The students of Trevose Day School and Neshaminy Montessori are hatching some eggs to add to our chicken family!
We decided to also add an additional element to our chick hatching program. Cupcake, one of our original chickens to our coop, is brooding. This means she has decided to sit on and hatch a clutch of eggs. So, we wanted to take advantage of her desire to be a mom, and give her some eggs to hatch. Our experiment is to see which method is more successful in hatching eggs: Chicken vs. incubator.
The 1st-3rd grade students voted to see which method they thought would be more successful, before it happened. They voted nine for the chicken and five for the incubator. The chicken group felt that the natural process would be more effective. They believe that Cupcake’s natural instincts would keep the eggs warmer and that the chicks as they developed would feel the love of their mother sitting on them. They also felt the natural environment would be better overall for the well being of the eggs. The incubator group felt that having a consistent temperature and humidity level would be more beneficial. They also felt that modern technology would be better than a chicken.
The problem with the experiment that they saw was that Cupcake can only sit on a few eggs and more were in the incubator, therefore giving the incubator an unfair advantage. When asked if we should take out some of the eggs, they said no, they didn’t want to risk any chicks life. The other problem that was discussed is that we do not know yet which ones are fertilized, and Cupcake might not have any fertilized eggs. We decided to wait a week until we can candle them, and make a decision from there as to what we should do.
Please follow our experiment and the progress of the eggs on our Facebook and Instagram pages!
