Tweet, tweet, tweet in Mrs. Hanson's room.
by LaVonne Hanson
Early in the school year, I asked my teacher, Mrs. Hanson, if our class could incubate chicken eggs for a Science project. When she said yes and put me in charge of the project, I knew I had a lot of work to do. We would need many supplies to have a successful project. First, we would need an incubator. Luckily, Mrs. Hanson had a self-turning incubator. The reason we got a self-turning incubator is because fertile eggs must be turned every twelve hours. You can either purchase an incubator that turns them or you can turn them manually. To have fertile eggs, there bmust be a rooster (or roosters) in the pen with the hens. Fertilization makes a chick inside the egg that can then be incubated. Incubation is the process of applying heat, either naturally or artificially, to eggs. The incubation process lasts twenty-one days. After setting up the incubator and letting it run for a while, we added water for humidity. Humidity is very important. This makes the shell softer and easier for the chick to break through and hatch. We then got our eggs. We had to wash our hands very well before placing the eggs in the incubator. Our hands carry oils, dirt, and other harmful things that could soak through tiny pores in the egg shell.
When placing the eggs in the incubator, the small end point of the egg had to point down. After the eggs were in the incubator and everything was ready, I made a calendar so that the class could track how far along the eggs were in the incubation process. On the seventh or eighth day of incubation, we would candle the eggs. Candling is the examining an egg in front of a light to observe the development of the embryo. Everyone was really excited and had lots of comments on the candling process. While candling the eggs, you should be able to see a little black dot and possibly a small body moving around in the egg. You can either see a chick or see nothing at all. If you don’t see a chick, you will see a clear or completely black egg. We had a couple of clear and black eggs and we disposed of them. Keeping the clear or black eggs in the incubator would risk the lives of the healthy eggs because they give off poisonous gases that kill other eggs. On the eighteenth day of incubation, we took out the egg turner because it could break the necks, legs, and wings of the newly hatched chicks.
After removing the egg turner, we placed the eggs back in the incubator and added more water. On the twentieth day of incubation, we heard peeping and saw small holes and cracks in the eggs, and the chicks started to hatch. We had our first chick at 7:50 p.m. on Tuesday May 11, 2009. We were all very excited when we returned to school the next day. We had many more eggs hatch that day and had eleven as a total when we left. We moved some chicks to the brooder, or housing that provides the environmental requirements of chicks from 1 day to 3 weeks of age, and mashed up a hard boiled egg for their food. Chicks require constant water, so we placed and automatic waterer in the brooder. The chicks also needed constant heat, so we placed a heat lamp over the brooder. After this, we made arrangements for the chicks to go to Mrs. Hanson’s ranch and we were done with our project.
This science project taught us things about development, life processes, and care of young. Some key vocabulary words we learned were air cell, brooder, candling, hatchability, setting, fertile, incubation, fertilization, infertile, shell, yolk, chick tooth, down, embryo, fertility, humidity, incubator, set, turn, breed, hen, rooster, sexed chickens, beak, and wing.
