If at first you don't succeed....

Try, try again!!!

We said good-bye to our eggs on Tuesday. We believe they just did not develop enough to come out of the shells. But after researching and experimenting more with the incubator we now have discovered that the thermometer used to keep track of the temperature was about 20 degrees off!! Because of this we also did not have the correct humidity. We are very sad that things were not correct in order for the chicks to develop and survive but we are glad we know what went wrong and now we can fix it. We will have a new thermometer that's for sure!

We feel pretty confident that a second chance will be successful! So next week our hope is to get a new batch of eggs! We sure hope this next time is in our favor and the changes we have made to the incubator will help. We will set up the webcam again when it gets close to hatching time!

Still hope!

Our eggs sure are getting frustrating but we are not giving up yet! I have done some research and I think there is still hope so hang in there! :) I have found many posts saying it has taken more than 21 days for the chicks to hatch. Seems to depend a lot on the temp and humidity levels in the incubator. We are still anticipating to hear some little cheeps soon! Keep checking in here or the webcam! (http://bambuser.com/v/3453123)

Webcam

Our day 21 was not filled with much excitement from the eggs! We are waiting patiently for our little arrivals and are still praying for some healthy chicks.

Quick note about the webcam site. It seems that each day it starts a new live recording, so when you go to it you just need to make sure you click "watch live" and make sure you are on 'live'. Otherwise you will see yesterdays. Here is the site for it today http://bambuser.com/v/3453123 So tomorrow you can still go to this one but just make sure to click the 'live' link. Enjoy!!

Almost hatching time!!

We are on day 20!! That means tomorrow (Tuesday) we should hopefully see some hatching happening!! The eggs were moved out of the egg turner on Saturday and laid on the bottom of the incubator. This will give them extra room to wiggle around while they are working hard to get out of that shell! So what happens if they start hatching while we aren't in school you ask??? Well.....we now have a LIVE webcam feed of the eggs! With the great help of Mr. Vadnais we have a webcam set up to be able to view the chicks anytime you want!! Just go to:
   http://bambuser.com/v/3451391 and you will be able to keep an eye on them.

Did you know?

We candled the eggs again today.  The air sac is still visible.  Around day 19, the chick will poke a hole in the air sac and it will use the air inside.  We also discovered some facts about eggs and chickens today.  The 3rd graders and the kindergarteners worked together in groups to find facts.  Once the groups had their facts, each group choose one fact to write on our poster.  The facts are hard to read in the pictures, so they are written below too.  We hope you learn something about chickens from our list!

1) Feather can be made into plastic
2) Brown eggs are bigger than white ones
3) Chickens called Easter Egg chickens can lay blue, green and even pink eggs
4) Fresh eggs will sink when put into water, stale eggs will float
5) Chicken lay 200 eggs a year
6) Hens will not lay eggs their whole life
7) There are more chickens than any other bird
8) Not all chickens are the same
9) Hens will sometimes eat their eggs
10) Chickens will eat worms.

Day 13

Our baby chicks (eggs) had a good, warm and cozy weekend! They continue to be resting in a temp of 99.5 degrees as well as being rocked back and forth. Oh the life that would be!! :)

We are on day 13 of them being in the incubator. The scales and claws appear on this day. Also the legs are now fully formed! How exciting to think of the miracle inside those eggs!! If we were to be able to see everything inside the eggs it may look something like this.....