Chick Incubation is a 21-day process and requires fertilized chicken eggs, an egg incubator to help control temperature, humidity and egg turning. The incubator replicates the mother hen’s environment with a warm moist environment for the rest of the gestation period for the chick. Chick Incubation is a excellent way to teach youth about nature, responsibility, science, caring from animals and life cycles

Due to COVID-19 we were unable to do a classroom setting Chick Incubation for the 2020-2021 3^rd grade classes. Therefore, we did the 2021-2022 Chick Incubation with 3^rd and 4^th grade classes. We also previously provided our Chick Incubation program to our high school FMD unit, also referred to as a Functional Mental Disability classroom. It is important to Leslie County 4-H to keep our FMD youth involved. Leslie County has 4 grade schools and 1 high school which targeted 14 individual classrooms, 3^rd grade – 7 classrooms, 4^th grade – 6 classrooms and high school FMD – 1 classroom. An estimated 270 youth participated in this project. We visited classrooms each week to provide a new lesson. Youth learned about embryology, habitats, parts of an egg, egg nutrition, different types of breeds, the process of incubation/important factors for incubating successfully, how to care for the eggs inside incubators, hatching predictions using the candling method and how to care for the chicks after hatching. 

The first week youth learned how the incubators operated, how to maintain them and they watched Mr. Garry and I carefully place each egg inside. The second week we provided a healthy egg cup sample with the recipe to each child. They learned each part of the egg and all about an eggs nutritional value. Our final week we candled the eggs and made predictions on how many eggs would hatch. The chicks hatched mid-April. Our hatch days were set for April 12^th-14^th. A total of 85 eggs were set and 72 hatched.  Once chicks hatched, they were brought back to Leslie County Extension where they waited for their new homes. Youth who had established flocks at home were gave the option to adopt the baby chicks. All 72 chicks went home with students (and their families) who participated in the project.

This has become a favorite project over the years, and we hope to keep the excitement going!Leslie County All Programs Assistant Garry Ostrander candling eggs inside a classroom