[Music]
[Music] I am Philip
J. Clower, a poultry extension specialist for Virginia
Tech. I'm responsible for 4-H youth programs
and small flock poultry programs in the state. Today
we're going to be doing a leader training program for
the 4-H Beginning of a life project.
The project is enrolled a little over 23,000 youth in
the state of Virginia. And is it the most
popular 4-H project in the state. Before we
get started, I'd like to make a few notes.
First of all, About halfway through the program,
we will have an eight minute break At the
end of the program. We have allotted 15-20 minutes
for call-in questions in this live program. Now let's
get on to our program. I'll start
with some interesting facts about chickens and the eggs.
Domestic chickens can be traced back to their ancestors in
the junglefowl, Gallus Gallus or Gallus
Bankiva. Gallus means comb. Today's chickens can
be found in many shapes and sizes. There are
over 350 different breeds and varieties recognized by the American
Poultry Association today. Let's look at the definition
for breed. A breed is a group of animals
possessing similar characteristics which when mated together produced offspring
with the same characteristics, shape, skin color and
size, etcetera. When looking at variety, it's
more or less a subdivision of the breed. There's
differentiating characteristics within the breed, things like plumage color
comb type, etcetera. Within the different breeds,
we have a number of different comb comb types.
Seven to be exact, the most popular comb type
is the one you see in your upper left hand
corner. Here it is called a single comb.
It is more or less by putting a hand on
top of the bird's head, five points and the
wattle hanging from underneath the beak. The second most
popular one that you see quite often is the one
in the upper right hand corner. It is called
a rose comb. A rose comb is like putting
a tadpole on top of the bird's head. It
has a large, meaty body to the front with
a sharp tail off to the back. Also,
within these different breeds and varieties, we have color
patterns, a number of different color patterns. There
are nine different solid color patterns within the bird,
in which the solid color is throughout the bird.
Then we have what we call barred plumage, which
is on the top row in this slide. Then
we have spangled or modeled which is in the left
half of the second role in this slide that is
mainly a solid colored feather with either white or black
tip. The three feathers on the center row on
the very far right are what we called penciled feathers.
It is a solid colored feather with a series
of symmetrical lines through the feather. The bottom row
is that of a laced feather. There is a
solid feathered colored feather with some type of lacing surrounding
the outer edge of the feather. Now I'd like
to show you some common breeds of chickens. First
of all, the three most common breeds that you
will see out of the eggs that you hatch in
your school programs will be the barred Plymouth Rock,
the New Hampshire red. These two breeds will come
from the brown egg chickens, The new Hampshire red,
which you see in this slide is probably going
to be the most common. Then every white egg
that you get from this project will hatch to look
like the birds in this screen, a White Leghorn
This is the bird that is most commonly used
for white egg production in the world today. Now
going into some of the fancier breeds that you might
see at fairs and things and the youth might have
questions about. Just to give you an example of
the different types available. Here is a bearded buff
laced polish, a light brahma. Here is a
black tailed white japanese bantam. Notice the short shanks
on this breed. Now, just to emphasize the
point of the difference in breeds we have here,
a large fowl and a bantam, a bantam is
the miniature counterpart of the large fowl breeds. Most
often people have a misconception here and everything that's a
little chicken is considered a Banti. Well, that
is not true. There are as many colors and
varieties of bantam chickens as there are of large fowl
chickens. In this slide to the left, we
have a large fowl white Wyandotte cock on
the other side? We have a white Wyandotte
cock bantam. The only difference in this slide is
that the bird is about 1/3 the size of the
large fowl. In the next slide, we have
something to show the very distinct differences between the breeds
in the left hand side of the slide, we
have a white coach and female over there, very
loose, tethered, low to the ground bird on
the right side, we have a Bertrand modern game
mail, which is a very tight feathered breed.
And by looking at this picture, the only real
difference here is the difference in breed. They are
the same exact size in ounces. When we took
this picture. Now let's move on to the different
parts of the chicken. What I have here is
a poster and I've got a chicken in my hand
as you probably probably all can see already. But
what we'll do first to show you the post and
go through some of the distinct parts of the chicken
that and some of the interesting characteristics we can get
from this. First of all, this red flesh
area on top of the head and the red fleshy
wattles underneath the bird are called the comb and the
waddles. And this is something that everybody tends to
notice with the chicken. The one thing that is
really interesting about this is a bird does not sweat
as do humans or other mammals. Their way of
dissipating heat is by pumping their warm blood through the
surface area of this comb and wattles and it works
as a radiator. Then what we do is we
go on to the ear lobe and that's the flesh
area in between here on a chicken just below the
comb in the eye. The interesting part about that
is that can tell you by looking at that.
You can tell what color eggs the birds going to
lay. I have a live chicken here and I'll
show you a little bit more now. Um,
first of all, the ear lobe, the thing
I was talking about is that fleshy area just down
below on this bird here. This one here is
kind of a pink in color. You might not
be able to see that and live, but it's
a pinkish color. Okay, if it's red or
pink in color, the bird will lay a brown
shelled egg if it's white in color, as in
the poster or if it was white in color in
his flesh area here in the chicken, it would
lay a white shelled egg. Well, a lot
of teachers and Children will be real smart. Go
. Well, what about those chickens called the americanas
? The easter egg. Chicken. Well, it
really stands to be about the same fact. The
only difference there is the anacondas have a genetic trait
in which they lay a blue cuticle over the top
of the egg that's already laid. So if it's
got a white earlobe, it'll be a white shell
with a blue coating put over it. In other
words, blue egg, If it's a red ear
lobe, it would be a brown egg with a
blue coating over it making it green. So that's
an interesting little fact that people like to throw up
once in a while in the classrooms and so forth
. Another thing I'd like to discuss with you just
because this is the same and wild as it is
in domestic fowl. When you look at the bird's
wing as you see it here, what part of
the wing do you really see? Well, what
you see is what we call the secondary feathers.
This part here is the secondary feathers. These outer
feathers are what we call the flight feathers. These
are the feathers of the bird uses to fly and
to get around. So what they do is to
protect these feathers, which they need to be in
good condition to fly. They keep those tucked under
and protected under the secondary feathers. This is quite
a colorful little rooster. I'm going to hand it
off now and we'll go on with our program since
we've got our chicken now in the parts of the
chicken. Next I would like to get into development
of the egg and the development of the egg actually
starts before the female embryo even hatches. there are
thousands of them inside the female chick as it hatches
these over um stay dormant within the chicken within the
bird until it becomes sexually mature. Once the bird
becomes sexually mature. If it's put under the proper
stimulation which we know light stimulates the bird so once
and if you noticed in the spring, the wild
birds nest in spring and what's going on in spring
. Well the daylight is increasing From the possible 10
hours light that we get over the winter days to
12 to 14 hours light during the spring days.
As the light increases, the wild birds begin to
mate and nest because that's when they are stimulated to
come into production. At the same time, science
has learned That by stimulating domestic fowl year round with
artificial lights and giving them 12 to 14 hours of
day length. Through artificial light we can stimulate the
bird to produce hormones, these hormones and sense,
then stimulate the the the album which we have a
slide here of to begin to plump up one by
one and every single day another one of these very
microscopic over um start developing up into what's going to
become the yolk. And if you notice in the
very lower the largest over um In this picture,
the very lower left hand corner, there is a
definite clear line through the middle of that over um
that is what we call the stigma line and that's
from which the area in which the yolk is going
to be released from the yolk sac. Once the
yolk is released from the yolk sac, it is
then picked up by the infant Dibley. Um That
is the very top of the reproductive tract. Once
it gets into the very top part of the reproductive
tract, it is the yolk and there is where
the egg is fertilized, the union of the sperm
to the female contribution, which in this case is
the blast o disk. And we'll show you that
in a second because once it gets fertilized, it's
called the blast of Durham and in humans and other
animals, they can refer to that as a zygote
, a fertilized egg. Once the union takes place
And this process takes place and once the egg is
dropped into the reproductive tract it takes about 23-24 hours
for that egg to become fully formed within its shell
and late. And then the process starts all over
again. I will not go into great detail today
as to this part in this process because your leaders
guide covers this in very great detail and we have
a lot of things to cover today. So we'll
just sort of let the leader's guide take care of
that for you. Now, once we've got the
egg we need to look at the egg itself and
I forgot my pointer. So I'll have to reach
across the camera. But let's look at the egg
ourselves. I broke out an egg in a dish
. Once it is laid, it's all intact.
Here. We have a broken out egg and we
have the shell just laying behind it. First of
all, the watery portion of the egg all the
way around is considered the albumin or as most people
call it, is the egg white and you can
see a small raised area right through here. This
here is just this watery portion of what we call
the thin albumin. This is what we call a
thick albumin, two different membrane areas. Then we've
got the yolk, everybody knows the big yellow yolk
but on the yoke we have a very small yellow
or white spot and you can see that on the
monitor. That is what we call the blast o
disk, the females contribution to the next generation.
Once that is fertilized, it becomes what we call
the blast o derm. So really the only thing
that is the true egg here is this small spot
. The rest of everything else inside of this egg
is nothing more than food and protection for the bird
and embryo as it develops. Then we also have
what we call the cell asia. This is the
white curly things on the end of each side of
the egg, there's some big misconceptions about dysplasia and
I'm going to go and demonstrate one of those misconceptions
right now, what we have here is nothing more
than a piece of plastic wrap and an orange super
bowl. Okay, and what the super bowl represents
is the yolk. When it drops into the incredibly
um as the yolk drops down the reproductive track and
makes its way down there, there are many protein
fibers and membranes that are laid down to put the
albumin in place. Well as the yolk rotates down
the track, it keeps spinning and rotating. And
we're going to do that with with this super bowl
and plastic here. Right now we're gonna kind of
make like it's twirling down the track and keep twirling
it and keep twirling it. Well what ends up
happening is it looked real clear when it was just
two pieces of plastic wrap and a super bowl.
And it really wasn't anything distinct on either end.
Well, as you, it twirls down the reproductive
tract. The yolk gets inter wind between these fibers
, forming what we call the CeleXA on both ends
. So what the chalets a really is is a
number of proteins and membranes that are intertwined around that
yoke that serves as a shock absorber for that egg
within that egg shell. So that's the sort of
keeps the oak centered as the egg breakdown breaks down
, the main brains and fibers break down and it
begins to sag giving the yolk a chance to get
closer and closer to the shell membranes and possibly stick
. That's one of the reasons we turn the egg
because by turning the eggs, we still exercise these
fibers slightly to keep that membranes from loosening up and
going down and dropping against the shell membranes and sticking
and killing the embryo. So that takes care of
the parts of the egg. The next thing we
want to look at here is now that we have
the egg. Let's take a closer look at what's
really happening in a natural incubation setting. Here we
have a little hand here, she's really cooperative,
she's real tame and she doesn't do much running around
. So we decided to use her today. Um
She's gonna help us demonstrate this a little bit.
First of all, how does the natural hen keep
the eggs warm? Well, the chicken's body temperatures
right around 105 107 degrees. So if you said
something that's about 100 and 507 degrees on top of
some eggs, the heat's gonna drop down a little
bit and keep the eggs right around 102 101 temperature
that we keep in an incubator. Well, you
, a lot of teachers will say, well we
set all the eggs at once. Does the hands
start setting her eggs as they are laid? No
, she will lay one egg a day, just
like any other bird. But she will not sit
on these eggs and warm these eggs until she's got
what she calls a clutch And a burden nature lays
a clutch the domestic chickens, normal clutch in the
jungle file would be 8-13 eggs. Once she has
laid the clutch, then she starts applying the heat
and sets on the eggs and stays there for the
majority of her time. Once you'll only get up
to maybe get a drink of water, get some
feed. Well then we ask, well, how
does the bird keep these eggs humid? We have
to keep the humidity up in these incubators from the
hatch. Well, if you ever have raised chickens
or have known someone who has chickens that are clucking
normally will leave their nests in the early morning hours
or near dusk. And what's happening outside about those
times the do is forming on the grass and the
environment is very damp. Well when she leaves her
nest and shuffles through the wet grass or wherever she's
going, she'll get wet on her breast feathers and
the rest of her plumage. Then she comes back
and sits on the eggs and adds all that moisture
to the nest for birds that don't have that.
Sometimes you'll see a bird when she drinks. She's
intentionally very sloppy and more or less slobber is water
down her front and gets her feathers quite wet.
That is her way of bringing moisture back to the
nest. Then finally turning does the hand really turn
those eggs three times a day? Not really the
hand turns the eggs A multiple of up to 12
times a day. Some good hands will turn the
eggs almost on the hour. So all we're doing
with the natural setting is we have observed that scientifically
over the years and we've learned how the female hen
takes care of her eggs. Then what we do
is we have stimulated this and used this artificially.
So we're gonna let her sit off here to the
side and see if we have any progress during the
period of the day. She's been sitting real diligently
here all day. We'll see if anything happens by
the end of the period. Right now we've got
a videotape that's going to look at some artificial incubators
commonly used in the program today with some of their
advantages and disadvantages. There are a number of different
incubators used in the school systems in Virginia for the
embryology program. First of all we have here,
Marsh Farm Turn X incubator, This is real common
a few years back because it was pretty self sufficient
. You could buy it with a turner, you
could have had its own fans circulating fan. So
it was a forest air incubator and whenever you have
a fan unit you can drop the temperature and it's
easier to control the temperature. But one problem that
we run into with these. The first problem is
that they only hold 18 eggs usually. And most
schools that do some experiments and programs are really hampered
to getting any type of hatch ability because they have
such a small number of eggs to work with.
Another problem with these is there's electronic circuit board that
goes out quite easily. It's easy to replace but
it also doesn't last very long. It's not as
reliable in the long run as some of the coil
units, but for a short time it's very,
very reliable. Um this also has a water bottle
unit that you fastened directly to it. So you've
got your water throughout the whole bottom incubator. That's
one advantage of this. Turn X incubator. You've
got very good humidity between the fans circulating the air
and the water trays taking up the whole bottom.
The incubator. You have very, very good humidity
going on to the oldest incubator is out there probably
. And that's what we call the transparent hen.
These are no longer made if you have one of
these and need parts, we need to do some
of our own creative rebuilding because most of these parts
and heating coils are no longer available. How long
are they? However, they are very reliable yet
. And a lot of programs use it. What
we have here is the two light bulbs, one
lightbulb is on at all times. If the incubators
plugged in, the other light bulb only comes on
when the heating element is on the heating element is
way up towards the top. So there's very,
very little chance of it getting bumped by anything an
incubator or when you're working with it, you have
the thermometer hanging right down next to the wafers to
read the temperature. The one thing about this here
is you can add your own water pans to this
quite successfully by just getting some pot pie pans and
adding three water pans that usually gives you more than
enough humidity to keep it going. The one disadvantage
of this incubator is because it's such a tall unit
is that it's a still air. And what happens
and still are incubators is that the air stratify eyes
and it's always hotter at the coil than it is
down below. So if you're reading the temperature and
it's still our incubators, such as a transparent hand
, Make sure that you read the temperature close to
the eggs and where the eggs will be sitting on
the tray, otherwise it may get too warm.
Mhm. The next unit here is another, the
new most popular one and this is the old harbor
bater, the round hub invader, It has a
round tray, a couple of small water pans in
the center, It holds up to 45- 50
eggs easily. This here unit has its coil up
here is also still air. These work fine except
for it's hard to keep a good set humidity in
this because the water pans in the center are so
small. If you've got one of these, it's
highly recommended to find yourself a couple of extra water
pans to keep the humidity up in the incubator,
increase the water surface area. All you need to
do is get some pie pot pans um or any
type of Petri dish. Anything will work fine and
add a couple of those in there until the eggs
hatch, then remove them so the chicks don't drown
. But that'll keep your humidity up. And that's
really the only difficulty we have with these. The
parts are very easy to find. The final one
is a new state of the art one which is
very inexpensive compared to most of these other ones,
it has a fan. It has the element has
a clear clear plastic top. What's really the advantage
over this one over any other one that's out right
now is that you can see all the eggs at
all times. You don't have to lift the top
off to look at them. You don't have to
worry about a thing. Another nice part about this
unit. It has its own fan unit. This
fan also circulates the air meaning you have better control
over temperature and if you don't have to worry about
the air stratify ng and getting too hot at the
surface of the eggs. This incubator right now Probably
is available for somewhere around$50. And compared to
the turn x. And the very far end here
, which usually costs somewhere close to 120 today.
