- Apr 22, 2011
- 6
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- 7
This is my second time hatching eggs in my classroom and I have yet to be successful. Today is Day 2 of the incubation process of hatching chickens. A parent brought me some eggs from a local farmer on Monday wrapped in a towel inside a cooler, but I had not set up my incubator yet so I took them home. She said something about the darker color eggs were older about 2 weeks and she thinks the hen had been sitting on those, but the lighter colored ones were just laid. When I got home I researched how to store the eggs and got several different answers. I kept them wrapped in the towel until I read somewhere that I could store them in an egg carton and they had to be cool. I set them inside my house in a darker area and turned the ac up in the house and placed the eggs there. I kept rotating them in the carton as I would have if they were in the incubator. However, I couldn't really tell you what the temperature of the eggs were when i stored them. I'd put them outside in the mornings and my boyfriend would bring them in before the sun would come out. I do know one thing though. There was a smell to the eggs when I got them out of the cooler and some dirt on them. I removed the dirt by lightly sanding them. On Tuesday, I took the incubator to my classroom to set it up an get the temp regulated. Came home (still Tuesday) and my boyfriend said those eggs stink. I took them out and smelled them one by one and found about 3 out of 27 that had a funky smell and when I tossed them outside it looked like a soft scrambled egg inside. The smell tapered off a bit and I got my incubator regulated at 99.5 (Little Giant 9200 Still Air said this temp). Placed water in the incubator and the temp stayed regulated. I placed the 27 eggs in the incubator on Wednesday after letting them sit room temp in my room for about 2 hours before I put them in the incubator. When I put them in, the temp dropped and my students kept telling me what it's temp was (1st graders). I explained that I needed to let them stay in there for about 3 hours before messing with the temp. After 3 hours, the temp was still at 96.5 so I raised the temp a little and kept watching it. I had to take a half day and left the instructions with the sub to keep checking it for me and he said it got to about 100.5 so he turned it down a TINY bit. I explained how sensitive it was. He said when he left it was at 99.5. The eggs were turned twice on Wednesday. When I came in yesterday, the temp read about 96.5. I noticed the smell again so once again I smelled them and found about 2 more. Raised the temp and it stayed constant at 99.5. This morning was the doozie for me. Got to school and walked it to my class to find one egg had a dark green bubble on top of it. Opened the lid and it smelled god awful. Took out the egg with the dark bubble and turned the rest looking for any others but didn't see any. Put the egg in a bag and placed it in the trash only to have a student throw something out and make the egg crack (could have killed him). The egg had black stuff in it and now my room smells like a hard boiled egg. So far I've been losing eggs everyday. What do you think I should do with the rest? Should I just wait till I candle them or continue to wait to find eggs oozing until I can candle them?