Our Last Chick Entry

This will probably be our last entry about the chicks… not necessarily the last entry ever, because we are now observing butterflies emerging from their chrysalis and I’m sure we will have other projects after that. However, I will try to get everything in here about the chicks.

We delivered the remaining 14 chicks to their farm on Sunday. It’s a dairy farm and they will be free range chickens once they are old enough to roam the farm. They were almost 3 weeks old, so they still have some more time under the warming lights and then they’ll roam in the barn until they are old enough to roam the farm.

One had really started to develop rooster-ness. He was the biggest, puffed out his chest, and had developed the most full-grown characteristics. On that same note, I’m thinking that Flopper may be a she. Either that or just slower to develop.

Here is a picture of Flopper the night before (s)he went to live on the farm.

It was a sad day for everyone. “A” cried and had a hard time saying good-bye. We have pictures, but won’t post them because it was a sensitive time. “C” still asks about the “chickies” every day. It’s hard to know what goes through “B’s” mind and she talks about it very little. I’ll have to try to get her to tell me what she thinks about the whole project.


I’ve been meaning to record the hatching information for each egg and some other meaningless stats. So here goes:

The eggs that did NOT hatch, were # 11, 14, 17, 28, 34, and 35.

Child C had eggs 1-12, the best hatch rate: 11 hatched: 92%
Child B had eggs 13-24, the second best: 10 hatched: 83%
Child A had eggs 25-36, the third best: 9 hatched: 75%
Overall: 83% hatched, 81% survived.

Eggs that hatched:
Monday, May 5th: 22, 23, 33
Tuesday between midnight and 9:30 am: 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 16, 19, 20, 21, 25, 27, 30, 36
Tuesday between 9:30 am & 2 pm: 1, 5, 6, 8, 15, 18, 26, 32
Tuesday after 2 pm: 9, 24, 31
Wednesday morning with our help: Flopper was in egg #29