Day 21! All Eggs Hatched!

Day 21!    Welcome, Flynn chicks!

    All 13 of the eggs hatched overnight, and everyone looks healthy.

Such a lot of excitement this morning to see and hear them! 

We will continue to live stream the cuddly naps and adorable antics for the rest of the day at the video link below!

Incubation, day 20! LIVE HATCH CAM BEGINS

This morning, the chicks made their very first peeps, still inside their shells! Now, officially, they don't hatch until day 21, but nature doesn't always keep a reliable schedule, and three of them have begun to crack their shells this morning!  

Introducing, the live stream!

Baby chicks begin to peep while they are in their shells. The first pip that they make with their egg tooth is through the membrane separating them from the air cell, and then they draw their first breath and can peep!  It may be a while until we see the chicks, but we can begin to watch the hatching eggs today. 

It's a big, tiring job to come out. They pip in a circle, all the way around the circumference of the egg, and then push the pieces apart.  They have to be healthy enough to do it themselves- no "helping" from the humans. Wish them luck!  

Incubation, day 18!

This is a big day! We are preparing for the hatching of the Flynn chicks!

 Today, we increase the temperature just a hair, increase the humidity, and stop turning the eggs. Inside the incubator, we have also put down a nonslip mat to make the first steps of the chicks as stable as possible- their bodies are so delicate, it is easy for them to accidentally slip, splay their legs, and permanently damage their feet and tendons. Does that liner look familiar?  It's pretty much the same as the nonslip material you might find under a carpet.

We also increase the ventilation, opening a couple of air holes in the top of the incubator. And now, the wait begins!

Waiting is hard!  But we hope you are as excited as we are!

Incubation, days 16-17!

The chickens are getting their bodies in position for hatching, and are turning their beaks towards the air cell.There is less fluid around the chick embryo now. This is the last day for turning the eggs. 

Here is a video of an egg candled at day sixteen. The majority of the egg is dark as the embryo is filling the space. You can really see the chick inside moving quite a bit on the end near the air cell. The beak is almost a quarter of an inch long. The eggs are really entering the home stretch!

Incubation, day 15!

Incubation, day 15! 

Today, the Flynn chick embryos are in position to be born, having turned their bodies inside of the shell towards the larger end of the egg. The larger end is where the air cell forms, which they will use to breathe in the days before they come out. Here is an awesome illustrated video of development from days 1-21.

Incubation, days 13 and 14!

Incubation, days 13 and 14!

So,  while this isn't a weather blog, it snowed today?! Blech. Hence my decision to lighten things up and begin with some chicken jokes.

Q: What do you call a rooster who wakes you up at the same time every morning?

A:  An alarm cluck!

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road, roll in the mud and cross the road again?

 A: Because he was a dirty double-crosser!

Now for the science!

Oh, how they've grown! It's getting harder to see little details when candling the eggs, because the embryo is taking up much more space. These eggs are only one week away from their hatch date!

 The air cell is getting bigger. The embryo's body is now starting to grow downy feathers everywhere. The eyes are completely covered now by fully formed eyelids. The bones are beginning to harden. Claws have formed on each toe, and the scales on the legs are starting to overlap.

Incubation, day 12!

Incubation, day 12! 

More than halfway to the hatching date now, and the embryo is really growing quickly. Seems like a good day for some interesting facts about hens- they are really amazing mothers! 

The chatter starts early- chicks can begin to chirp while they are still in their shell, shortly before they hatch out. Their mother hens cluck back to them to communicate.

 In the incubator, we make sure that the eggs get turned about 3 times per day, but we are no match for a good mother hen. Hens turn their eggs about 50 times per day!

Incubation, day 11!

Incubation, day 11! 

Just ten more days to go, and the embryo is really filling up the egg. You can see that the egg, when candled today, has two very discrete sections. The dark area on the upper left is the developing chick. Its network of blood vessels has really widened its spread inside the egg. 

Today, the legs of the embryo are growing their scaly texture. Some people say that chickens are modern-day relatives of dinosaurs. What do you think?

Incubation, day 10!

Incubation, day 10! 

Here is a drawing of a ten day old chicken embryo. If we were able to peer inside of an egg right now, the embryo would be starting to fill up the space, and it is almost halfway through its development. It really starts to look like a chick now! Still, the photos can be hard to look at, so I made you this drawing to check out instead.

 Feather follicles are starting, and the egg tooth and beak become prominent. 

At this point in the development, the egg shell becomes more porous, to let in more oxygen. It's important to only handle the eggs with very clean hands now, so that germs and bacteria cannot make their way inside.

Incubation, Day 9!

Incubation, day 9!

Let's talk about two very important parts of the eggs, which you are probably already very familiar with- the egg yolk and the egg white!

Some people think that it is the yolk that turns into the chick, but that's not the case. The embryo grows from a tiny dot called the germinal disc, and the yolk is the source of nutrition for the embryo as it grows.

The albumen, too, provides nutrition in the form of proteins to turn into tissue. It also provides water to the embryo, and acts as a cushion, too!

Also, today the embryos are growing knee caps! Isn't that nifty?

Incubation, Days 1-8!

 Spring is the time of the year that first grade students at JJ Flynn Elementary in Burlington hatch baby chicks in their classrooms. School closures have impacted access to so many cool things, but my family realized that this is one place that we could make a difference, since we already raise chickens as pets. 

Boo!

So, with the help of a new Hovabator Incubator and the generous donation of thirteen Lavender Orpington eggs from our friend farmer Pat Barberi of Heritage Hens Homestead in Berlin, Vermont, we proudly introduce the first day of incubation of the Flynn eggs! 

We will post a daily update on the JJ Flynn PTO Facebook page, with that day's news and embryonic stage. 

These little eggs are being kept at a cozy 99.5-100.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Below is the 21 day development cycle, and they should be hatching on April 29! 

In the last few years, all of our hens have come from Pat's farm, where her hens are raised cage-free, free-range, and free of hormones and antibiotics. Chickens are much smarter than most people believe, and come running for treats just like puppies. 

We will be having a naming contest for the chicks! Flynn students can submit their suggestions, and we will hold a vote to choose the most popular ones!
_________________________________________________________

Incubation, day 2!

It's been 48 hours since the JJ Flynn eggs entered the incubator! So, what happening in there? The heart and blood vessels are forming! 

Here's info from the website Raising Happy Chickens: "The embryo's blood vessels are now forming and within two or three more days will become visible in candling. By just before the end of the second day of incubation they have joined up with the heart which now actually begins to beat, although it's undetectable unless you have a specialist device. Also today, the chick's ear is beginning to form as are two separate circulatory systems, one to provide the embryo with nutrition and the other to take away waste." 

Also, here is a photo of the breed these eggs come from, lavender orpington.

_________________________________________________________ 

Incubation, Day 3!

Flynn egg incubation, day 3! What's going inside today? Today, the heart of the chick embryo begins to beat! If you had really special equipment, you could even begin to hear it. The little blood vessels grow out into the yolk, which is the bright golden part, which the embryo (fancy word for the development chick) will use for nutrition until it can hatch. 

Here is a diagram of the egg! The germinal disc is the tiny spot you can sometimes see in an egg, and that is where the embryo begins to develop, and it's the spot from which those blood vessels begin to form. 

_________________________________________________________ 

Incubation, day 4!

Today begins the tiny formations of all the internal organs of the eventual developed chick. This day also begins the formation of the structures of the mouth and tongue. Have a look at this little video to see the tiny web of the heart and blood vessels to see the earliest view of a Flynn chick! See more updates and keep up with the daily growth at the JJ Flynn PTO Facebook page. 

_________________________________________________________ 

Incubation, day 5! 

The beginnings of the bones of the chicks are forming. Today is the day that the embryos become either male or female, as it is when the reproductive system is starting to form! 

Here is a cut-away diagram from raising-happy-chickens.com, which illustrates day 5 of incubation. Also, it's pretty neat how bunch of new families are following the PTO page to see the chicks' development. If you know another family that might like to watch this process, feel free to invite friends to follow our science journey. 

From raisinghappychickens.com

_________________________________________________________ 

Incubation, Day 6! 

Flynn Fireflies, I am SO excited to share these photos of our eggs with you. The top left photo of this collage is what one of our Flynn candled eggs looks like through a regular lens. The rest are actually the exact same photo I took, with the contrast, brightness, and saturation adjusted to really enhance the appearance of the parts of the egg. You can see the air cell very clearly at left, which will get larger as the embryo grows. Today, the egg tooth begins to grow, which the chick will use to exit the egg when it hatches. Also today, the tiny beginnings of the downy feathers begin, called the feather germs. 

_________________________________________________________ 

Incubation, Day 7!

 First is a photo of lavender orpington chicks. Aren't they so cute? 

Also, here is a link to the Hamburger Hamilton stages of egg development, which is a progression of 46 discrete developmental stages in chicken embryo development. It's pretty interesting to read about. Today the Flynn eggs are about at stage 31, and in if we had a microscope, the embryos would look just like the black and white photo here. Look at how big the head is compared to the body, and the eye is absolutely huge! 

From embryology.med.unsw.edu.au

If you want to read more about it, here is the link to the HH scale: https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/…/Hamburger_Hamilton_Sta…

_________________________________________________________ 

Incubation, day 8! 

Check out this awesome imagery of one of the Flynn chick embryos in motion this morning!