THE GALLERY - C is for Chickens

The prompt at The Gallery this week is "C is for"

Well when I dropped Aaron at nursery yesterday, one chick had been born two hours before.

When I collected him 5 hours later, it had been joined by 2 others and there were three of them in total, surrounded by eggs that had not yet hatched.

The longer they are out of the egg the flufflier they get.

We spent so long just watching their every move.

What a great idea.  The children love it

In the evening there was a yellow one and two brown ones, so I assumed the yellow one was the oldest and enquired as to whether the brown ones would turn yellow as they dried off, or got older, but was shocked to hear that the brown ones are male and the yellow ones female.

As confirmed here:

Color sexing is the newest method of determining the sex of a day-old chicken. In 1975, commercial breeders were developed and the chicks of these breeders can be identified as hens and roosters by the color of their plumage. The plumage on hens is generally white while the plumage on roosters is brown.

It was so interesting watching them, and also seeing the marks on the unhatched eggs, where soon to be new arrivals are tapping, with a view to getting out soon.

Aaron already knows that he was once in my tummy (he's seen all the photos) and now he knows where chicks come from too.

I have updated the post this afternoon to show that when I went back there at 1 p.m., all ten of them have hatched now and there are 2 girls and 8 boys:

The thing to note about this photo which makes it particularly cute is that when they lie down they ALL lie down and when one pops up, they all hop up, to standing. Look closely and you'll see both in the photos :-)

And here if you'd like a better view - they huddle together so beautifully and they are standing stronger on their legs now:

You can see the full size version of all of the photos in my G+ album here

Update again at 18:45 tonight, that by pickup school run tonight, they were moved into a straw bed and are now old enough to be held.

There's literally HOURLY progress with these guys:

If you think that your school / nursery might like them, there is information here: >> Living Eggs
Liska xx