Chicks are Here!

Wow!  What a busy and exciting week here in First Grade.  On Wednesday afternoon we noticed the very first pip in one of our eggs.  We were so excited and when we arrived at school on Thursday morning we were greeted by the very first chick to hatch!  The chicks in Mrs. Remick's room were eager to come out and they hatched rapidly while the chicks in our room took their time.  By the end of school on Thursday, Mrs. Remick had 13 chicks and we had 3.  Our incubators were different, ours had a fan which we believe made it difficult to hold the humidity and more difficult for our chicks to pip through their shells.  Thursday afternoon one little chick had pipped his whole head through his egg, but he forgot to zip the rest of his shell and he was stuck!  At about 8:30pm the chick had been like this for hours and his membrane was drying out so I decided I need to intervene to help him hatch. We took him out of the incubator and placed him in a warm, wet towel and slowly began to use tweezers and break off tiny pieces of his shell while still leaving his membrane intact.  Once the shell was removed we had to continually wet his membrane until he could free himself.  We've affectionately named this little guy "Egghead" and I'm happy to report he is alive and doing well.  I added a bunch of water to our incubator to try and help raise the humidity level and this seemed to help.  When school ended on Friday we had eight chicks hatched and one more egg with a pip in it.  When I went back to school Friday night around 9:30 we had 9 chicks!  Between the two classes we now have 23 adorable baby chicks in our brooder.  Check out our slide show and videos below to see for yourself just what we've been up to this past week!