Wednesday 6 May 2020

Chicks hatched - but we didn’t keep them

I put the eggs on to incubate intending to keep them, but then a friend wanted to raise some chicks so they all went to them as soon as they hatched. 
Here are the eggs just before hatching. If you candle one you can see which ones are likely to hatch as the whole egg appears black except the air cell. The chick breaks through the internal membrane in to the air cell and rests before ‘pipping’ when it makes a little hole in the shell before it rests again and eventually ‘unzips’ round the whole egg so it can get out. The whole process can take 24 hours and is pretty tiring for the chicks.

Of the original 20 eggs, 6 didn’t develop, these were all from the rescue chickens, they were scared of the cockeral at this point obviously! In the end 11 hatched. The hatch was slightly early suggesting a fractionally high temperature. I think the humidity was pretty good and constant throughout and they lost 13% weight from the sample eggs which is good.

 

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