Xanthe and Alwyn

 





We get the chicks out every morning and now we take them outside.I was playing with Alwyn. First he was on my hand then he ran up my arm and onto my shoulder and then before I knew it Alwyn was on my head every one thought it was funny. THEN I  felt something else on my head and it was a POOH! Then I decided not to let any more chicks on my head.
by Xanthe.

Weight Update

Hello everybody we are back with more chick stuff. This time we are telling you about chickens weight. We have been weighing the chicks every few days and watching their growth.  We have taken pictures of the chicks and we write their weight underneath their picture.
 The lightest chick is Stubby, he  weighed 45 gm after week 1,  50 gm after week 2, now he weighs 55 gm. We are a bit worried that Stubby will get picked on because he is so little. The heaviest chick is Toko, he started at 60 gm after one week,  he weighed 100gm on week 2, on week 3 he weighed 100 gm again and on week 4 Toko weighed 225 gm. All Black weighed 45 gm after week 1, he weighed 80 gm after week 2,then on week 3 he weighed  125,on week 4 he weighed 180 gm.The last chick we are telling you about is Fire, he weighed 50 gm on week 1, on week 2 he weighed 75 gm,on week 3 he weighed 100gm on week 4 he weighed 125.
This is the end of  the weight  update. Next week we are going to make graphs to show each chicks weight gain.
By Troy and Heidi.

New Brooder Box

On Wednesday the 26 of November Room 4 got a new brooder box. It has a wire lid so the chicks can't fly out which means we don't have to stay in at lunch. It also has a door that you can open but we don't open it because all of the shaving will come out.We have a lid because the chicks are learning to fly. Sometimes we have to clean out their home because they spill all their food and water. To clean the brooder box you have to take the chicks out of the box. Next you take the food and water bowls out. After that you have to put the shavings in the rubbish and put some new ones in. Now you can put some fresh water and food in for your chicks. Room4 makes sure that we don't put shavings by the food this stops shavings from going in the water but one or two get in once in a while.  By Abbey and Hollie

By Abbey and Hollie.

Chicken Playground

Every morning when we get to school there's always a chicken playground there. Kiwi and Toko try to fly out of the playground. Pearly and Alwyn like to perch on your shoulder and on the blocks. Stubby has a sore leg so we can't put him on the blocks. We don't know what is wrong with him.

Lots of people come in our room to play with the chicks, but we always have to pack up the blocks 10 minutes before the bell rings. There's always  poo on the newspaper when we pack up. There's always towers for them to perch on. Sometimes they get out and run out the door. Max is the first one get here so he can chose what chicken he wants. Sometimes some people put Alwyn, Kiwi, Toko, All Black and Creamy on their shoulders and they poo all down your back. Lots of people have started bringing a change of clothes to school in case they poop on you.    By Libby and Koen
                 

 

Chicken Biographies

Our Chickens 
Below is some information about each of our 11 chicks. 

Fire

Fire is one of our pet chickens, he is one of the smallest and he  is very cute.  He is about two weeks old. Fires personality is very funny because he usually goes on top of his little water trough and poos there,  which is funny.  He is starting to grow some feathers on his feet and legs.  Fire's height is a little bit over 13cm.  That is about the right height for a chick.  Fire's weight went from 50 to 75 to 100 grams.  We weigh him every few days.  He is a very colourful chick because he has a bit of green down the spine of his back.  Most of his fluff is a nice yellow sort of colour.  On his wings he has a bit of black and grey.  Fire's beak looks different to all of the other chicks.  It looks like it has been burnt.  It is not though.  Meg and I think it is a burnt beak because of when he was hatching, some of the egg shell might have got stuck to his beak.  Meg and I think he is the cutest chick in the world!

By Meg and Leah.  

Creamy

Creamy is one of the littlest chicks but has a remarkable voice.  We weigh them every week.  After one week old Creamy weighed 25 grams, and after two weeks he weighed 75 grams.  Creamy is 9cm tall and 10cm long.  When Creamy came out of the egg it still had some egg yolk with it.  The other chicks were hungry so they started to peck him.  We don"t know if they are boys or girls.

By Abbey and Arnika.

