An egg-cellent opportunity for learning about the world

🥚In Spring 2023 Wildlings adopted some chicken eggs!

💛We were so lucky to have this opportunity to see the whole process through and would like to thank A's family for bringing them in and setting it up for us.💛

🐣An incubator with 9 eggs was set up at the hall, so we could keep a close eye on them. We kept our families informed of any progress and ensured children had the opportunity to come and see the process during their sessions with us.

🐣🐤 It was a wonderful opportunity to help the children build an understanding of the world around them, especially the lifecycle of animals! Another important learning point was being shown how to care and look after living things and to treat them respectfully, plus understanding more about their environments and habitats. 🐥🐣

Here’s our Chick Diary, we hope you enjoy it 😊

26th April 2023

Our incubator and eggs have arrived at the Wildlings Hall. They came from the farm of own of the Wildling’s family and once they have hatched and grown strong enough, they will return to the farm again.

9th May 2023

An egg-citing day checking our developing chicks. Today we candled the eggs. We found somewhere dark and used a torch to shine through the eggs to see if a chick was growing. We saw the network of veins and the air pocket at the end. 6 eggs have developing chicks inside. We tucked them back up in the incubator and look forward to the eggs hatching hopefully next week.

19th May 2023

We had a wonderful discovery when we came in this morning, 2 of our eggs had hatched and we could see a third chick making it's way out! So, after our day at the park we came back to 3 gorgeous, chirping chicks.

20th May 2023

🐣 🐣 Chick update 🐣🐣

When Kerry popped in to check on the chicks yesterday evening (Friday) we had 4 chicks! One had only just hatched. When we left at 4:30 there were 3 chicks and a cracked egg.

They are now under the heat pad and are eating the chick crumb. 2 eggs left to hatch. They are wobbling so hopefully they’ll pop out today 🤞 The chicks are cheeping away. We can’t wait for the children to have a hold next week!

22nd-26th May 2023

Sadly, the last 2 eggs never did hatch and one of the chicks was very weak when born and didn’t make it.

Nevertheless, the Wildlings had a fantastic week with our three chicks. The children were given the opportunity to name them as well as help to look after them and watch them grow. Everyone chose a name and then we drew out 3 names. The stripey chick was named Fluffy Chickie, the dark chick is called Aga (like the range cooker!) and the chick with the dark spot has been named Fireman Chick!

All the children got to hold the chicks during the week before they go to live on the farm with A.

5th June 2023

The Wildlings chicks are settling in to life on the farm really well and A’s family send us photo updates of how they’re doing. It’s fantastic to see how much they’ve grown in just one week!