Picture post: hatching eggs

I’ll start with a sentimental picture of adorable fluffy chicks, so that everyone can say, “Aaaaah”.

But the point of this post is simply to show eggs as they hatch. I managed to record all of the final four of our hatching eggs. Two on Friday lunchtime, one late afternoon, and the final one on Saturday morning at about 8am.

Practically I can only take pictures through the thick plastic lid of the incubator, for to lift it off for pictures would risk chilling the hatch and killing the newborn chicks. So please forgive the flare on some of the pictures.

The hatching chick begins to enlarge the air hole

As the chick works its way round, you can glimpse the feathers inside

Chicks that have already hatched cluster round to encourage the newborn

And he's almost out! The cap of the shell breaks off and the chick emerges.

He just needs to struggle free from the shell

And the fully hatched chick flops down for a well-earned rest!

The next egg was already starting to hatch as the first one emerged, and I didn’t have the opportunity to move it to a more photogenic position. The pictures had to be taken through the curved part of the lid.

The chick has already chipped around the inside of the shell

The chick begins to break out of the shell

Well on his way out now

Almost free of the shell

And he's out

And he collapses exhausted against one of his siblings, born only a couple of hours earlier

Once more, this time without captions. You know the sequence by now …

… just because I can’t resist publishing it:

More cute chix pix in the next few days. I can sit and watch them for hours!