All Black

All Black is one of the favourite chicks in the class.  He weighs 125 grams and before that 80 grams and before that is was only 45 grams.  It has a black body with a white chest and bum and it has an orange and black beak and black eyes.  It is 12.5 cm high and he is one of the tallest chicks that we have.  All Black has lots of furry feathers.  We think that his fur is about 3 cm tall.  His personality is very good because he is a very healthy chick and he is friendly but he doesn't really like high places because he is scared that he might fall.
By Matthew Jones, Oscar Lowrie, Max Bridson

Kiwi

Kiwi has a white neck followed along with a brown coat and some brown feathers. He is growing more all the time.  When he was a week old we weighed the chicks. Kiwi weighed 50gms. After 3 more days we weighed the chicks again and he weighed 100gms. We weighed the chicks again yesterday and he still weighs 100gms. They are about 2 weeks old now.  Kiwi lives in a brooder box with the other chicks.  In the box with him are some shavings, a heat lamp above him and some food and water.  Kiwi loves to fly, when you pick him up he tries to fly out of your hands. Normally just after he flies, he poos!  Kiwi is really cute when he sits on your lap. He has a pattern on his wings that  goes - brown, black, white, brown, black, white. Kiwi has such adorable eyes. Hollie, Gus and Izzy think that Kiwi is cute, funny, annoying when he chirps, and smelly.  We all love him and that's the story about Kiwi the Chick. 

By Hollie, Gus and Izzy

Alwyn

Alwyn weighed 100gms after two weeks. First he was 45gms, then 70gms and now 100gm. Libby brought the egg in from her neighbour's, Daphane and Alwyn. We called the chicken Alwyn because the man called Alwyn died. Alwyn is the oldest chick we have and he is the tallest. Alwyn is black but his feathers are going brown. He is cuddly but if you put him on your hand he will try and fly off. He does like perching on people's shoulders.  

 By Libby and Roseabel 

Pearly

Arnika named one of the chicks Pearly.  She is yellow with a black beak, it looks like it has been burnt. Her wings are yellow with black bits.  Her weight gain has been slow. She was 50 grams when we first weighed her and she didn't put on any more weight the next time we weighed her, and then it got better, she went to 70 grams.  She likes to eat the special food that we give her. She has five claws on each foot and all of the other chicks only have four.  She loves roosting and every morning we build a park out of blocks and put the chicks in it.  She has a very flappy personality, because she loves to flap around like a headless chicken. Pearly has a very happy life.

By Xanthe and Pascoe

Toko

This is Toko the Chick.  Toko's weight at one week was 60 grams, it was then 100 grams and after a few more days he was still 100 grams.  Toko looks very tall when he puts his neck up.  Sometimes he fly's when he is not meant to.  Toko has a splotch of yellow on his head.  Toko cheeps a lot.  Toko has four claws on each foot.  Toko has lots of feathers on his body.

By Arlo, Koen and Abbie.

Stubby

This chick is called Stubby.  The reason why we called it Stubby is because it is so small and you can bearly see it's legs.  Stubby isn't one of the favourites.  Stubby walks very differently from the others, it is one of the smallest chicks that we have.  Room Four think that Stubby won't survive because it looks like it has got pecked underneath it's belly.  We think that it is a Silky Bamtam.  Stubby weighed 45 grams at one week, a few days later it weighed 50 grams and it's the same now.  Stubby is grey and yellow, it's beak is orange and black.  When you pick up Stubby, it flaps it's wings like it's trying to fly.  We don"t know if Stubby is a girl or a boy yet.  The chicks poo when they are really nervous.  They used to have poopy bums until we started to have bum wipers each week.

By Sarah, Jessica and Millie.

