Day 9 - V12 = Zippy!

So, yesterday when we were candling, we had one egg, V12, who was especially active.  We decided to name V12 Zippy!  We know that naming the eggs before they hatch is an especially risky proposition, since there is no guarantee that any of our eggs will hatch, specifically this specific egg, but we are willing to take the risk and will be rooting for Zippy!

Grow Zippy, grow!

We have 40 eggs in our incubator and they are all numbered according to who gave them to us.  Miss Joey's eggs are J1 through J15 and Miss Valerie's eggs are V1-V15.  They are randomly distributed throughout the incubator so they all have an equally good chance of hatching.

Next week we will really ramp up our chick preparation.  Here are things we need to do for sure:

Make and extra brooder box
Purchase MEDICATED chick feed
Purchase one extra feed container
Purchase one extra water container
Purchase more 2 gallon ziplock bags
Check our heat lamp
Bring up the heat lamp holder from the basement

Oh, so much to do!  I can't wait for the chicks!

 - Broadway Gal

Day 8!!!!!!! Candling Development!!!!!!

Guess what?!  We candled today (more about that process in a second) and we didn't have any eggs that looked terrible!  That is GREAT news!

Our process for candling is pretty easy.  We take a flashlight and tape a toilet paper tube to the top of it (over the light).  We place the eggs one by one (very carefully because there are developing babies in there!) on top of the tube in the dark and this allows the inside of the eggs to light up and glow.  In the picture here, you can see the dark spot on the top of the egg...this is our developing baby chick!  The mass below it, I think is the yolk, which the chick will slowly absorb while it is developing.  This is how it gets all its nutrients.  We were able to see movement, veinage (the growth of veins all around the top half of the eggs) masses and dark spots in almost all of our eggs.  Some of our eggs had darker shells so we couldn't see that well in all of them, but we are feeling much more certain that we WILL have chicks in two weeks. 

I'm SO happy and excited!!!

Happy happy happy!
-Broadway Gal

Day 5 - Saturday, In the Incubator...I think it was the 25th of February...

Anybody get the reference in this blog post title to an old song?  I love that song.  *sigh*  It's just perfect for sunny Saturdays in the summer.  Unfortunatly today is not a sunny Saturday in the summer.  It's not summer and it's not sunny.  But, it is Saturday!  And we are hatching chicks!  Yay!

Okay, back to the Incubator.  Today is day five.  Here is a picture of what is going on inside this eggs (hopefully). 

On Tuesday when we candle (which by the way is a hilarious process.  There are usually about eight of us and we all take over the men's restroom on the Youth Services side of the library.  We turn all the lights off and use the flashlight to see inside each egg.  If any unsuspecting men come into the restroom we usually scare them out of their wits.) we will be looking for eyespots, masses, and veins.  Veins especially.  Keep your fingers crossed! 

I try not to think about what to name our chicks until after the first candling, but I just can't help myself.  Here is a recap of what we named the chicks last year.  And remember, last year we had a great hatch:

Shirley
Bonita
Samuel
Gilbert
Pollyanna
Dillinger
Huck *
Elphaba
Helen
Rose
Raphael
Jaymi
Alan Rickbird
Rosa
Ryuzaki
Harper
Sunny
Sawyer
Heidi
Jeannie
Pippin
Charlotte
Estelle
Billina
Francie
Viola *
Oliva
Ian
Rocky *
Malcolm
Diane *

So, we had 31 hatch and the ones with the * all unfortunately died, leaving us with 27 viable chicks.  It was a great hatch last year.   I think we may have to name one of our chicks this year Cauli.  I mean how could we not?

Have your read Cauli's blog?  You can find it here!  Cauli's Blog

Till next time! 

Broadway Gal

Picture taken from the book:  Egg to Chick by Millicent E. Selsam.  Pictures by Barbara Wolff.  Published by Harper and Row, copyright 1970.

Day 3 - What is going on inside this egg?

So this is a picture of what COULD be going on inside each of our eggs.  See the tiny eye-spot that is starting to develop?  This is just day three but already our eggs have somehow made the decision (based on how conducive our climate is and whether or not they were fertilized) to develop or not.  Once we candle, we will have a much better idea if our eggs are on the right track.

You might ask, where did our eggs come from?  If I put the eggs in my refrigerator into an incubator and turn them very frequently and give them the right amount of moisture, would those eggs hatch into chicks in 21 days?  The answer would be NO.  Our eggs came from two local families who have lots of chickens...specifically hens (the females who lay the eggs) and roosters.  In the interest of our younger patrons let me just say that you have to have hens and roosters in order to have eggs that will turn into baby chicks.

We have 40 fertilized eggs and we are hoping for at least a 50% hatch.  We'd really like more than that and that's why we are watching our temperature and our humidity so carefully! 

I can't wait!!!

 - Broadway Gal

Picture from the book Egg to Chicken by Camilla De la Bedoyere, published by QEB Publishers in 2009. 

Day 2-Always with the 99.5 Degrees!

So, this is pretty much all I'm thinking about in regards to the chicks...are they at 99.5 degrees? Are they at 55 percent humidity? How are they doing? Do we have growth? I'm driving myself crazy wondering! I will get some relief next week when we candle the eggs (which we actually do with a flashlight) but until then I will be pretty paranoid about the eggs.

This morning didn't help. The power at the library was off for 10 minutes (meaning no electricity in our incubator) but I think everything will be fine...oh! I can't wait to candle to find out if we have growth!

Yours in evident impatience,
Broadway Gal

Time to do the Chicken Dance!

It's today!  It's today!  Today is the day we get the eggs for the 2012 Chick Hatch at the Mooresville Public Library!  This is Broadway Gal, here to keep you abreast of all the Chick Happenings! 
To be honest, we aren't as ready this year as we were last year.  This is probably due to the fact that we had a great hatch last year and so now we are getting lax in our preparations.  I do have the following done:

Incubator up from the basement - check
Incubator cleaned - check
Incubator set at 99.5 degrees - check

But I still have a lot to do:

• Bench behind window
• Pull books on chickens and eggs (which should I pull first, I wonder?)
• Put up Chick Development Poster
• Print out posters
• Print out Chick Packets

And of course, today we will be very busy!  Today we have to install the egg turner in the incubator (ours is a little shady, so we will be borrowing Chicken Lady's), also install the humidity measuring device (can't remember what this is actually called...a hydrometer?  Must read all blog posts from last year!!), and number all eggs and place in incubator.  I was thinking that we need to do the descriptions of each egg (no...not all eggs are white!) but we will do that next week when we candle for the first time. 

I'm super egg-cited.  Wild Thang is ready to have it all over with already!  I love this video.  Love the numa numa song and basically it's how I feel about the chicks.  Can't wait till they start hatching!!