by Kelly Jones
All of a sudden the egg fell over, and a wing stuck out. It was covered in wet fluff and shaped sort of like a triangle.
Then I guess it took another nap, while the other chick worked on pipping its shell and peeping at the top of its lungs. The second chick seemed mad that the first chick wasn’t answering. Or maybe it liked peeping without anyone interrupting. Chris and I tried peeping back to it, and it took breaks to listen.
Then the first chick started flailing its wing around, and knocked itself over, and the shell started to break in half a little wider. And then we could see a beak! And an eye! After that, it kind of rolled out of its shell, and flailed around, and unfolded itself until I could see it had all its chicken parts, but like a tiny rubber chicken with a partly bald wig all over it.
Then it fell over, stopped peeping, and didn’t move at all. I freaked out. I thought it had died. Chris told me no, chicks do this all the time. They just get really worn out from all this living, so they stop wherever they are and have naps.
Meanwhile, another chick had started pipping! Little bits of shell were getting everywhere, and all that loud peeping was kind of overwhelming too.
Chris calmed me down by going over the next steps. We are supposed to wait until the chicks are all done hatching, and until they are dried off. Then we can finally open the lid. I have a brooder box set up near the incubator in the barn, which is really just a cardboard box with a heat lamp hanging over it, and food and water and some wood shavings inside.
The chicks still weren’t dry when Chris finally had to go home. Dad brought me some hand sanitizer and dinner in the barn, so I wouldn’t have to leave the chicks to come in. Even though he’s not really a chicken person, he thought the chicks hatching was pretty cool, so he went and got Mom and Lupe. We all stood around and ate sandwiches and listened to the chicks peeping. Mom asked me lots of questions in case she ever needs to write an article on hatching chicks.
I don’t know whether I hope they’re all done by the time I wake up tomorrow, so I can see them before I go to school, or whether I hope they aren’t, so maybe I can watch more of them come out of their shells. Whatever they want, I guess. It’s their birthdays, after all.
Your friend,
Soph
Monday, August 25
Agnes Taylor
Up There Watching Over Unusual Chicks (I hope)
Dear Agnes,
I woke up extra early this morning so I could check on the chicks as well as my chickens before school. It’s not that easy, being a poultry farmer and having to go to school too. Were you a poultry farmer when you were a kid? Or did you wait until you were done with school?
The humidity and temperature were still okay, thank goodness. All the chicks that had started hatching were out of their shells now. A couple of them were flopped over, looking dead. One of them was on top of another egg, and another had its head still curled up in an eggshell. But the other two were moving around, peeping. They were starting to dry off, and I could see that they were kind of dark brownish gray, with yellow heads. But they weren’t all dry yet, and not all of them had hatched, so I left them in there and didn’t open the lid at all. I’ll hurry home right after school and see how they’re doing.
Your friend,
Soph
Date: Monday, August 25
To: Hortensia James
From: Sophie Brown
Subject: These eggs aren’t hatching, though
Dear Hort,
Four chicks have hatched. They’re still in the incubator. I think they’re doing okay.
But what about the other eggs that haven’t done anything yet?
Your friend,
Soph
Date: Monday, August 25
To: Hortensia James
From: Sophie Brown
Subject: RE: These eggs aren’t hatching, though
Dear Hort,
Gregory came by to deliver our mail. He’s a poultry person too, and he’s my 4-H leader, so I asked him about my eggs, since you haven’t emailed me back yet. He showed me how to do a thing called candling, where you shine a flashlight through your eggs. Lupe turned the barn light off so we could see, and Gregory held his hand around the flashlight with an egg on top, so the light shined through it, and I had my hands ready to catch the egg, in case it rolled off or started to hatch or something. Two of them just looked yellow, so we think those might not have grown chicks. One of them looks mostly dark, so we think there’s a chick inside that one. But when will it come out? Is it stuck in there??
Please email me back,
Soph
PS Sorry I didn’t know about candling before. I’m learning as fast as I can.
Date: Monday, August 25
To: Sophie Brown
From: Hortensia James
Subject: RE: RE: These eggs aren’t hatching, though
Dear Soph,
Sometimes it’s hard for me to check my email when I’m out working on my own farm, but I’ll always respond when I can. Good work learning to candle your eggs—that’s just what I would have suggested. Please give Gregory my thanks for showing you how. In the future, you can candle new eggs before you put them into the incubator. With practice, you’ll learn to see which ones have embryos developing inside and which ones don’t. It’s best to keep any that aren’t developing out of the incubator. But since we’re not entirely sure with these, you can keep them in for now.
By my calculations, you’re now at Day 20. Bantam eggs usually hatch by now, but it’s not uncommon for chicks to hatch late—keep remembering, chicks are not robots. They have their own schedules.