Poopy

Poopy is not one of the favourite chicks. Poopy twitches a lot and he pecks a lot. Poopy got his name because he used to always have a poo bum. He doesn't like fingers but he does like to fly. We say he is cute because of his wings - they are different colours than his body.  He is a grey chick.  He has a bald bottom because we had to wipe stuck poo off him and it took his fluff off.  He is happy to get away from people. He's a male by the looks of it. Poopy is two weeks old and he's a king kong fat chubby chick either way. He is fun but irritating when he chirps a lot and cute, loving and he is not a flesh eater.  He has got adorable black eyes. He weighs 100gms so that means he eats a lot. Poopy is a hunger machine and a grreat weight model.  He likes to light-bathe and relax. He is not the bravest, nor the weakest and he's not the brightest. He's not the best at flying either. He likes to cuddly Alwyn neck to neck. He loves walls because he curls up next to them.   By Troy and Sam 

Smokey

Room Four named one of the chicks Smokey.  We named it that name because it looks like smoke and it's a really dark grey.  The first week we weighed Smokey, it was 70 grams, the next week she was 80 grams and then next was 125 grams.  Sarah and Heidi think that Smokey is a girl because she has really smooth wings like a  hen not like a rooster.  Smokey's eye colour is pitch black.  Sarah and Heidi think that by looking at Smokey's eye colour it looks like there is no eye in it.  Smokey's beak colour is black on the top and orange on the bottom.  Smokey has four claws like most of the other chicks.  Smokey is sooo cute!!

By Sarah and Heidi.

Lazy

Lazy's weight is.......at the first week it was 30 grams, at the next week it was 70 grams, and the next he was 85 grams.  Lazy is two weeks old and quite big,  he's 10 cms high.  Lazy is 11 cm long, that's not very long.  Lazy is yellow with a bright yellow beak and is growing a comb.  Lazy's feathers are black and yellowish.  We chose Lazy as a chick name because Lazy was sitting on us most of the time and very friendly when we picked him up.

By Emma and Isabel

Opening Eggs

Today we had the amazing experience of cracking open the eggs that hadn't hatched and looking at them under the microscope.  My first egg was rotten and splashed all over my arm.  My second egg was cool, the embryo had started to grow and died at about day 7.  There were about five fully grown chicks that hadn't hatched, we think their sacks may have gone dry.  One looked as though it had even tried to get out.

After we finished, we buried the remains in the orchard.  It was  an awesome learning experience, we loved it.

On a more positive note, our eleven chicks are doing really well, living under a heat lamp in our classroom and cheeping away happily all day.  We love to pick them up and cuddle them!  Our classroom is always full of visitors and we are enjoying showing off our new babies.

By Pascoe Wells.

Saturday

Hi All
It's Saturday today and we've got 12 chickens. I think that's all we'll get as it's past the due date and there isn't any signs of action from the other eggs. I'll add pictures and a time- lapse video on Monday but thought you might like to know where we're at.  11 of the chicks are in the box and the last one is drying off in the incubator. Our classroom smells terrible and I'll probably clean out the incubator tomorrow. I'll keep the unhatched eggs and we can do some experiments with them during the week. There is one egg where the chick has died trying to get out and it looks very ugly. Not sure if I'll be able to keep that one as I'm sure it will smell pretty bad. The chicks in the the box are all happy and chirping away, so here's hoping they'll all survive the weekend.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

 This is a photo of Renee when she was born. Yesterday we had a discussion about premature babies and why they are more likely to live than premature animals in the wild. So today Renee brought in pics from when her and Hollie were born. They were very small and about 7 weeks early, so they spent a lot of time in an incubator.

We have got three chicks now and a couple are on their way. We have a box ready for the chicks and we have put shavings in the box with a heat lamp so they will be nice and warm. We will be taking the first three out of the incubator and we will be putting them in the box that has been ready for them. We will probably be starting to feed them today. We have a black, white and yellow one we will be naming them all but since some will look the same we will put tags around their feet. The box we are putting them in has to be 85 degrees Fahrenheit  so the chicks will live. Everyone is getting really exited about having the chicks and holding them. We haven't found out which is a boy or a girl but we will find out soon.                                                                                                       by Meg and Xanthia

 

Chickens!!!

Well it seems that even chickens come before their due date!! Room 4 has two chickens already and they weren't due until Friday so the excitement level is very high today.  We have set up the time lapse camera so hopefully we'll catch a chicken in the act of hatching - although one of the chickens managed to hatch with all in the classroom and nobody noticing a thing until it was fully hatched!!!
We have a wee black chicken and a yellow one at the moment and another egg has quite a decent chip in it. The hatched chicks are very noisy and are beginning to wander about inside the incubator.  Tomorrow afternoon we'll move the two chicks to the brooder box but they need to be fully dry before we do that and we need to get the heat lamp set up over the box. So it's all go from now on!!!!

