I have been learning about raising and hatching chickens on backyardchickens.com. So, as they hatched, I was reading up on what to expect. One of the first things I learned is that while it is best to let the chicken hatch fully on its own, sometimes the chickens don't hatch properly and intervention may save their lives. How many of you have heard that if you help a chicken hatch, it will die because it needs to gain strength while hatching? Well, that is not really true. If the chick is too big, it will not have room to rotate and it will die, unhatched. Also, if the chick pecks through the shell and there is not enough humidity, the membrane will dry out, and make it impossible for the chick to hatch. In both cases, you can hear the chick peeping, and it is healthy, but if it doesn't get out of the shell it will die. At this point, careful intervention can save the chicks life.
Out of the 5 that have hatched so far, we assisted with 2 of them. They are looking good so far!
2 comments:
Laurie, this is just too cool. So educational and fun for your kids too. Awesome.
Love,
Leslie
Cute. Very cute. Odd to think that something so cute, which evokes such a feeling of tenderness, can grow up to be so yummy. How sad. God should have made them taste like dirt. Then maybe we'd eat more vegetables.
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