Day 8 Classroom Incubation Project

If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If an egg is broken by an inside force, life begins. Great things happen from the inside. – Unknown

Today was day 8 of our chicken and duck egg incubation project. You can read about day 1 here and if you are interested in chickens in your classroom you can find basic instructions right here. We turned the lights off and it was time to candle the eggs. It is hard to believe, but right now all of the eggs are developing perfectly. The embryos are clearly visible. The class was incredibly excited. The duck egg has some dirt on it and the class had an interesting discussion about washing the eggs. We will explore the microbial film covering the eggs tomorrow.

Classroom Egg Incubation Project Day 1

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It is time to incubate again! Here are our beauties happily situated in the incubator. This year we have five chicken and 2 duck eggs. We weren’t really counting on ducks. They have a different incubation time than chickens. We will see how it all works out in the end.

We use a fully automated incubator. It turns the eggs and keeps the temperature at a constant 37.5 degrees Celsius.  The kids still turn the eggs by hand once a day. The automated turning is an amazing feature. Without it we would have never attempted this project. Letting the kids hand turn the eggs once a day helps keep them involved. Keep your fingers crossed for some healthy chicks and ducklings!

If you are interested to start your own chicken life cycle project check out our previous post about chickens in the classroom.