Day 17 - Lists Complete!

I spent this morning dragging our brooder boxes up out of the basement and dusting them off for the families.  Here are some pictures of the boxes waiting for the babies:

I also got all the feed and the vitamins ready for distribution, printed out more chick packets, set up our heat lamp, printed out our chick chart, and I got the camera all juiced up!  It will still be a few days but we are ready!

Sunday the eggs will be removed from their turner and the humidity will be upped so they have an easier time getting out of those sticky shells. 

Can't wait!!!

Day 16 - Making Lists...

It is now definitely time to get ready for the coming babies!  They will be here in less than a week!  I have so much to do!  Here's a list of what I'll be doing over the next few days:

1.  Check on Brooder boxes for the families...they need bedding, water container, feed container.
2.  Organize feed and vitamins...both need to be distributed in bags for the families.
3.  Check on info packets for families...I have to make sure they have all they need for their 2 weeks!
4.  Get our heat lamp ready.  Those babies are used to 99.5 degree heat!  It can't be too cold for them.
5.  Remove eggs from the egg turner.  They have been gently rocked back and forth 24-7 on the egg turner and now on Sunday they are being removed from the egg turner in preparation for them to hatch!  I have a staff member coming in to do that for me on Sunday (Thanks!). 
6.  Print our my chart so we can track what time they hatch, get names down, get assignments for families, and track which eggs don't hatch.  :(
7.  Juice up the camera!  We want to get a few videos of the chicks to share with all of you! 

I feel like I'm forgetting something (I'm sure Cauli will remind me), but I guess those babies will hatch whether or not I'm ready!

I can't wait!!!!!

Day 15 - Candling Success!

So today we candled the eggs for a second time...and we had success!  Well, success for the most part.  There were three eggs that we saw little or no development and we actually decided to crack them open (A3 / J14 / and J18).  If left in with the others, there is the possibility that they might explode in the incubator which is no fun.  Two of them looked just like the eggs you'd have for breakfast which means they were probably not fertile.  The third one showed signs of development, but it had obviously stopped at least a week ago. 

The ones I had listed as good last time are all still good and a few earned themselves names!  J9 is our Jeannie, J23 is our Jaymi and A5 is our Diane.  Jaymi and Diane definitely had movement going on in their eggs.  Now if only they will hatch!  Today is day 15.  They are due to hatch on day 22, after having been incubated for 21 days.  We are expecting the babies to arrive around 11:30 on April 5th. 

In the video above, right in the center of the video, you can see a pulsing vein!  You can hear all of us chatting about it too...

Just one more week!

Day 12, 13, 14 and Today!

I am going to blame my lack of blogging on the Homeschoolers. We are currently in rehearsals for our small reader's theatre production of Sleeping Beauty. There are 30 children in the show and that includes 10 fairies. I only just yesterday got the cast nailed down since I was not sure if my prince (a girl) would actually concede to be the prince. But she did, and rehearsal went off yesterday without too much of a hitch.

I just realized that is it very Broadway of me to be blogging about a play when I'm supposed to be talking about the chicks. Although, after a very cursory search I did find a picture book called Broadway Chicken by Jean-Luc Fromental. We don't have it in our collection, but I think we just might have to have it!

So, I'm definately going to be doing another post later today because today is the second day that we are candling the babies! That will be at one o'clock. I will post the results later today! Keep your fingers crossed!

Day 10 and 11: Half-way there!

I can't believe we are almost half-way through our journey to hatch the chicks! The babies inside the eggs should start looking a little like chicks over the next couple of days. I'm wondering what we will call each chick. This is our list of names from last year:

Walter
Patrick
Vincen
Perseus
Ginny
Linus
Theodore
Edgar
Suzanne
Carly
Charlie Brown
Henny Penny
Bella
Ellie

Just so you know, we paid no attention to their gender at all. We are not at all skilled in determining this, so we just sort of named what we felt like. Most of our names had very specific reasons for getting the names they got. Patrick hatched on St. Patrick's Day. Perseus was named after Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Ginny was named for Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter books. Linus and Charlie Brown are, of course, Peanuts characters. Charlie Brown was so named because he had a really hard time getting out of his shell. I think we even helped him out which is generally not what real chicken raisers do. I think they figure if the chick is too weak to get out of their shell, they will be too weak to thrive. In Charlie Brown's case, our incubator did not have enough humidity so he just stuck to the shell all over the place!

Henny Penny is pretty self-explanatory. Edgar was a black chick and was named for Edgar Allan Poe. Bella was named for the character in the Twilight series. Suzanne was named for me (but not by me!). She was first named during the first candling. She was a tiny speck whizzing around her egg with such energy that there was nothing to call her but Suzanne. Vincen was named by one of my assistant's sons. My other assistant named Walter after Walter the Farting Dog. Carly was named by a local kindergarten class after iCarly. Theodore was named after Alvin and Chipmunks. (An aside: I love Alvin and the Chipmunks. I can just hear the theme song now..."Alvin, Simon, Theodore! Do, do, dodododo...do, do, dodododo!")

