Peachicks

The eggs are hatching! 

We have five total- two out of the incubator and three in (still drying off)- and one that is clearly pipped. 

G created a little brooder for the dry ones. This one hatched much sooner than the others, and was cheeping nonstop (lonely), so I made a "mother" for it. Got the idea off Pinterest. 

I added some straw to the bottom of the box because the chicks have a hard time standing on the slippery cardboard; their legs splay apart. 

Of the three drying in the incubator, two are doing great. One is a little slow, but that's to be expected. That particular baby needed help getting out of its shell. 

Normally, you don't offer any help to hatching chicks; they can handle it themselves and people helping can actually hurt them or cause them to die. So it's a last resort. 

To hatch, chicks first peck a hole in the egg to access outside air so they don't run out of air when they hatch. They rest after that hard work. Then, they rotate around inside the egg pecking a line in the shell so it will pop apart like an Easter egg when they push. They take rest breaks while they do this and then finally break out. Somewhere during that process, the blood vessel that connects them to the egg yolk closes off so it's safe to detach from the shell. If someone intervenes, it's possible to break the blood vessel if it hasn't closed off, and the chick can die. 

This chick hadn't made any progress yesterday afternoon through late in the evening. We hoped to find a hatched chick in the morning, but still no progress, so at that point we decided to intervene. 

The feathers seemed dried to the inside membrane of the shell. I picked off pieces of the shell in a ring around the egg, trying to mimic its normal hatching pattern. The chick didn't try to bust out, so I took a scissors to carefully cut the membrane 2/3 of the way around the shell and then put it back in the incubator. 

Maybe a half an hour later, the chick broke free! It's resting, but seems to be slowly gaining strength. Nutrients from the last bit of yolk are enough to give the chick energy for at least a day without food or water, so we will leave the chick in the incubator until it is dry and fluffed up.