Just 21 Days!

The past couple of years we have ended our school year with a special project . . . hatching baby chicks. It is a wonderful educational experience for my children. It does require quite a bit of time and patience, but it is not difficult.

We work with a local farmer who so kindly donates fertile eggs to our small home school. He is a retired school teacher and he and his wife now have a small farm and raise chickens and work with local schools donating eggs. I am so lucky to have found him. My girls love his farm with all the animals about. They have informed me they are living on a farm when they grow up.

I turn the eggs three times a day while they are in the incubator. At day ten we looked at the eggs to see how they were doing. It is called candling . . . we had three that were not forming, so I removed those eggs and we continued on with the remainder.

On day 21, my daughter woke me up with her face directly in mine informing me we had chicks. It was very early o-clock in the morning. It was an exciting day! There were two eggs that never hatched for some reason the baby chicks just never made it out. In total we had a total of 19 chicks hatch.