The chicks are getting huge! It is time to give them more space and join the other 4th grade hatches at the farm. They had a fun weekend at Mrs. P's house avoiding Dahlia who s=wanted to touch them VERY badly. She did toss my two remotes in the box for them to play with. Believe it or not, they did not want to watch Netflix! And I had to wash chicken poop off my remotes. The things a grandparent will do...
This guy was starting to get shrink wrapped. To help him out I had to carefully peel back some shell and membrane. When I got him to this point I put him back in the incubator to finish himself. He has a case of "curly toes" which will make it difficult for him to walk. We will wait to see if it gets better.
Wet and exhausted! Our first egg hatched around 2:00 pm while we watched its hard work. He's all tuckered out and taking a well-deserved nap.
The incubator is quiet this weekend since the eggs are in position to hatch. Inside the eggs however, the embryos are still moving. If their beak was still tucked under their wing, the embryo must now move it towards the air cell to get ready to hatch. The last bit of yolk should be completely sucked into the gut and the opening will begin to close up. This allows the chick to go 48 hours without food while hatching. It lives off the yolk.
Below is a picture of the incubator all set to go. Each corner has an extra cup in it to provide more humidity for the hatch. I also filled another trough underneath. The humidity needs to be 55 to 65 percent to keep the membranes moist and prevent the chicks from getting "shrink wrapped". The live stream is up and running. The light will be on 24/7 so you can even watch at night. Remember that many hatch outside of school hours! Today the chick will be turning it's head towards the air cell. Some may even break the air cell. Once that happens their lungs will begin to function on their own. So far, the embryo has been "sucking" up the yolk from the sac. Today the yolk sac begins the process of being absorbed into the abdominal cavity.
Watch for pictures on setting up the incubator tomorrow. On Monday we will start looking for pips from early birds, but most likely things will be quiet until Tuesday. The incubator has been running at 100 to 101 degrees the whole time, which means they will hatch on time. If it ran a smidge hot, we might see some early hatches, and if it ran a little cool, it would take longer. As we near the end of the 21 days, the embryo is pretty much fully developed. It will gain more weight and keep absorbing the rest of the yolk, but the main task it to get that beak pointed at the air cell. There is no room to turn inside the shell, so it must tuck its head under the right wing. The embryo must be really flexible, don't you think?! Today and tomorrow morning are the last days for turning the eggs. Days 18, 19, 20, and 21 are used to get ready to hatch. On Saturday I will set up the incubator and Monday we will start looking for early bird pips! Most likely the pips will begin on Tuesday. Are you getting excited? Can you believe how this all started 16 days ago? The changes are so rapid, it's incredible! The major events are slowing way down and you will see a lot of repetition. Some embryos begin to turn their beak toward the air cell today and some won't turn until this weekend. All the eggs were candled as of day 15. Here is what is currently happening (current because some could still be quitters before the hatch). We will take a look at the three quitters today to see when they might have quit. We did not have any duds (unfertilized)! This has never happened in all the years I've been hatching eggs. Here is our egg count:
Major events:
Notice how much room the embryo is taking up now. If we candled them the embryo would appear as a large mass. There is not as much room to move, so we wouldn't see as active embryo like we did on day 9. The embryo is growing and putting on more weight and own now. We are in the last stages. Hopefully in a week we will have an incubator full of hatching eggs! Major events:
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May 2019
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