Room 140's Chicks By Michael Wood
I was studying chickens in my class. I learned that to candle eggs you need a flash light and a tin can. You have to put the flash light in the can and there has to be a hole in the top of the can. Then you put the egg on top of the little hole and you will be able to see what’s happening inside the egg.
You can see the embryo and the yolk and even the blood vessels. You can also see the air space. You can also see a lot of other stuff too. Eggs are supposed to hatch in twenty-one days. But sometimes you have to wait a bit longer because they might not have been laid twenty-one days ago. They could have been laid the first day you got them. That is what happened to my classroom's eggs.
But my teacher Mrs. Kroeker said she saw an egg wiggling so she thought we might have luck with that one. But we didn't, so hopefully we will have luck today with some. She also said she was looking at that egg for half an hour. I hope we have luck with all of them today.
	A chick also has an egg tooth, which is a very sharp part on its beak. It is also very strong. It will help it get out of its hard shell. If the chick isn't strong enough to get out of its shell, help it because or else it might die.
We have two chicks in our class now because two of them hatched. But one of them almost died because it had a blister between its legs. But my teacher said that we have to throw away the incubator because the eggs have gone so past their due date and that it was almost impossible for the chicks to hatch.
Not only that, but three eggs burst today. So we only have two eggs and that’s how many we’re only going to have. But other than that things are going fine with the chicks. Like I was saying before, if you help the chicks they won't die. But if you don't help them they will probably die. On the other hand, first of all its feathers might be a bit wet. But after they will dry up.
But it won't be wet with blood like babies are. Inside the egg the blood vessels will give it the yolk too. The chick will eat up the last bit of yolk when it hatches. That will last it 30 or 24 hours.
We have four short videos of the chicks. You might have to right click and tell the video to "open in new window". Be patient with Video 4, it is about a minute and a half long and it takes a while to open.
Video 1 This video is from only a few minutes after the first chick hatched.	Video 2 He's still having trouble figuring out what his legs are for.
Video 3 Still flopping around...it must be hard work - he looks exhausted!!	Video 4 (right click, open in new window - be patient, this one takes almost a minute to open) In this video, the chicks are about a day old. Look at how well they are getting around already.