E2G6+Claire

=Making the Coop :) [engage 6's wiki page] Presentation Project Egg=

6/1/09 We are finished with our project. We returned the chickens to Bower's Farm which is where they will be living for the rest of their lives. The chicken coop is done and will be donated to Bower's farm. W learned that babby chickes are needy(and noisy). We relized that everybody had quite an intrest in the chicks, even mr. McCloud, and that sometimes eggs won't hatch. We would greatly encourage anyone who has an intrest in the eggs and chickens, and the right attitude to do this. We had a great experience, and we will post a video of all of our reflections on 6/2/09. 5/27/09 Yesterday we contacted Bowers Farm. The same farm that supplied us with the eggs. We were concerned why the eggs hadn't hatched yet, they said they have been going through an egg fertility "drought", meaning very few chickens have hatched but for educational purposes, they gave us two chicks, one quail and one chickens. Pictures of them are shown below, along with a video. media type="youtube" key="uLb7_2t0wLA" height="344" width="425"media type="youtube" key="7CFYOYveSd0" height="344" width="425"

5/25/09 Over the weekend we monitered the eggs. They were due to hatch around this time, but you can never set a truthful date for these kinds of things. We found that one of the eggs has a significant crack in it, and it looks like a chick is on the way hopefully. But we did learn that the chance of eggs hatching in a small brood is much less than a large brood. A large brood being about 50 eggs, but we have a pretty small batch. The chance that most of them won't hatch is very large. There were a couple of cases where out of 50 where only one or two hatched, so we can't get too hopeful. The eggs are schedualed to hatch today, but bowers farm has been having many infertile eggs lately. We are hopeful our eggs are fertile.
 * 5/20/09** Today we made two big breaks. First we made the chicken feed that will feed the chickens for the first 2-3 weeks of their lives. We made the feed from oats, bran, oat germ and other whole grains. We also attached the casing to the output of our dial. We made it safer and we attached it to the side of the incubator to make it easier to handle. We had a very productive day.

5/19/09 We learned today that Chickens along with other large no flying birds roost during the night. This means they perch during the night in the tree or tall bush to protect themselves from predetors, and even though our chickens will be safe through their whole lifes it is important to teach them early how to do this because it is an important part of being a chicken. So we can put a wooden dowel in the coop so that they can perch. This is what we can do today. We also have to make the warm box and feed. It is time to prepare for these chicks! We need baby fed and Chicken feed. We will be able to make box. We also purchused the warm light for the warm box. We also found a great video displaying the actual hatching of chickens. media type="youtube" key="tof5b1Qs_OE" height="344" width="425" media type="youtube" key="UCpCvf136Zo" height="344" width="425"**5/11/09** The eggs came back from the weekend. We now know that we have to take tha water bowl out of the incubator when traveling with it becasue the lose water can harm the eggs. We covered the loose wire caps with electrical tape and we are going to but a casing on the base of the dimmer. Only two more weeks until the chickens hatch!
 * __5/18/09__** We bought the materials for the warm box, so when the chickens hatch, but are too weak to go to the chicken coop, they have somewhere to stay and be warm. The materials for the warm box are a cooler, a warm light, bedding, chicken feed, which we are going to make, and water for them to drink. We also made a paper that says how many days are left until the estimated hatch date.
 * __5/16/09__** We built the nursery today. Which was one of our goals. We did some research though and we learned that they need to be a little warmer that expected. We also found a great site that has lots of information about new hatched chickens, this is it: [] . We also found a cool picture that has the stages of all the eggs at different days.[[image:egghatching.gif]]We will start to construct a warmbox. And this is the link to our chicken monitering: Incubator Log !
 * 5/13/09** We learned today that the outlet we decided to switch to yesterday is perfect for keeping the eggs at the correct temperature. We want to learn how time will effect the growth of the eggs. We think they might do most of their growing with in the last week, which we are approaching sooner than expected. We will countinue flipping the eggs until they are ready to hatch and we will get the coop and nursery prepared for them. Our goal is to have the materials for the nursery by friday. We have the box the chicks will be resting in before they are strong enough to move into the chicken coop.
 * 5/12/09** Today we switched outlets for the incubator. We learned the first outlet we had used was not powerful enough, and the incubator temperature was not reaching 100 degrees farenheit. We are going to check to see if the outlet is more powerful by checking the temperature, if the temperature goes up, the new outlet is more powerful. We also got two manila folders to keep our information, data and other papers in. One folder has the chicken coop papers and insructions, and the other has the incubator data.Katie Powell is assisting the incubator group. She is in Mr. Browns hour 2. we put eliectricle tape around the wires.[[image:Picture_002.jpg width="251" height="188" caption="liz and amanda woriking on the coop"]]
 * 5/8/09** Today we worked on the wiki. Adding the care page and instructions of how we will care for our eggs. The incubator is dropping a little bit but we are going to cover a hole so that less warm air escapes and more of it incubates the eggs.


 * 5/7/09** Today we started our chicken coop. Amanda brought in 2 big pieces of wood and we cut these pieces into 8 supports for our roof and walls. We will begin to nail these into the base tommorow and cover the wallls. The eggs are doing fine execpt for one which has a couple of harline cracks visible and when looked at with a flash light, it does not look good.


 * 5/6/09** Eggs are on the incubator and the incubator is holding a prefect temperature(100). We have been flipping the eggs at 8:00, 2nd hour Lunch and 6th hour. The bowl of water is keeping the eggs very humid. The perfect conditions! We have all of the bases covered on the project and we have the planning for the coop almost complete.media type="youtube" key="HHBOSCKrcGM" height="344" width="425"

Group Notes Place! How to Care for the Eggs!