We had chicks start hatching on Saturday as we expected, but so far, we only have 4 out of 12 eggs. :-(  I was really hoping for a better hatch. However, we haven't given up all hope just yet! I have been advised that, with the kind of incubator we have (still air), there could be hot and cool spots that will cause some to hatch early or late. Under ideal conditions, chicks should hatch on the 21st day, but with temperature fluctuations, some could hatch as late as Day 24 or 25. We definitely plan to wait until, at the least, Day 24. So keep your fingers crossed for us that we will have a couple more hatch soon!

Here are a couple pics of the chicks that have hatched so far.

Above you can still see the egg tooth (the white dot on the tip of the chick's beak) which is used to break the egg shell when hatching.

These chicks are Ameraucana chicks. When they mature and start laying eggs, their eggs will be blue to blue-green in color. We plan to breed these with some Marans chickens we will be hatching next. The Marans lay a very dark brown egg. When we cross-breed these two chickens, the off-springs' eggs should be a beautiful olive color! That is our chicken breeding goal right now--which will give us 5 different egg colors from our laying hens.

Be sure to check out our SlideShows to the right. Our Chicken Hatching Project has photos of a chick hatching. I hope to upload the video soon and will provide a link as soon as I can.

This Saturday, March 21, is the big hatch date!

We are all excited to see how many few little chickies hatch this weekend. Out of our 16 Ameraucana hatching eggs, I believe 4 are infertile or just never started developing. That leaves 12 eggs to hatch--although, a few of them are questionable.

Since we've never incubated eggs before, nor have we candled eggs, it's all a little difficult to know exactly what we're looking for in a good developing egg. Add that to the fact that the blue Ameraucana egg shells are dark and hard to candle and we're just really not sure! I had hoped to be able to post a few pictures of the candled eggs with the developing embryo, but since they were so dark it was hard to see anything, much less photograph it. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens Saturday.

I will definitely be able to post pictures of our hatching chicks, maybe even some video links to a live hatching. I am also nearly finished with a Chicken/Egg unit study which I would be happy to share with anyone who may be interested. It includes general information, as well as pages of diagrams to label of the egg, a developing egg, and the anatomy of a hen.

Here's one of the diagrams I used to create a page for labeling the anatomy:

Well, as if we didn't already have enough critters around here.....we've gone and added some more! We will be placing 16 Ameraucana eggs in our new incubator in the morning. We ordered all of our 14 chickens as day old chicks last spring, and incubating hatching eggs is whole new experience for us. I hope to make the 3 week project into a good unit study. We will be able to study the whole life cycle process of the chicken and learn all the ins & outs of trying to mimic the natural process of a hen brooding and hatching her eggs. Let's see how well we humans can become a chicken!

You can check out our site about chicken keeping here:
Which Came First?

I plan to keep everyone updated on the project--as we candle the eggs before placing them in the incubator, at day 8 or 9, and again at day 18. Then, if all goes well, we'll have pics of fuzzy little chickies!

We're super excited to add Ameraucana chickens to our flock--they are the chickens that lay blue/green eggs. These eggs will hatch our black, blue and splash (mixed) colors of chickens--colors that are difficult to find in our area. Because of this, we are considering starting a second flock to breed the Ameraucanas. It is my hope that the boys will enjoy learning all about the chicken and the techniques involved in keeping healthy, happy chickens. A little hard work can't hurt either!