If there’s any pipping from the unhatched eggs, or you hear peeping from them, leave the hatched chicks in the incubator a little longer. You want the incubator to be at the proper humidity when the other eggs hatch, and it won’t be if you open the lid.
If there’s no pipping or peeping from the unhatched eggs, you can quickly and carefully move the hatched chicks to your brooder box (you have that set up, right?) when they’re all dried off.
Either way, leave the unhatched eggs alone and wait patiently until tomorrow, Day 21. If they still haven’t pipped or peeped at Day 21, email me and I’ll tell you what to do.
Best of luck,
Hort
PS Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to be so patient to be a good poultry farmer. Don’t you?
Date: Tuesday, August 26
To: Hortensia James
From: Sophie Brown
Subject: Some eggs still aren’t hatching
Dear Hort,
It’s the morning of Day 21, and I still have three eggs that aren’t doing anything at all in the incubator. So I’m emailing you like you said to.
Your fellow patient poultry farmer,
Soph
PS I moved the dried-off chicks to the brooder box, so there’s nothing in the incubator except for the eggs.
PPS It’s making me really sad just to look at those eggs. I hope the chicks aren’t dead in there.
Date: Tuesday, August 26
To: Sophie Brown
From: Hortensia James
Subject: RE: Some eggs still aren’t hatching
Dear Soph,
I know just what you mean. I’ve spent so many years becoming the best poultry farmer I can be, and I still feel like I’ve failed every time one of my eggs doesn’t hatch. But the truth is, some eggs just don’t work out, and it can be hard to know exactly what’s going on in there. It’s time to test
these ones and see if you need to wait a little longer, or move on and take care of the ones that are in the world.
Here’s what to do now. It’s called the float test, and it’s the best test we have for this sort of situation.
Find a big bowl—big enough for your three eggs to fit on the bottom without stacking on top of each other. Glass is easier, so you can look into it from the side instead of just the top and see exactly what’s happening, but any kind that holds water will work.
Fill partway with warm water (100 degrees F) so it’s full enough to cover the eggs once you put them in, but not so full it will overflow.
Listen and look carefully one more time to make sure there’s no pipping or peeping from the unhatched eggs. If there is, don’t open the incubator lid!
If there isn’t, carefully open the lid and take an egg out. Gently lower it into the water as carefully as possible. Repeat with the other eggs.
Wait until the water stops moving. Watch the eggs to see which of these apply:
The egg sinks to the bottom and stays there. No chick ever grew in this egg, and it isn’t ever going to hatch. Keep it out of the incubator so it doesn’t go bad and explode, contaminating the others.
The egg floats to the top and about half or more of it sticks out of the water. This embryo didn’t make it and won’t hatch. Keep it out of the incubator too.
The egg floats with only a little bit sticking out. It might stay still, or it might move around. This egg still needs time to hatch; carefully fish it out and put it back in the incubator!
Best of luck,
Hort
PS Let me know what you learn.
Date: Tuesday, August 26
To: Hortensia James
From: Sophie Brown
Subject: RE: RE: Some eggs still aren’t hatching
Dear Hort,
After school today, I did the float test exactly like you told me to. Thank you for the help.
I listened very, very carefully. My friends Chris and Sam listened too, in case their ears were better. None of us heard anything, none of the eggs were moving at all, and we couldn’t see any cracks, not even tiny ones.
So I did it: I opened the lid. I took out the eggs, very, very carefully. I put them in a bowl with the warm water. (Yes, we measured the temperature first. Those old thermometers are really hard to read, but luckily Chris has had practice with them.)
Two of the eggs went straight to the bottom and stayed there, without moving at all.
But one of them went down a little and then started floating up.
Chris started telling it not to be a dead floater. Sam covered her eyes. I held my breath.
We watched as the egg floated up to the surface—but only a little bit of it stuck out of the water. Slowly, the water grew still.
And then—then the egg wiggled.
I never knew an egg could do that before the chick wanted out! Chris yelled that it was a good egg—no, a great egg, and a fighter, and it was going to make it! Sam uncovered her eyes. We watched it wiggle a couple more times. Then I got scared that maybe it was going to start pipping right there and drown, so I very carefully fished it out and put it back in the incubator and closed the lid.
I didn’t feel right just throwing the other two eggs away, even though they sank. So Chris and Sam and I buried them back by the henhouse. Sam dug a deep hole, and Chris found some broken-up concrete chunks in one of Great-Uncle Jim’s junk piles to put over them so nothing would dig them up. I put the eggs carefully in the hole and said a few goodbye words, even though I know you said they hadn’t even started to develop, so really no one was in there. Then we covered them all up and went in to see if the egg that wiggled was doing anything.
We’re still waiting.
