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Mar. 17, 2008

Chicken Mummy Experiment Pt.1

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This is something that has been in the works for quite some time but we just never got down to doing it :) So on Friday I took the final step and bought the 'chicken' *grin*

Our cast of characters consists of:

1 cornish hen aka Queen Chick-o-patra
2 boxes of salt
1 box of baking soda
1 jar of rubbing alcohol
paper towels
rubber gloves
2 clear plastic bags or large ziploc zipper bags
kitchen scale

Poor, poor, Queen Chick-o-patra has died and the embalmer is setting to work getting her ready for the mummification process. First he is carefully inspecting to make sure that her brain and other organs have been removed and placed in their 'canopic' jars. Ours didn't actually have any organs but if you did you could preserve them separately and place them in specially decorated canopic jars just like the Egyptians would have :)

The next step was to pour a generous amount of rubbing alcohol inside and all over the outside of Queen Chick-o-patra. I was told that this would help keep some of the bacteria and smell down.

You want to make sure that you dry your chicken thoroughly inside and outside. It takes quite a bit of paper towel but is important to the drying process.

This proved to be a little to much for my squeamish embalmer to handle *grin* and he had to take a brief rest in the middle of our project!

While K rested and got back some of the color in his face I finished up the drying of our chicken and cleaned up the sink and got Queen Chick-o-patra onto the scale for her first official weigh in. She's a whopping 950 grams or 2lb. 1 and 1/2 ounces. We're going to chart her weight loss each time we change the salt and then graph it in the end.

We quickly set to work mixing up our Natron by combining 1 1/2 boxes of salt and 1/2 our box of baking soda together.

I didn't have large ziploc bags (I forgot to buy them) so I used two sturdy bread bags I had, one inside the other and then we poured in a couple cups of our natron to fully cover the base of the bag before we set Queen Chick-o-patra inside.

Our embalmer then proceeded to fill Queen Chick-o-patra's cavity to the top with Natron...

and then placed her inside the bag on top of the natron we had already placed inside the bag. He then continued to pour in the natron all around her until she was completely covered and not one part of her body was visible through the plastic.

We tied up the bag tightly, placed it inside of a bowl just in case there are any leaks and placed her on top of the fridge. There she will sit until next week when we check out if the salt is starting to clump and get damp :)

UPDATE: Want to see how our chicken mummy is progressing?? View parts TWO , THREE and FOUR here.

Blessings,

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Comments

Mar. 17, 2008 - Untitled Comment

Posted by BritishColumbia

I'm so glad you're doing this one! I thought about it long and hard, but ugh! I can't wait to see the results!

Are you interested in taking over the BC blog? They ask you to post once a week, which I've been awful at, and they give you two free subscriptions to the magazine. It's worth it just for that! Let me know if you are interested.

Kathleen

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