first time hatching eggs for my preschool classroom need lots of help!

[Educare Teacher]

Hi! My name is Deanna , my teachers and I want to try hatching eggs. We already have an incubator that has ben built for us and are working on regulating the tempature. So far so good. We would like to get our eggs next week. I have been reading on this site that eggs should be turned 3 times a day. Is this true? We are concerned about the weekends when no one is at the school to trun eggs.

We are looking for any advice and suggestions to make this work.

Thank you!!

Deanna

 

[ecse129]

I hatch eggs in my third grade classroom and I started using an automatic turner, specifically for weekends. However, the teacher I took over for said she did it every year and always skipped weekends and they turned out fine. So I guess you will have to see what others say, but it worked for her to skip weekends. Make sure you set them on a Tuesday or Wednesday to increase the chances of them hatching during the week. If your kids want to see our pictures of our eggs, you can go to our Shutterfly: http://3huntseggs.shutterfly.com/
Good luck!

 

[hannakat]

If the bator is small enough and you live close enough, why not take them home those 2 weekends? If you set them on a Tues or Wed then lockdown would begin on Sun or Mon so you could leave them at the school the 3rd weekend since they won't need turned part of the time anyway.

Wishing you lots of luck and fuzzy butts!

 

[Educare Teacher]

Thank yo to everyone who replied now another question!! What is lockdown?

 

[fshinggrl]

Quote:
Lockdown is on day 18 when you do not open the incubator and jack the humidty level up. You also don't turn the eggs after that. That is day 18 until they hatch...

 

[kupi99]

Quote:

I am also a preschool teacher (I have 3 year olds), and I have been hatching eggs in my classroom for the past three years. It is totally awesome, and y'all should go for it.

The simple answer to your first question, is yes, they need to be turned 3 times a day for the first 18 days, including weekends. There are people who do "no turn hatches" and report success, or like this other teacher esce129 says they don't turn them as often as they should. But on the by large, the turning is a necessity. The best thing would be to try and see if y'all can get a turner that fits in your bator, then you don't have to worry about it. But if you can't, you might try esce129's suggestion, and just turn them durning the week and see what happens. I think the risk with not turning is getting chicks with deformities, not necessarly chicks that don't hatch.

Are y'all regulating your humidity as well? There are lots of different opinions about what this should be on what days, and different methods. The advice on this site is really good for that. I recommend reading through some posts/articles here. That's what I did, and it was helpful.

As fshinggrl said, lockdown is one day 18, when you stop turning the eggs (whatever method you used), and up the humidity (how high you up it depends on what it's been at before, and what method you are using. Again, dig around on here for great info on that!). the chicks should start hatching sometime between day 18 and day 24. If everthing has gone well, they'll all be born more or less on schedule on day 21. But if your temps were a little high, they might come out earlier, a little low, they might come out later. For the past two years, I've trouble getting steady temps in my classroom, and my hatches have always been late. But I still get some chicks.
You might also notice the eggs moving during this time. That's the chicks getting into postion to come out. You might also hear them peeping in the shells as they break through the air cell. Hopefully this will happen during the school day, as it's very exciting for the kiddos, and you

!

Also, once they hatch, they can be left in the incubator for 48 hrs. They're still eating the yolk, so they don't need food or water.

How long are you going to be keeping the chicks after they hatch? Like I said, they are good for 48hrs w/o food or water, but sometimes you'll have some that hatch out a few days behind the others. I have quick temporary brooder that I keep the baby chicks in for a little while till I send them home with the student they go with. It's not the greatest, but works for a short span of time (no more than a couple of days).



I don't know if y'all if y'all have any plans or not, but in case your interested, here is what I do with my kiddos in the room while hatching the eggs.

First, make sure you time when you set them carefully. You'll need to be at school on day 18 when lockdown comes, so you can up the humidity (I also always like to do this with the class, see below). Last year, I accidently miscalculated, and lockdown landed on a Sat. There was no way I could come up here to put them in lockdown, so I wound up doing it a day early. I lost several chicks that were fully developed in the shell, and I think it was due to that (but I'm not sure). So be careful. You also want to time when they are due to hatch carefully, in case you have some temp issue and they hatch early or late. In other words, you don't want to have day 21 be on Friday, and have late hatch were they all come out on day 22-23, and that be over the weekend. This year my eggs went into lockdown on Friday (today) and are due Monday. I'm able to come up here this weekend and make sure the humidity is right. If one happens to be born early (I hope not!), it will be ok in bator till Monday.

We hatch chicks to go with our egg unit. So before I set the eggs, we open up an unfertilized eggs from the store and talk about the parts of the egg. We talk about how the yolk is food for the baby chick. I'm always surprised at how many of my kiddos don't know what the yolk is called!

Then we it's time to set the eggs, I hold the eggs and let all the kiddos take a turn feeling them. We then talk alot about the incubator, and what it does. How it has to keep the chicks at just the right temp, not too hot, and not too cold. I also talk about how it has been just wet enough so the air cell will grow right, and the chicks will have air to breathe when they poke through it. Each year, I also prep the class in case the eggs don't make it. I tell them they might not hatch, or they may not come out on time, and I tell them why (if it gets too hot, or cold, or it's too wet, not wet enough, etc...). Then I set them, and let them all come and take a look!
I also have a "Count Down to Chicks" display on the front of the cabinet with the incubator. I have a cut out of a baby chick for each day of the incubation. We take one chick off each day at dismal, and count how many more days we have to go. This is a really great visual that helps my 3's understand how long it will be chicks. They can see at first that's its really long time, and how much shorter it is as we get close. By the time we are down to last few days, they are excited.

Since I have automatic turner, after that it's alot of waiting until the big day. I check on the eggs to make sure everything is going well, and the kiddos have a chance to come and see the eggs in the bator during center time.

I always candle at least once to let the kiddos get a look inside. I found it works best to candle while they are centers. Once I find a good egg with an embryo really moving around, I call them one at a time to see. To candle the eggs, I just used the mag light that was in my car. However, an overhead projector works really well too! I used one of those for 2 years, b/c it was handy

. Some years they are into it, this year I only had a couple of kiddos who thought they were cool. I think most of them were expecting to see a baby chick, not some black dot wiggling around that I told them was the eye.

I always try and put the eggs on lockdown in front of my class. We candle again, talk about how big the chick is now, and what the air cell is, and then we set them in there and wait! I have yet to have any of my chick arrive on time (a little frustrating with the whole countdown thing), but I have high hopes for this year, as I've had some of the most stable temps yet. The little guys are due on Monday, so here's hoping!

That might be more info than you need, but there you go! And this site is wonderful place to get advice. I have loved it for the past 3 years I've used it, and it's helped me tons! So keep checking back here!!!!!!