I finally had to come home....I have dogs and a child that felt they deserved more attention than my chick and eggs.
I'm exhausted! Why do I feel like I spent all day trying to come out of an egg???
Our program is a county non-secure residential facility. The boys range in age from 12 to 17. Most of them have been locked up before.
I teach 6th, 7th and 8th grade science but a lot of the boys are many grades behind and are in their middle teens.
I came up with the idea to hatch chickens in the classroom when my son, who is in second grade, came home and told me he was soooo excited because they were going to hatch "baby chickens" in his class this year.
It started out as just this neat idea, something to engage them in the classroom...I had no idea that they would become attached....a group of mommies!
Another teacher at our facility has a neighbor who had an old incubator, (the old metal round kind), said she would let us borrow it and supply the eggs. After I got the approval from the higher ups we started "The Great Chicken Adventure....Round 1". We didn't have an automatic turner so the boys were responsible for turning the eggs, checking the temp and deciding if the eggs were alive and growing when we candled them. This was a scary prospect because some of these boys are violent offenders. Boy Felons. And it was a really moving experience because these were the ones who became the most protective and loving toward these eggs. We had a huge countdown and the boys paired up and each had their own egg that they named, (Sassy was my favorite name a boy picked). Hatching day came and went and nothing happened. There was a lot of sad faces that day and a lot of grumbling from the boys who were due to be released and wouldn't be around for the next hatch.
Instead of taking the chance with old incubator, which didn't regulate its temperature very well, I went out and bought a new incubator with an automatic turner, (I was sick of coming up here every weekend), and started again.
The boys were just as protective and when we candled them on Friday out of the 12 eggs we started with 11 of them had very definite movement. So today was a very egg-citing day....(I will pause here for a collective rolling of the eyes).
I couldn't make the boys leave the classroom today!!!! And they did get to see the pipping and hear the peeping and I can't wait for tomorrow. I was terrified all day though...questioning humidity, temperature, the whole set-up! I just couldn't stand the thought of the eggs pipping, the boys getting excited and then them not hatching completely. I'm still terrified now that I will come in tomorrow and they will be dead. This has evolved out of the classroom too...I have high school and GED boys coming by or asking questions, I have other teachers and Detention officers coming by all day, and by luck my principal was there this evening when this guy hatched and caught it on video on her phone. This was especially neat because she has been my biggest supporter!
I'm hoping to keep them in class for about 2 weeks so we can learn how to care for something. After that they are going to the farm that provided the eggs. I have no idea what kind of chickens they are...I do have one green egg though that the woman is very anxious to have hatch because she says they are really beautiful chickens!
To answer the last question...I guess it started out as a lesson in embryonic development but it turned into something different. I would bet for some of these boys they have never had anything depend on them or ever felt attached to something and now I'm watching it everyday...and this was even before they hatched!!!
I will update everyone tomorrow with the reactions of the boys!!! Keep your fingers crossed everything is ok when I get there in the morning!!!
Thanks for all the congrats!
Stacie