Proposal Video

Day 18

Today we realised that the eggs are  going to hatch on Friday instead of Thursday, so we have to wait another whole day!! This morning we all lined up at the incubator and took out an egg each so that Mrs Hancock could take the turner out of the incubator. If we had left the turner in the incubator then the chicks wouldn't be able to get out of their shell and that won't be good. At lunch time Megan, Mrs Hancock and Max went and got the science trolley and set it up in our class room so that we could see the eggs close up through the camera on the trolley that links to a big screen. When they were setting up the trolley they could hear some chirping coming from the eggs. Sooo exciting!!!

The chicks will hatch into the incubator and then they stay in there for up to two days. Then we move them to the brooder box with a heat lamp. Tomorrow we will show you a picture of our box where our chicks will go.  

Day 15

Today we tried candling some of the eggs. To do this we went into a dark room with a torch. Then we held the torch up close to the big end of the egg. We could tell if there were chicks inside the egg because we could see veins and dark patches as well as moving in some of them. This was really cool and most of the eggs in the incubator looked like they had chicks in them. We will try the other incubator after lunch. The short you tube video above shows what it looked like inside our eggs.

We have nearly finished our i-movie proposal for Mrs Waite. It looks pretty cool. If we work out how, we might load it on this blog. 

We have now looked in the other incubator and it's a sad story in there. Most of the eggs haven't developed. There are about 3 that may be still growing. Luckily we've got the other incubator!!! Only 6 more days to go......

Day Nine to Fourteen!

Well it's been a whole week since we were last able to write. So I thought I'd do the update today and then the kids can get back into it again tomorrow. We last wrote on a Friday, then we had a long weekend. So Tuesday was the first day back in the classroom but I was on release and then yesterday we had a trip to Lake Rotokare. While all that was going on I've had a few problems with the actual blog. I won't bore you with the details but hopefully now you'll all be able to view and make comments!  Fingers and toes crossed.
So, as for the chickens, they only have a week left until hatch day. The kids are making a proposal in the form of an i-movie for Mrs Waite and Mrs Stark, with the desired outcome that we are allowed to keep the chickens at school long term. We have had a big brainstorm session today and the kids have decided the best option would be to get their dads to help us build a coop from scratch - assuming our proposal is accepted - so watch out dads (and mums of course).  I'll let whomever writes tomorrow fill in the details but I'm very impressed with the kids overall thought process.
The embryos themselves are really starting to look like real chickens now - our development chart states that the chick is turning itself so that its head is facing the large end of the egg.

Day Ten of Blog and Day Eight of Eggs

 Today room 4 learnt a thing or two about the incubation,we learnt that when we turned the eggs you have to take the lid right off because we have a loose screw and it will fall out if we don't hold the lid carefully. Day 8 is when the feather tracts start to be seen and inside the egg looks quite colourful.  Watch out for day 9's photo of the chick because it starts to look ugly! Room 4 is thinking of doing proposal for Mrs Waite and Mrs Stark to ask if we can keep the chicks at school. We will start planning our proposal next week after we finish our research presentations. 
By Hollie and Arnika

Day Nine of Blog and Day Seven of Eggs

Today the comb growth begins and they're getting their egg tooth. Most Chicks are hatched at a chicken hatchery before going to farms. Baby chicks are kept in brooders.
Chicks stay warm and safe in the brooders.
Chicks grow very quickly and they have all their feathers fast. Young hens are called pullets.  We wish the egg would hurry up and hatch!
From Isabel and Emma.

Day Eight of Blog and Day 6 of Eggs

Today Hollie and Jessica had to turn the eggs over.  Mrs Hancock is going to put some water in with the eggs so that the shells don't get too hard for  the chicks to chip their way out at hatching time.

