Announcing ...

Okay, this is usually something associated with parents and the maternity ward, but I do feel it necessary to announce the arrival of Freddie and Chocolate, born 21.5.09. 21 days of waiting are over, and between Thursday and Friday two incredibly cute members were added to our classes.
It sounds barmy to say, but I do feel some strange sense of parental responsibility, having talked to, cheeped at and provided chick-look-a-like-and-sound-a-like props around the days of hatching!
The whole school is buzzing!
Second batch are planned to hatch during next half term. In the meantime, watch, enjoy and admit an inner-secret "Aaaaaahhhhhh!"

Pipping ...

Apparently the term given to an egg carrying a chick, which has a tiny hole in it! So, one of our eggs has started to pip, and we have also heard peeping from inside the shells! Most of the day was spent standing over the incubator watching the eggs do a strange kind of rolling dance while holding a hand held peeping fake chicken to make the pre-hatchlings feel more at home. The things we end up doing in the name of education!
Nature has been left to take its course tonight, and hopefully tomorrow there will be some additions to Year 2.

In Anticipation ...

Today is Monday, nothing too unusual about that, but also day 18! Day 18 is the reccommended day that the hatching tray is put into the incubator, so we have put it in! And ... for the next 20 minutes, we just watched!

Not exactly sure what we thought would happen - it is not as if the addition of the hatching tray induces chick-birth, but still, we watched in silence, anticipating what is to come!

We are expecting the arrival of our wee ones over the next 3 days!

What came first, the chicken or the egg? ...

Well, in all honesty, I can only answer ... neither!

The first thing that arrived was the incubator! A few weeks ago, along with some colleagues, we decided that it would be exciting for the children in our classes to watch as we incubated and hatched chicken eggs. We had a very good contact, and an incubator funded by our PTFA, and after reading the comprehensive set of instructions, were all set to go ...

My colleagues will try to hatch eggs with their class this half term, and I will try next half term. However, the "Very-first-cermonious egg-placing-in-the-incubator" happened yesterday, and we all feel equally responsible for them!

All was going so well until ... we put the eggs in the incubator and it bleeped ... and bleeped ... and bleeped some more!

So ... what does one do with a bleeping (and by bleeping, I refer to its physical condition) incubator full of eggs? They ... turn it off and start it again ... 3 times. I've heard of the dizzy ducklings game, and as the incubator we have purchased turns the eggs automatically, it seems as though our wee banty eggs are having a similar experience!

After faffing around for some time, it seems as though the bleeping problem was to do with a loose lid, which could be fixed with a wedge of blu-tac cemented to the internal incubation switch (Problem to be rectified by reputable company sending out new incubator after they required us to send incubator back ... Hmmm slight problem there until chicks hatch which has been explained in a lengthy telephone conversation with them!)

For the first time, I have sense of parental responsibility.

Incubation period ... 19-21 days. Watch this space for updates!