Our adventure hatching chicks. (By Brandan)

                                    

  

This last Christmas I got an egg incubator as one of my presents. We weren't able to 

use it for a while because I got it in the winter and chicks should usually hatch in the 

spring so that they can be warm enough while they are baby chicks growing into 

chickens. 

But just about 3 months ago (maybe less), we got a dozen eggs with baby chicks in them from 

our friends who live near to us.  They had a bunch of different varieties, and we were excited about that! 

So we put the eggs in the incubator and we waited.

(Usually chicks stay in the incubator for 21 days before hatching.)

It was hard to wait, but we did. 

And then on the 19th night we saw one of them trying to get out of the egg.

We were all so excited we didn't want to go to bed.

Then the next day everyone woke up early so that they could see how much the chick had gotten out of the egg. 

But it still hadn't come out very much. And then we saw that there were others that were trying to come out.   

About six chicks had pipped their egg by then (that means that they had made a little hole in the egg with their beak, and were starting to try to come out) 

So we waited until later that morning, to see how much progress they had made. 

The ones that had pipped the egg that morning hadn't made very much progress, but the one who

had pipped the egg the night before was almost out of the egg. So we called our Grandma on the phone, 

so that she could watch the chick come out with us.   

It took about an hour or more for the chick to come out. 

And when it came out it was very wet and pretty scraggly. 

You couldn't really see it's fuzzy feathers. All you could see was it's skin and some wet, fuzzy feathers.

And the chicks had hatched! It was only the 20th day, and finally by the end of the day (after watching almost all day) 11 of 12 chicks had hatched!  The last one was a dud, so we had to throw it away, but we were all amazed that 11 out of twelve chicks hatched!   It was an amazing Easter surprise!   

And now they are a lot bigger, than they were when they were first hatched, but they are still in the stage where they don't look like chickens yet, they still look like chicks :) 

So that is the story of how we hatched 11 chicks.