Do you know the answer to the the question above?
If you know the answer would you please help me out? I am asking this because I am about to take on hatching chicken eggs in my classroom. I know you think I am crazy...but I am a country girl and I feel like I should expose my city kiddos to some real southern living! I got the idea when I was working on my lesson plans for the month of April. I have done Biomes, Mammals, Reptiles, and this week we are on birds. My thought was my Grandaddy always had baby chicks from his home incubator, so why couldn't I do that in my classroom? HAHAHAHA....So what did I do? Call my mother. If someone knew how to do this it would be her. I mean she is a Farrington and grew up on the Family Farm plus she is a Science teacher?! These were her exact words: "Mol, I mean your Grandaddy did that, but I don't know how to really do it." WHAT!!!! Then she said, "Check the internet." Ha, my mom is becoming so technologically advanced now!
So then I go to my next resource: the science teachers in my school. Not a single one has hatched eggs in their room. So to the internet I went. I knew where I was going to get the eggs: My aide Wendy has a bunch of chickens and a rooster at her house and her son sales their eggs. So one problem solved. The next problem came about when I realized we were going to have to figure out if our eggs were fertilized or not! HUH? There were only about a gazillion different ways to figure that out: crack the egg and see if there was a white dot in the yolk, if you have a rooster they are fertilized, on and on and on. So Wendy called an older lady she knew and basically she said if you have a rooster, most likely the eggs are fertilized. To really tell you wait for 7 days of incubation and you go into a dark room and "candle" the egg with a flashlight. You are suppose to be able to see the embryo by then.
On to the materials- We are using a Rubbermaid container, a desk lamp, towels, thermometer, and a sponge (for humidity). I am going to put the incubator together tomorrow afternoon and then we are going to put the eggs in on Thursday morning. So in 21 days I will hopefully (cross your fingers) have baby chicks. My Aunt Vi (who has everything because she was a preschool director) found about my endeavor from my mom and sent me a great Reading Rainbow of eggs hatching. My kiddos loved it.
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Hopefully this will work. I have always told Matt that no matter where I live I want to have chickens. Why you ask? Because ever good Southern woman has chickens. This is going to be an adventure for sure. My principal just shook his head when I told him that we were going to hatch eggs. He said as long as they don't poop in the hallway. I think we can handle that! If you have any advice I would greatly appreciate it!
**Side Note: Most kids with Severe/Profound Disabilities are never exposed to things we take for granted every day. I am determined to expose my kids to any and every thing I can.**
My nephew as sooo many chickens they cant sale them fast enough. So they give many eggs away! He tried the incubation thing with a small incubator. Now both chicks did pass away quietly after a few hours... One lasted a day. So... if it doesnt go well we can just buy a small chick and pass it off as the ones that hatched.
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