Please help me with ideas for my biology project with hatching chicks!

[kristin16]

I have to do a major project for biology and have until April to have it completed. I have chickens (full size and bantam) and ducks and would like to do something hatching chicks. Only when I brought the idea up to the teacher he said I needed variables to test and I needed a question that through doing the project I can answer. I can't think of different things to test and I really need help! Any ideas?

 

[BantamFan4Life]

Hmm....I think that hatching chicks would be a great idea for a project. I can help you with incubation and stuff but I'm not getting any ideas for a question to answer :/

 

[sepaditty1]

Do you have a hen that's broody? You could measure success rate for natural vs incubated.

Maybe measure whether or not duck eggs take longer than chicken eggs?

If there are different categories for your projects you could go economical and track how much your eggs cost, man hours working the bater, heating costs, feed costs to get them big enough to butcher (even if you're not going to butcher them) and compare it to buying the same number of chickens at a grocery store.

You could go "social science" and track which flocks welcome the new babies better: chickens or ducks

Any of these may spark an idea.

 

[kristin16]

Well I do not have a broody hen at the moment but my science teacher has several and he offered for me to borrow one. Also I asked about doing duck vs. chicken eggs but he said I couldn't because we already know that chicken eggs take 21 days and ducks take 28.