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......