That Eggy Smell

My classroom has a faint odor of eggs and chickens. You get used to it once you've been in here for a few minutes. My kids haven't commented on it so far, except when they're in the back next to the incubators or lifting off the lid.

So far today, everything in both incubators is going fine! That was not the case last night... Things were fine when I went over to church at 3:30 (I'm co-leader of youth group and we had an event after school). But they were not when I stopped afterwards. One incubator was up to 110 degrees! Ugh. I thought we had fixed it. Time to call Dad. 

He said that temperature is too hot and didn't recommend sticking something in the edge to vent some of the heat off. So I turned off the incubator and went to New Ulm to buy a new one. Thankfully Runnings had some in stock. No humidity thermometers or incubator thermometers though. I wanted one to put in each incubator to be a second opinion on the temp inside. My regular temperature thermometer will have to do.

When I got back to school, the too hot incubator was at the perfect temp for hatching eggs, so I left them sit in there while the new one heated up. Once it was up to temperature, I carefully transferred the duck and goose eggs to their new home. Whew! Hopefully it wasn't too late!

Today, we came up with a schedule for rotating the eggs. I have a whiteboard and marker back there for them to write down when they turn the eggs. I read that you can turn them 3-6 times per day, so we're making a tally mark when we do them and try to do it every two hours or so. In about a week, we can candle the eggs and see if anything is growing. 

My boys wanted to take apart the not-working incubator to see if they can fix it. They are in the process of testing if their fiddling with the dial solved the problem. We're all hopeful it did! If not, they wanted to turn the incubator into an extra heater for the classroom. Or make their own incubator from scratch. 

The two sixth grade boys did research on how to do it. It's actually not too complicated. You need a cardboard box, thermometer, and heat lamps. And for humidity, a wet sponge or covered bowl of water so the chicks don't fall in. I told them if they wanted to build their own they could. We'll see what happens!