Chicks go from a tiny bundle of cells to a full-grown chick hatching from an egg in 21 days, or three weeks! There is rapid growth every single day in the egg!
What happens on each of those days will be covered in detail with our 'Chicken Incubation Timeline' under In-Classroom Activities. Students will make a timeline of each day and there are full-color teacher cards that show what the developing chick looks like each day with a short description of what is happening that day.
Additionally, in order to log data each day, an 'Incubation Log' will be provided for students to use.
Here is a video from NC State Extension on some great Incubation Tips:
What is egg candling?
Egg candling is the process of being able to look inside a developing egg with a bright light in order to check out what is going on. You can see many things during development with an egg candler; there is a built-in one on top of your incubator, or you can even use the flashlight from your smartphone as a mobile egg candler! You can see blood vessels, the eye of the chick, movement from the chick in the egg; and candling allows us in the poultry industry to be able to know if eggs were not fertilized or have terminated during the process for various reasons.In order to correctly candle eggs, you need a dark room and a bright light. It takes some practice to know what you are looking at, and also make sure to not keep eggs out of the incubator for too long (more than a minute).
Here is a video from NC State Extension demonstrating egg candling each day of the incubation process:
