Our eggs are now 9 days old! We candled them again today to check their progress. Candling is the process of shining a very, very bright light on the egg in a dark room to see if there is growth inside. You can tell if there is growth inside by tracking the amount of dark space vs. light space inside the egg. As the embryo matures you can even see blood vessels and movement inside the egg! We have good growth in 10 of the 12 eggs we are incubating. In the picture above you can see one of the eggs we are candling. The light space at the bottom is the air sac that the chick will use to breath the last few days while inside the egg and the dark space at the top is the embryo. This week we also cracked open unfertilized eggs (the kind in the grocery store that will NEVER become chickens) to study the parts inside a shell. The kids learned the yolk is the food for the embryo if the egg was fertilized and the clear stuff around it is the albumen which provides water and a safety cushion inside the shell.
So far here is what has started to develop:
brain
heart
beak - was soft and now is starting to harden
egg tooth - baby chick uses to break out of the shell and then it falls off when it is a couple days old
wings
legs
blood vessels
and.....the feather started to grow today!
So far here is what has started to develop:
brain
heart
beak - was soft and now is starting to harden
egg tooth - baby chick uses to break out of the shell and then it falls off when it is a couple days old
wings
legs
blood vessels
and.....the feather started to grow today!