fell asleep.

My Chicken Tractor

I have built a chicken tractor so the chicks can be outside. The chicks will learn how to find their own food. The chicken tractor is about 3 times as big as their bin, so the chicks can get lots of exercise and have way more space. One side of the roof will have hinges so the roof can fold over so we can reach in and grab the chicks. I will soon build a hen house that can set on top of half of the tractor, it will have a ramp from the house to the ground inside the tractor

Here’s the update about my experiment

None of the eggs hatched, so we are putting in some more eggs. I think that the shell was too thick, so the chicks couldn’t get out. The humidity level may have been too low, so it may have not softened the shell. We opened up an egg that was not going to make it, it was at 23 days it had a chick that was still alive, but the chick died right away.

This time we aren’t going to open the incubator any more than we have to. We will only open it to rotate them, we won't even to candle the eggs. We went and bought 6 baby chicks that were only a day old. The chicks are so soft and cute, so I am holding them all the time.

Still WAITING!

Number 15 we think will hatch because we see the chick moving around every time we candle it. We have read that if the temperature is under 99.5 Degrees the chicks can hatch late, so we are glad to know that we have been keeping our temperature at constant 100 degrees. The eggs may not hatch because the humidity level could be to low, the temperature might be wrong, or the eggs are not fertile, we know our eggs are fertile because we have embryos.

No Chicks

We haven't had any hatching yet. It is the 29th, the eggs 1-13 were supposed to have hatched by the 25th. About half way through the incubation a power pole was moved so our power was out all day, so we took our eggs in the incubator to my grandma and grandpa's house. We got the eggs when the power came back on, but the power went out for a only a few hours the next day so we thought they would be fine if we didn't open the incubator. In the power outage the temperature may have gone down too much and made the embryos die. The chances of 14-31 forming is greater because the power outage was before 14-31 all were put in the incubator.

We candled the eggs, 1-13's embryos were formed but stopped developing around 10 days old so we threw them away. Most of our other egg's embryos were doing really good. We are expecting to have some eggs hatch starting on the 2nd of May. There is a bigger chance of us having some chicks next week because there are a lot more eggs, and most the embryos were forming.

# 27's embryo died :(

We still haven't had any hatching yet, so we are worried that we did something wrong. We have read that if the temperature is to low or to high the eggs can hatch late. It is the 22nd day for 1-5, 21st day for 6-10 and the 20th day for 11-13. Next Sunday we have 18 eggs that could start hatching, those eggs have a bigger chance of hatching because when we candled all the embryos we could see were developing. We are all very anxious to see some eggs hatch, so we have been checking on the eggs at least three times every half hour.

We think our eggs are going to be hatching really soon now because we have seen eggs wobble and we have heard the chick trying to get out.This week 13 eggs should be hatching so we have a bin ready with bedding, water, a feeder, and a heat lamp for when the chicks hatch. We will put chicken wire over the bin so the chicks don't fly out.

2nd candling

We candled our eggs for the second time. This time in the first eggs we put in we could only see a black blob taking up half the egg which is is the baby chick, the yolk took up the other side of the egg. In the chicks final days of being in the egg the yolk is all in the stomach of the chick so when the chick hatches it can go up to 48 hours without eating. In the newer eggs we could clearly see the embryo moving around in the egg. About 90% of the eggs we could see through looked like the embryo was forming. We still couldn't see through the green eggs, the egg's shell is to dark to see anything. Our eggs could hatch any time now, so I am very excited.

Our Eggs Will Be Hatching Soon

In a few days our eggs will be hatching, so we will need to get all the supplies we might need. We will have to get a waterer that we can put marbles in just above the water level so if the chicks fall in they will be sitting on the marbles instead of drowning. We will get a feeder that has holes in the side of it so the chicks can just stick their heads in and eat, we choose that type of feeder so that the chicks don't get in the feed and get dirt and possibly poop in their food. We also will get feed. We will have a heat lamp with a 100 Watt bulb we have to keep the chicks warm between 95 and 100 degrees. We will keep our chicks in a plastic bin with liter in it until the chicks have their feathers, the feathers take 5-8 weeks to fully grow in.

We went on a field trip to an organic farm in September, where all the vegetables were grown organically, and all the animals were fed organic feed.

The picture to the right is where we saw the idea to make a chicken tractor, you can see that the chickens scratch up the soil looking for bugs if you look inside the tractor in the picture. The tractors had a tarp over one half to make shade for hot days, and chicken wire over the other half. I will make a similar version of the tractor on the organic farm, but it will be smaller so it will be easy to move. The chicken tractor will have hinges on the top so the roof can fold over so we can grab the chicks.

Chickens in a chicken tractor loosen and mix the soil up. The chickens droppings act as fertilizer for the soil, and the chickens eat all the bugs and worms in the soil.

The chicken tractor will get the chicks used to being outside, and it will protect them from predators such as dogs, hawks ,and other chickens.