Over the past few weeks, we have been lucky enough to witness the start of a chicken's life cycle.
Emily (LSA in Cat's class) and her dad (Kevin) brought some eggs for us to incubate, hatch and watch grow.
When they first arrived, the eggs were put into a special container called an incubator. This keeps the eggs at the right temperature so the chick inside can grow.
We found out that there is no way of knowing if a chick was growing until they were around 2 weeks old. If an egg was fertile that meant a chick was growing inside. If it was infertile, that meant there was no chick and it was just a normal egg. The only way we could find out was by candling the eggs.
Kevin showed us how to candle the eggs to see if there is a chick developing inside. He used a very bright light and placed the egg on top of it. We found out that eggs that were fertile, were darker than those that were infertile. We had around 20 eggs that were fertile so we were hoping for quite a few chicks!
Emily also helped us understand what was happening inside the egg with a display. Christiano in year 4, drew the life cycle of a chicken to help his friends understand what happens.
On day 21, the chicks were getting ready to hatch. It was very exciting to see how much they moved during hatching. In total, we hatched out 17 chicks.
We loved the chicks so much that we got to name them! Every class put in 2 names and we selected 10 names:
- Megladon
- Crab Rave
- Ziggy
- Messi
- Kiwi
- Sid
- Hen-ry
- Fluffy
- Cupcake
- E-I-E-I-O
What a wonderful experience for our children. Thank you so much to Emily and Kevin for providing us with this opportunity.