I am homeschooling my first grade son and our first science unit we decided to do Oviparous animals (animals that lay eggs). My sister who raises chickens offered to let me take her forced air incubator and some eggs to attempt a hatch for our project. I decided as long as she was willing to take the chicks after it would be a great experience for my son, (and myself), so I agreed. We started with two dozen eggs of various breed/mostly mixed breeds I believe and set to incubate. I did quite bit of googling and researching (and found myself here at back yard chickens more often than not).
At lockdown on day 18 we had 15 viable eggs. I was positive and looking forward to hatch day. But hatch day came and went without even a pip. We did end up with one hatch on day 24. A fluffy yellow. Her legs seemed to be slightly splayed but she fluffed up nicely and the next morning went to the brooder. On day 25 a little black one hatched, after much trouble but wasn't very active and never quite fluffed up. He died that night.
Our little yellow chick (who's legs are perfectly fine now) is now about 3/4's feathered out, and will be 4 weeks this Tuesday. She is so awesome. I never understood chicks as pets, or thought they had much of a personality, but now I am hooked. We are so bonded to this little (girl I think) that she is a pet. She has this amazing little personality and wants to be with me and out of the cage 24/7.
It was hard to take though that out of two dozen eggs we ended up with only the one. I've gone back and really put some thought into where I went wrong and I think I have a good idea of the contributors. I hadn't planned on trying again as I am not one to take the loss of animal life too easy, but since we decided Peep (trite I know, but she started peeping at us from inside the shell the night before she pipped, so she kinda got labeled with that name) isn't going anywhere since we are way too attached, my son has decided he wants a rooster if Peep is a girl, I agreed to give it one more shot.
We're in the country, we have the room and means and we like farm fresh eggs, so we have decided to give it a go at raising some of our own backyard chickens. I never thought I could get attached to a chicken, but I'm starting to realize they are kind of like tattoos....once you have one, you want another...lol
So plan is, if my sister gets them to me, next week we are going to set up another 3 dozen and see what we get. Hopefully the second try will work out for us both as I know how disappointing it is to have a first hatch fail. So good luck!! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, let us know how the second try works!!
