Chicks

We went to a friend's farm. Her name is Ellen. She raises alpacas for their wool. She also has goats, chickens and dogs. Out of all of the animals the children loved the chickens the best. Ellen offered some eggs to take home to incubate. It sounded like so much fun...and she was right!
The embryo's in the eggs don't begin to develope until it reaches a steady warm temperature of 99.5 degrees...a fertilized egg just can't be left out in the cold...
So we put 6 eggs in an incubator.
Every few days we shined a flashlight through the eggs to chart the growth of the chicks. It was fascinating! The gestation period of chicks are 21 days...in 3 weeks we had baby chicks hatching! So cool.

Hatching Chick...it took her all day to work her way out.

Only 3 hatched..which actually is good odds. It is usually 20% of eggs hatch...Sadly 2 of the chicks died :-(
It took all day for them to work themselves out of their eggs. We watched helplessly. We wanted so much to help them get out. But we couldn't. Part of their working themselves out of the eggs enables the fluid to be pressed out of their lungs. The struggle makes them stronger....isn't that a great life lesson right there?
We got more than we bargained for when I decided to incubate chicken eggs. It has become a great learning experience for our whole family!
But we still have Mathilda--the lone surviving chick!

Mathilda