Chick hatching photos
7 am on day 21 --- two
eggs are pipping. I knew the head developed on the blunt end of
the egg and somehow expected the first cracks to show up at that tip,
but both cracked areas are instead about a quarter of the way down the
shell.
The first signs of
pipping are exciting, but then...nothing happens. I wait, and
wait, and wait, nearly figuring the chicks died until I notice the
membrane below the cracked shell undulating as the chicks
breathe. Around lunchtime, the monotony is broken when one chick
gets inspired by the sound of Mark's voice and peeps up a storm.
2:25 pm --- One chick
has pecked
through the membrane and I can barely see a beak moving inside!
The
chick doesn't seem to be pecking at the shell so much as whacking its
whole face against the boundary of its miniscule world.
3 pm --- While I wasn't
looking, a third egg started pipping. But there's now no movement
from anything except the chick that showed off its beak half an hour
ago.
4 pm --- The most active
chick finally decides to get to work. Slowly but surely, it
knocks against the side of the egg, turning its head so that the crack
progresses around the egg's circumference. After 45 minutes, the
opening is half an inch long --- is this going to take all month?
4:45 pm --- Rest, who
needs rest? Suddenly, the chick is pecking like
mad. (I turn the incubator around and notice a fourth egg has
begun to pip.)
A thin line of blood
appears on the egg's membrane where the
chick scratched itself, but the little trooper keeps right on going.
One hard whack
rolls the egg over so that the chick's head is pounding against the
floor, at which point the youngster begins to push and strain against
the
three-quarters severed lid.
5:10 pm --- Plop! Out it falls onto the
floor of the incubator.
After all of that
commotion breaking out of the shell, you wouldn't have thought it would
take another half hour for the chick to figure out how to get its head
out of the lid.
A massive flapping of
incipient wings and the chick is free to drape itself across its
unhatched siblings. Two in-shell chicks join in the crazy peeping.
No signs of further chicks out of the shell this morning. Now I'll have to make the hard choice --- open up the incubator against everyone's advice and take out chick #1 and check on the chicks who haven't poked through yet, or leave them all another day?
See scads more cute chick photos (and learn how to become an expert at
incubation) in my 99 cent ebook.
Permaculture
Chicken: Incubation Handbook walks beginners through perfecting the
incubating and hatching process
so they can enjoy the exhilaration of the hatch without the angst of
dead chicks. 92 full color photos bring incubation to life, while
charts, diagrams, and tables provide the hard data you need to
accomplish a hatch rate of 85% or more.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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How fun! We eat so many eggs around here that I tend to forget what they're really for... It's a bit funny to see the little chicks come out.
Congratulations
J --- my sentiments exactly!
Sara --- I know what you mean. It was a bit tough to make the mental leap from egg to chicken. (Far tougher than it should have been --- what did I think those eggs were?!)