Science Fair Project!

[Lucky1]

I am planning to enter a science fair competition and I wanted to do something with chickens. I know that in some high schools they genetically alter a chick somehow. I was wanting to do something like that or try to reduce the hatching time somehow. I know that might should a little weird but I thought that that would be possible if you changed their environment or if you changed their genetics a little bit? Any ideas or past experiences would be helpful. Also if/ when the chicks hatch they will be going to my best friends place since she needs new laying hens anyway and that is where I will be getting my eggs from edited to add: i have to have the project done by April1, 2012, so raising them would take to long

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

You can alter the time to hatch by modifying the heat and humidity, but realize that there can be health issues both with hatching too early and hatching late.

Maybe a better project would be to compare growth rate of chicks on several different feeds: try different brands of starter, medicated versus non-medicated, gamebird vs chick starter, supplemented with additional vitamins and/or meds versus not.

Or select different parents, and predict the offspring phenotype from each set. Then compare the results.

 

[Lucky1]

Does this make sense to you guys? If i speed up hatching then there will be a higher percentage of deaths, but if you use only healthy, mature, fertile chicken eggs, then there is a lowered mortality rate/ higher hatch rate (right?), and if you put those two together you would get a faster hatching chick with an average chance of survival since the balance themselves out.

 

[Henk69]

We had this same early april fools joke a few years back over here in Holland, like the sleeping pil for the rooster to avoid the early morning crowing.

A higher incubation temperature would not only harm the embryos but also the males would have a higher survival rate than the females.
Doing the opposite would make more sense, but not without downsides.

 

[AinaWGSD]

It is a testable hypothesis, but I believe that you will find you have a greater increased mortality from speeding up hatching than you do decreased mortality from using only healthy mature eggs. So the chance of survival would still be below average. And it starts to introduce the question of how ethical your project would be when you know from the start that it has the potential to cause harm and suffering. In scientific studies using fertile eggs that challenge survival rates or drastically alter genetics none of the eggs are ever allowed to hatch, thus theoretically eliminating suffering that may have been caused to the chicks had they been allowed to hatch.

 

[Lucky1]

I don want to cause harm to anything! i just wanted to see if it is possible, does anyone else have other ideas that i can do with the hatching eggs? i REALLY want to do a chicken project that tests natural things. also, is there any other way that i could hurry it up without harming the embryos, even though i realize that some might die anyway. (fertility issues e.c.t.)

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

I don want to cause harm to anything! i just wanted to see if it is possible, does anyone else have other ideas that i can do with the hatching eggs? i REALLY want to do a chicken project that tests natural things. also, is there any other way that i could hurry it up without harming the embryos, even though i realize that some might die anyway. (fertility issues e.c.t.)

You might try testing dry hatching versus conventional hatching; auto turner versus hand turning; fan versus no fan. You might test one breed versus another for hatch rate.

FWIW, disallowing viable, developed eggs to hatch when they have been allowed (deliberately incubated) to develop seems far more unethical to me.