An Egg for a Classroom Pet?

Well, of course your not going to have an "egg" for a classroom pet. But maybe a baby chick! Caring for a chick requires love and compassion so make sure your ready.

You are first going to need a place to put the little chickies. We set our incubator and brooder box up in a pre-school classroom.

These are the items that are going to be crucial to raise a chicken.

1. Incubator (we used a HovaBator Advanced Egg Incubator Combo Kit from IncubatorWarehouse.com)

2. Brooder box

3. Feeding and watering containers

4. Bedding that will later be used in the brooder box

5. Heating lamp

Photo credit-edenparadigm.com

Getting the eggs is a very important step. Of course its a important step but you need to make sure you get your eggs from a trusted farming website or a local farming business. ( Do your research!)

Getting your eggs will be very exciting!

But when you get the eggs you need to make sure you get them into the incubator right away.

When you do so you have to make sure you read the directions that come with your incubator because each one has a certain method of care.

It usually takes a chick 21 days to hatch.

We used a poster similar to the one above to show how the eggs developed. This would give students a better picture of why the eggs took so long to hatch.

Egg teeth (small, sharp points on the tip of the baby's beak) break off after they use it to break out of their eggs.

After the eggs hatch you will keep them in the incubator until they dry.

Do not wash the embryo off it will absorb into their skin.

After the fur is about all dried up you will put them in the brooder bin! With the heating lamp, food and water.

Video credit- Larry D Rueff

A huge thanks to Conoco Phillips for providing a teaching grant opportunity!