And, we can't remember how Ellie got her name. Well, we can't keep track of everything, can we.

Day 9 - Award Winning Chicks and Chickens

Our babies are doing great. Everything today was as it should be (save for a hairy instant when one of us, who shall remain nameless, accidentally bumped their electrical cord for a brief moment). I was thinking about how great it would be if some of our babies grew up to be award winning chickens and that lead me to the following chickens who were, in their own way, recipients of a very important award in children's literature: the sought after Caldecott. The Caldecott is awarded each year for the book with the best pictures. The chicks and chickens in the following pictures are from the following books:

Sylvster and the Magic Pebble - William Steig
The Rooster Crows - Maud and Miska Petersham
One Fine Day - Nonny Hogrogian
Noah's Ark - Peter Sis
Animals of the Bible - Dorothy P. Lathrop
Chanticleer and the Fox - Barbara Cooney
The Egg Tree - Katherine Milhous
Frog Went A-Courtin' - Feodor Rojankovsky
Fables - Arnold Lobel

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every book that has ever won the Caldecott that has a picture in it of a chicken, but it is a start. And don't even get me started on the Honor books...this year's honor went to a book called The Interrupting Chicken!

Day 8 - Candling the Babies

We had a very scientific time today candling the babies. I'm happy to report that we saw some kind of something in all the eggs. We kept a table of all the eggs starting with the number, the description of the actual shell, and then what we observed inside. Here's a few examples (they do not necessarily correspond to the pictures up top):

J8 / Light Brown Egg / Division in horizontal S shape / eyespot / veins

J11 / Small green egg / Division / Very Full

J26 / White egg / Speckled Interior / Red veins / Division

5V / Brown egg / Division / Eyespot

"Division" is Suzanne-speak for seeing a definite dark mass at the top of the egg and a definite clearness at the bottom of the egg with a clear delineation between the two. Most of these divisions were not in a straight line, but rather were curved. Some were VERY curved resulting in the description of a "horizontal S shape." The green egg above sort of has that going on. An eyespot is a very distinctive small dark spot in the center of a darker mass. You can see one of these above. Veins are really important at this stage. You can sort of see some veins in one of the pictures above. Speckled interior is not necessarily a good thing.

You can see it in the picture down here. I think (from my careful Internet research) that that means the shell may be weak.


I'm so glad that we saw veins, spots, and dark masses! Of our 41 eggs, 8 of them had all of the following: veins, dark masses, and dark spots. I have marked them as "good." They are as follows: 5V, 7V, 11V, J1, J3, J7, J8, and J15.

We candle again in a week! I will let you all know what happens!

I can't wait to Candle!

So, tomorrow is candling day! After one week of incubation we have the opportunity to actually see some of what is going on inside the eggs. We do this in a pretty rudimentary fashion involving a room with no windows (probably the men's bathroom!) and a flashlight.

You make a ring with your thumb and forefinger. Hold it flat and cup the egg in the circle. Shine the flashlight underneath trying to direct ALL the light to the egg. If done properly, the egg will glow. The little concentrated dot is the developing chick! Sometimes you can even see them swimming around. We also look for veins growing all through the egg.

Of course, it can also tell us if something is wrong. An egg that is entirely clear with no concentrated dark spots might mean that there is no development. Also, an egg with a dark ring visible also might be indicative of something amiss. We won't remove the egg yet though. I'm pretty sure they will remain in the incubator at least another week, just to make sure. There is a risk that a bad egg might explode in the incubator...which would be very unpleasant to say the least, but we want to give them all a chance!

As we candle (each egg will get candled) we will be tracking our observations on a chart. We will include the number of the egg (each egg is numbered on its shell) as well as any dots or veins we see.

I can't wait! I'm worried and excited and anxious all at once!

Days 6 and 7 - Humidity Emergency!

Well, today is Monday. After being left to their own devices over Sunday, I got in today and the babies are parched! Humidity was at 40 percent! You are all my witnesses that we thought they were doing great on Saturday.

So, I hurridly gave them 5, count them, 5 droppers full of water (and it's a pretty big dropper). They were up to 42 when I had to leave to go do some booktalks and story times at an area school.

I just got back and what do I see? They are at 38 percent! I have now added 10 more droppers! Will keep a constant watch and let you know the increases as they occur.

This picture is similar to the humidity measuring device we use.

At the typing of this post they are now at 43 percent.

Day 5 - Saturday and Humidity...

Saturdays are interesting in the library. We always have our special Saturday Staff going on which means only one staff member in the Youth Department. Today my very capable assistant (also known as Wild Thang) was the lucky staff member working. She texted me with some questions regarding the falling humidity in the incubator. I was at home (my house is undergoing extensive renovations following the recent ice storm) looking through paint colors. A flurry of texts later and the number was up from 55% to about 57% and rising. All is well in the incubator.

