Pip Pip Hooray!

After all the worry and uncertainty, the royal chickens are beginning to hatch!

First there was the pioneer chick who popped off a part of its shell. I was elated when the King pointed it out to me because it meant there was hope after all!

Because after that, a second egg pipped. And a third. And now a fourth. At this point I'm going for it, we're gonna hatch all 18-19 chicklets, I feel it in my bones!

We got incredibly lucky...

So what is a pip? It is when the chicken first pokes through the shell. They have what is called an egg tooth, and they use it to break through the membrane into the air sac and through the shell. It is step one in the hatching process.

This is our second pipper:

If you look at the bottom of the bottom egg you can see where I marked the air sac with a pencil, and just above that, almost in the center, is a slightly raised bump where the chick is poking through. It can easily be overlooked unless you know what to look for... but there it is - a pip!

There are two eggs that have pipped and two which are in the process of zipping, which is when the chick has chipped all the way around the egg and is preparing to use its legs to kick the shell away from its body.

These are our more advanced eggs:

The one at the top was the first to pop its top, the lower one pipped third but broke through second, and below that, just out of the picture is the most recent egg to pip.

They will all hatch at different rates and it can take 24+ hours for the whole process to occur. Maddening! But at the same time, it's more than I was hoping for, even if I really was hoping for this... hard to explain.

This photo is from a thread on the Backyard Chickens blog, it show a full zip:

It's what I hope to see tomorrow. This is like waiting for Santa on Christmas morning... but more stressful.

So once they are out of the egg, we leave them in the incubator for two reasons. First, to dry, because they can easily get cold and sick if they are wet. Second, to peep and bump into other eggs which encourages them to pip/zip/hatch.

At the end of the hatch they absorb the yolk sac and can forego food for up to three days. Hopefully they will all hatch within a couple of days of each other and we won't have to figure out what to do about chicks and eggs... If you open the incubator while a chick has pipped you risk drying out the membrane and shrink wrapping the poor thing, so it's best if you don't have to...

To that end, the sponges are working beautifully. I am using a straw and a small funnel to add water to the sponges through the air holes, and the humidity is holding at about 60-65% where it needs to be.

 Fingers crossed for healthy, happy chicks!