Meeting Our Chicks

Once the first 24 hours have passed, you can begin to observe the chicks body language and overall health. By their second day they should be less damp and look decidedly more cute and fluffy. Once the chicks are dry and fluffy, you can then move them to a chick brooder.

After the excitement of our chicks hatching, Ioan and Finny were very excited to get the chicks out of the incubator and meet them properly. We decided to wait until Cian’s nap time as we thought he might be a bit over enthusiastic with handling them.

When I handed them each a chick, Ioan and Finny were both a bit nervous. Finny had decided they should both wear their penguin dressing gowns to make the chicks feel more relaxed.

Within seconds, Finny was in love and very confident in his role as chicken handling. He was very excited to be the first one brave enough to pick a chick up by himself, he loves doing things before his big brother.

You mustn’t leave newly hatched chicks away from a heat source for long, so we didn’t get the chicks out of the incubator until our friend was on her way to collect them. This meant the chicks were only out for 5 minutes before they arrived at her farm and their new chicken brooder, with a heat lamp to warm up under.

I think the chicks could sense Finny’s confidence and Ioan’s nerves, as they all crowded round Finny and snuggled under his dressing gown. Ioan was horrified by the chicks pecking a the chick poo.

It was time to move the chicks into a newspaper lined cardboard box for transportation. Ioan and Finny asked to put them in the box themselves, but Finny had put 10 of the 11 chicks in the box before Ioan felt brave enough to pick up one. It’s at times like this that their different personalities are very apparent.

Then, with them all settled in their box, we waved them off for their new life back on the farm.

DfES Early Learning Goals (2017)

Understanding the world

ELG 14 – The world:

Children know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things. They talk about the features of their own immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another. They make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.