I was thinking about famous chickens the other day. Camilla, Gonzo's girlfriend, is one such famous chicken, although if I were Gonzo's girlfriend I'm not sure how I would feel seeing him run after every chicken around simply becase he cannot tell us apart. *sigh* Camilla is a lovely white chicken with blue eyeshadow. I honestly don't know if our chickens will be white. I think some of them might be. Last year we had darling yellow chicks, brown chicks, and some black chicks and they all grew up to be different kinds of chickens. I can't wait to see the babies! Here is a fun video of Gonzo to keep you entertained while we wait for the babies to hatch. If we are lucky, maybe our chickens will also have musical talent!

Click Here for Chicken Video!

Day 4 - Families All Accounted For!

We now have five families all signed up to foster our babies. Each family will receive two chicks, a brooder box, all the feed and vitamins needed for about a 3 week stay, and food and water containers. Families have to provide their own heat lamp and clean bedding for the babies. Those of you with good math skills might be wondering...isn't that only 10 chicks? True, but recall, we aren't sure that all the 41 eggs will hatch. We will have a much better idea of how we are doing after we candle the eggs on Tuesday (more on that in a later post).

Any babies that arrive that do not get fostered get to go right to their final destination (and that is NOT Cauli's tummy!) at the farm.

I've checked the incubator several times today and we are holding steady! Our book says the babies should be sort of tad-pole-like by now. I hope they are swimming happily in their cozy shells!

Day 3 - Feeling Good!

Well, it is day 3 and everything is going as planned. We are SO excited about the stability of our temperature. Our humidity is sitting pretty at 60 percent and we are feeling (dare I say it!) pretty smug and sure of ourselves.

Thought you all might like to see what is in store for our chicks in the future. They will (after their fostering experience) be living at a local farm in the area. Here is a picture of it:



We already have four families signed up to foster but we have space for one more! If you are interested in fostering, please come to the library and request to see a Chick Packet. You will need to read it in its entirety so you can learn all about such uplifting topics as "how to prevent pasty butt" and "what to do if your chick looks like he (or she) just ran a marathon."

If all goes as planned hopefully we will reach our goal of 20 chicks. Maybe even more!

Looking back to last year, we actually hatched chicks on St. Patrick's Day since Easter was so early. I remember one of our babies was named Patrick for just that reason. If you have a good idea for a name, you can send it on! No guarantees though...last year our choices were rather inspired.

Day 2 - Story Times!

Today is Day 2. According to our books, our chicks (hereafter referred to as "the babies") should be about the size of a couple of specks. Last night was a little hairy...the first day it is very important that the incubator is regulated so that the rest of the waiting period goes smoothly for the babies. At 7:20ish PM we discovered that we were running a few 10ths of a degree on the low side. I knicked up the heat just a smidge and then had to wait an hour to be sure that it didn't go too high.

An anxious night followed.

Arrived this morning and was very relieved to see our temperature resting at exactly where it needed to be. Our humidity looks good too! Now it should stay perfect, barring any power outages... I really hope that doesn't happen.

Today all the Story Time kids were introduced to the babies. It is really fun to see them climb up on the "observation deck" to see into the incubator.

Cauli's spy was here too today. I'm excited that Cauli is so thrilled about the coming babies, but I'm a little skeptical about her intentions...

Cauli's Blog

Day 1 - Eggs are here!

Today is Day 1 of our Chick Hatching Experience! This is the second year that the Mooresville Public Library's Youth Department has hatched chicks. Most of us are really excited (from his blog, I gather that Cauli, our Library Cat Blogger, is egg-cited too...see more from Cauli here: Cauli's Blog) although it is definitely a big responsibility and parts of it can make us a little anxious.




First you need an incubator.

We are borrowing one from a local patron who has a flock of chickens at her two acre home. The incubator provides a perfect environment for the development of eggs into birds, that is, when is it properly supervised. It has to be set at 99.5 degrees and have the proper amount of humidity in the air as well (about 60%). So, as long as we add the right amount of water and watch that temperature, we should have a good hatch. Our incubator is equipped with a turner which is also imperative. If you don't have a turner, you have to manually turn the eggs...a lot.

Next you need fertilized eggs.

We have 41 eggs in our incubator. We got our eggs from three families who raise chickens. They are all coded so we know who we got them from and will be able to differentiate them from each other later on. We are hoping for 20 chicks this year. Last year we hatched 14. We will have a better idea how good we are doing once we candle the eggs next week. Candeling actually uses a flashlight. Last year we did this in the men's restroom (no windows!). You hold the egg above the flashlight and look for dark masses inside the egg. If it is completely clear, the egg either wasn't fertilized or something else prevented it from developing. Sometimes you can see the tiny mass swimming around in its egg.


Lastly you need lots of care.

We will be checking on our eggs many times a day. We have to check to make sure the humidity is right, the temperature is right, and make sure the turner is still turning. We have 21 days to prepare for the chicks and I'm sure it will go fast!

Be aware, I'm just a Children's Librarian! Please don't use this blog as a guide to hatch your own chicks. We have books at the library for that or you can check out these websites:

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/livestocksystems/di0631.html

http://umaine.edu/publications/2072e/

http://www.backyardchickens.com/