Egg-citement!!!*

First up, the Robin's Nest update:

Notice anything about that egg on the top, right hand side? No???

Look closer;

AAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!

At first, we thought that it had to be an accidental crack- there's no way that a whole entire being can be ready to hatch in such a short time. Well, according to the Internet, it's not only possible, it's normal! We'll post updates as the situation develops, provided Mama Robin can tolerate our nosey-ness!

Also, we spent the morning anxiously looking out for one of these;

Why? and how exactly does a UPS truck relate at all to eggs? Well, last week we ordered one of these, a fancy-pants egg candling device which was slated for delivery today! Now, if you saw last Wednesday's post, you got to see a few examples of how the Frogs have been exploring light and shadow. When you candle an egg, you use light and shadow to give you a sneak peek at the developing chicken embryo. (Or the empty egg as the case may be.)

I actually snapped this picture while I was on my coffee break downtown. The back was wide open and it took every ounce of my self control to resist climbing in and rifling through the boxes until I found it! It's a good thing i didn't, because when I got back to school, it was already there!!!

it turned out that our web cam didn't do a very good job of capturing images from the Ova-Scope, so we relied on our good friend, Mr. IPhone, to help us view the candled eggs. Here are a few pictures of our eggs at 5 days gestation:

This egg is beautiful with the light shining through it, but it shows no signs of embryonic development. This is not uncommon. In our experience, the average hatch rate of incubated eggs is about 50% or less. (We drew the star onto the outside of the shell to help us keep track of turning the eggs.)

See those veiny looking lines at the bottom of the egg? Those are a clear sign that, somewhere on the yolk of this egg is a little bunch of cells that are starting to grow into a chicken!

Same here! As we get further along the 21 day gestation period, we should be able to see the outline of the embryo itself. All of those veiny lines lead to the developing chick's umbilical cord, delivering nutrients from the yolk sac.

The kids are starting to make a lot of connections between concepts, thanks to this project. They have connected the eggs in the Robin's nest to the eggs in our incubator. They have also started to connect the waiting that comes along with this process to the waiting that many of them have gone through recently when they had new siblings come into their lives. (We've had 5 babies show up over the last 12 months!) At the beginning of this project, we asked "Were your babies ready to be born right away? Or, did you have to wait a for them to come out?" You could see the knowing looks cross their faces, as they all started talking about how it took a long, loooong time for those babies to come out.

It's funny, in years past, the Frogs have found the process of waiting 21 whole days for these chickens to come out to be a bit arduous. Somehow, I suspect that this time, it might be a tiny bit easier. 21 days goes by a lot quicker that 40 weeks!

(*Apoligies for the horrible pun. I just couldn't resist!)