Calblog

Chicken autopsy

This morning as I was disposing of chicken eggs, I suggested candling the eggs before disposing of them. My husband suggesting just breaking them open since we were tossing them out. Cool. Just like CSI, I could figure out the clues to cause of death. If they had never developed, we'd know that they died in cool storage because UPS delivered the incubator late.

First, we broke open one of the three eggs in the jerryrigged footbath incubator. I was pretty sure those had not made it because the temperature was hard to regulate and it got too hot. Sure enough, there was cooked yolk and no embryo in the first egg. There did seem to be a covering to the yolk which isn't there when you hardboil an unfertilized egg. I suspected that it may be placenta which developed in the first day before the temperature got too hot.

This was great. a real science experiment. The twins huddled around me very curious about what we were learning. We decided to do one of the incubator eggs next.

Big mistake. Rule number 1: Children may not be present at chicken autopsy next time. Rule number 2: Reconsider having a next time.

I was reviewing the chicken material this am and realized that after the first week, I had forgotten all about the humidity instructions. So I had filled the water the first week but had plain forgotten after that. I wouldn't have done it the next time either if I hadn't reread the instructions. So my assumption on these eggs was they had died around then -- one week into a three week incubation. I figured we'd have yolk and a little embryo that would be of scientific curiosity.

Imagine my surprise -- and everyone's horror -- when we opened the egg and found a fully developed chick. No yolk left. Black feathers, closed eyes and a little beak. Two freaked out little girls and a mom sorry she'd come this far.

We decided not to break any others. The other two from the incubator went back into the incubator just in case we had miscalculated the dates.

Here's a tangent about why I put them back. At some point we raised tadpoles. Like all other small animals, the tadpoles had to be kept from the cats. (Eventually the cats did get the fullgrown frogs.) Since they were Madeleine's tadpoles, she kept them in her room in the closet. Since the cats liked to sleep with her, she would close the closet at night so the cats could troop in her room. In the morning, she'd shoo the cats out, shut her door, and open the closet so the tadpoles could get light. As you'd expect, many mornings, she would forget and the tadpoles got no light. We expected them to die but they didn't. They also didn't develop into frogs. According to the materials sent with the tadpoles, there was some period of time by which they had to develop -- a few weeks.

After a while, almost a year after we got them, I got tired of the tadpoles in the closet. So I moved them to my bathroom. Darned if those tadpoles didn't grow into frogs at a year old. They were happy, healthy frogs too until the cats got them.

So the last two chicken eggs get another week. Who knows?

Until then, I have to listen to the girls tell me how I "killed it".

Posted by Justene Adamec at May 26, 2003 05:29 PM