 The chicks inside the eggs are starting to get their beaks and starting to move. Room 4 are thinking of getting a big cage so we can fit all of the chicks that have hatched in it.  It takes 21 days for a chick to hatch in an incubator. Some of us each day have to turn the eggs because the incubator hasn't got a automatic turner! We have about 40 eggs in the incubator! Mrs Hancock is going to nearly have more chicks in her class than children in her class if they all hatch. Our class wrote         chicken stories in writing and we might share some on here.  We are making pompom chicks in art and will take photos of the finished chickens and post them on here.                                                                                                                           By Pascoe and Millie.

Day Seven of Blog and Day Five of Eggs

Today the appearance of the elbows and knees are starting to show up. Do you know that chickens have elbows? Well they do.
The eggs are going pretty well so far in the incubators.We are still deciding what to do with the chickens once they hatch.We have a few ideas so far.So far the only ideas we have is Koen deciding to have scrambled eggs, Abbie deciding to run a business on the side of the school gate, and Gus suggesting to make a chicken coop at school for pet chickens. By Koen and Arlo

Day Six of Blog and Day Four for Eggs

On Saturday when it was calf and lamb day Mrs Hancock turned the eggs in one of the incubators and checked the other one if the automatic turner was working. Our research has been going quite well and we are learning a lot. This morning we filled both incubators with water so the eggs won't die and don't get too hot. Now the eggs are starting to form into chicks. Today if we cracked the eggs we would be able to see the blood vessels and the beginning of an eye. The chicks take 21 days to hatch and we are up to day four. By Troy and Leah.

Day five

Today we were waiting for Mr Mitchell to bring in his incubator for us to use it because ours is not working. When he bought it in we were all so happy! We now have got an incubator and have each put one egg in it. Hopefully on the 7th of November we will have chicks. We hope all of our eggs hatch because we love having eggs in our class because we always get to write a blog for all of you to read.

By Abbey and Libby

Mrs Hancock says - Hmmm think we're actually going to have two incubators going now!! Think I've worked out what was wrong. So now we have about 50 plus eggs waiting to turn into fluffy yellow chicks. Madness. Never mind, the kids are so excited and with this many eggs we're sure to get some chicks - unless there's a power cut.....

Day four

Today Mrs Hancock fixed the incubator with the help of Mr Mitchell. But we are getting another incubator from Mrs Mitchell because we don't think our one is going that well.  Megan gave us a thermometer and in the morning we will see which thermometer  is working and which one isn't. We are putting some of Abbey and Heidi's, and Mrs Mitchell's eggs in our incubator. We will put the other eggs in the first incubator if we can get the temperature right. . Abbey and Heidi brought in their eggs today.  By Heidi and Roseabel

Day three

Well we got into class when the bell rang and we realised that Room Four's incubator was not there.     Mrs Hancock said that the incubator was not working, the whole class was very sad. Then Mrs Hancock looked on the computer and looked at incubators. There was nothing under incubator but we looked on trade me but they were too much money, so we looked for hours and hours on the computer.  Then Mrs Hancock  said when she was teaching at another school she rented an incubator to hatch eggs. Abbey made some phone calls but the hire place had closed down. Then we had some class time to research about chickens. We still couldn't get hold of an incubator though. Later in the day we found that Mr Mitchell has an incubator that is the same as ours. He is coming in tonight to see if he can fix it. If he can't then we might be able to borrow his own one. So by tomorrow we should know we've got an incubator.....By Abbie and Matthew

Day two

Today Abbie and Roseabel brought some fertilised eggs! We were so happy. In the morning we got a sticky note and we wrote what we know and what we want to know. The class wrote chicken stories and shared their stories to our class. Today we are going to put the eggs in the incubator if we can. The Turtles reading group is going to read the instructions to see how many eggs can go in it.

Day one

So today I put a box on the classroom floor and asked my class what questions they might have about the box and what might be in it. Some great questions were posed, then when the children realised I wasn't going to answer their questions, they began to find clues on the box as to what it might be. Before long they had discovered that inside the box was a chicken egg incubator.
My next question was - what will we do with it? After some more conversation the class decided that we should get some eggs (fertilised of course as someone pointed out) and see if we could hatch them. Then we'd need a cage to put the chickens in. So the first task the children have undertaken is to try and find some eggs. The children came up with some ways to find eggs so we'll wait and see how they go......