A CHICK HAS HATCHED!!!!

A CHICK HAS HATCHED!!!

We have a little black baby chick that was born this morning, Saturday, April 24th at 8:40 a.m.

Yesterday I was in our YouthServices Workroom at 4 p.m. and I heard peeping! I went over to the incubator and saw that Egg #5 had made their first pip in the egg! A pip is a tiny crack where they start to break their egg shell to hatch. We were all very surprised to see that a chick could be starting to hatch on Day 17. I googled on the Internet to see if this has happened to people before that a chick could hatch before their 21 days of growth and I found that our breed of chickens that we are hatching "Bantam Chickens" can begin to hatch as early as Day 18! WOW!!!

I went to the store and bought some "gauze bandages aka.cheesecloth" to help cushion the chicks when they hatched. Many of us stayed to help on Friday night to take out the automatic turner 1 day early. We took out the turner, added sponges to the water tray for more moisture, put the gauze bandages down over the wire rack, and carefully laid the eggs on the gauze so that they can hatch.

This morning at 8:40 our first chick was born....4 days early!

Our Hannah Montana club attendees were the first to see our new baby chick!

We named our first chick #5 Saturday after a children's book titled

A Chick Called Saturday

written by Joyce Dunbar illustrated by Brita Granstrom

I will upload pictures and hatching videos this afternoon after Hannah Montana Club & Bakugan Club. Stop by the library to see our first baby!