Your friend,
Soph
PS My friend Xochitl says thank you for sharing the float test with us. She’s going to be a zookeeper, so she was very happy to learn about it. She’s going to help me with it next time, if she can. She wants to know if it works for reptiles too. And what about platypuses?
Date: Tuesday, August 26
To: Hortensia James
From: Sophie Brown
Subject: Chick hatched!!!
Dear Hort,
The last chick hatched!!! When it dries off, I’ll put it in with the others.
Thank you,
Soph
PS Are the other chicks going to be mean to it, since it’s new to the flock? Or is that just a grown-up-chicken thing?
Date: Wednesday, August 27
To: Sophie Brown
From: Hortensia James
Subject: RE: Chick hatched!!!
Dear Soph,
Congratulations on a very successful hatch!
You should be able to add the last chick to your flock in the brooder box without any pecking-order issues. These chicks are too young to be sorting out who’s the boss yet. They’re busy just eating, drinking, sleeping, and pooping. That was a good thing to check on, though.
For the next three to five weeks, you’ll have your hands full taking care of all of them, I’m sure. It’s amazing how much dust and mess a few little fluffy chicks can cause!
You might want to start thinking about adding roosts to your brooder box, so they can start practicing sitting on them in a few days. Keep in mind that their feet will still be very small, so they can’t hold on to big branches, but they’re heavy enough by then that a tiny twig won’t work either.
I’d love to see a picture, if you have time to take one! I never get tired of seeing those adorable fluffy little creatures.
Your friend,
Hort
PS I’m sure you already know this, but do not under any circumstances put your new chicks in with your adult chickens. Most chickens don’t know enough to be nice to baby chicks they didn’t hatch.
PPS I’m afraid I don’t know a thing about reptiles or platypuses. Sorry.
Date: Thursday, August 28
To: Hortensia James
From: Sophie Brown
Subject: RE: RE: Chick hatched!!!
Dear Hort,
Here is a picture that we took on Lupe’s phone. This was the cutest one. Sorry my thumb got in the way a little bit.
You know, those chicks really do make huge messes! I see now why you sent me that other waterer that hangs. Every time I fill up the one that’s like a dish, one of the chicks jumps in it or falls in it or walks in it and gets the water all over the shavings, and then they all try to sit in the wet shavings. I guess the chicks just don’t have very much sense yet. I worry that they’ll get cold and sick and die, so now I’m just using your waterer.
There is one chick that has a little more sense, though, maybe. I haven’t named any of them yet, because I don’t really know who they are yet. But this is the chick that hatched the last, the one whose egg floated, and it’s light gray, like smoke, with a yellow head. When everyone else is rushing for the wet shavings, this one always stays warm and dry in the corner. Chris says we should name it Gandalf, because Gandalf was a wise wizard who was known as Gandalf the Grey in some books and movies. But I’m not sure it would be a good idea to name a chicken after a wizard. Especially not one of mine.
We’ll see.
Your friend,
Soph
PS I figured it would be a bad idea to put the chicks in with my chickens. But I hope they can meet them someday, when they’re older.
Saturday, August 30
Agnes Taylor
Heavenly Roost
Dear Agnes,
I’m sorry to say that someone left trash in your front yard. Or maybe the wind blew it there, or a whole bunch of crows brought it there, or something. Lupe and I cleaned it up, but it made me sad that someone would treat your farm like that.
Lupe squeezed my shoulder. “It’s just because people think no one is living here, so it doesn’t matter.”
But people here knew you, and they know it’s my farm now. Maybe they think it doesn’t matter to me. Or maybe they don’t like that Redwood Farm is mine now.
Anyway, that’s not why we were there. We went to see what we could use to build a practice roost for my new chicks. I never knew this before, but Lupe took shop class in high school and knows how to use a bunch of Great-Uncle Jim’s tools! So she is going to help me build them something great, and then I will learn how to use the tools too.
Thanks to all those people helping out at our work-party picnic, I think the chicken coops are ready to go! We checked very carefully, and all the wire mesh is stuck tight to the wood frames, with no loose parts or gaps, and the doors latch shut, and there aren’t any plants growing inside that could be poisonous to chickens. (There are a few blackberry vines trying to come in again already, but I know those aren’t poisonous to chickens because my chickens peck the leaves off of them all the time.)
There are eight empty coops right now. They made me sad, because what’s the point of a coop without any chickens in it? But I’ve already got chicks getting ready to go into the first coop, and more eggs will be coming soon. I’m pretty excited to fill every one of them with chickens again. I mean, it will be a lot of work, but most kids around here have chores and things they have to do. I bet it won’t be nearly as much work as Sam’s llama, or even Chris’s mom’s vegetable garden. (It’s ENORMOUS! You could park more than ten cars in her garden, I bet.)