So these here right now are probably one of the
best incubators you can get for a school program.
They're inexpensive, easy to clean. These are the
four main incubators used in school programs today. That
will briefly give you an idea of some of the
incubators used in a school program. And you may
need to look at these incubators and decide which is
best for your purpose. If you're doing an experiment
and you need more eggs, you're going to need
larger area for the eggs. So you might want
to get one of the large incubators. But if
you're just hatching the eggs in a school setting,
the smaller turn extends and some of these things may
be the best buys for your school system. Now
, just a few other concerns. I obviously could
teach a semester course on basics about poultry. Well
obviously we can't do that in two hours. So
I've just covered upon some of the things that are
commonly asked questions and interests to the students and teachers
. Some of the other things within your resource packet
, which we'll be covering in a second that you've
gotten at your on site location. We've put a
quiz in there just for your benefit when you first
got to keep your curiosity up. But the answers
are right on the back of that and that might
give you some fun little things also, but along
with that, there is a fact sheet in your
packet called what is a chicken and that. Their
covers a lot of the real basic questions and some
even more specific questions that are commonly asked within the
school systems. Um, and I commonly get through
the phone or the mail now, what since we've
covered some of the basics about poultry and eggs in
general, what I want to get into now is
the meat of the program. What type of resources
are available to you in this program and some other
activities and programs you can do within this. First
of all, we'll look at the project Resources.
First of all, we've got a packet in front
of you in which we've got all the literature resources
that I've got at this time in this packet and
all of you should have gotten this on site.
If you haven't checked with your facilitator on site and
see that you get one of these after the program's
over. First of all, I've got that brief
little quiz test on there and we don't need to
look at that because you all have that in front
of you. The next thing we have is what
we have is the literature and the visual aids fact
sheet that's available for this program. The 1st 4
are the publications that are available. The last four
our VCR tapes, uh slide sets and other videotapes
available for the movie. Next we've got resource sheet
about other sources and we'll talk about that answers.
The next one is answers to embryology questions most commonly
asking this program this year is helpful if you've got
commonly asked questions then we've got the beginning of life
leaders manual. The beginning of the life vocabulary studies
the beginning of life members guide in the beginning of
life record book. The rest of your packet in
front of you is a number of fact sheets that
we'll be using as through the rest of the program
. So as we talk about things, the rest
of the program, you might want to leave through
these one by one. As we cover this on
the videotapes of the program. The first one is
sources for all those incubators we just covered. Where
can you purchase these? The next one deals with
the proper care and maintenance of incubator. We'll be
covering that segment next. So we'll just set the
package down for the time being. The next thing
that we supply within the program are the eggs and
what's available through Virginia tech. As far as eggs
for the program free of charge. Our chicken eggs
, white or brown. And here we have three
different types of chicken eggs. Those are available on
request through your county extension agent for people enrolled in
the program. The other thing we have available on
a very limited basis. Our cartoonists are japanese quail
eggs. These are experimental quail not to be released
in the wild, but more or less pets.
These are all available through our extension program. Then
just since we're on the egg aspect, I thought
I'd show you some of the different types of eggs
since it's a commonly asked question And I'll move some
of the chicken eggs out of the way. 1st
. First we've got a turkey egg. It's quite
a bit larger but it's kind of freckled, that's
the common turkey egg. Then we've got a pinfall
leg about the same size of turkey egg but more
of a steady light brown. Here is a pheasant
egg small doesn't take. Then we've got a goose
egg. So those are some different eggs that if
you want to get some of these other things for
your program and hatch them in your schools. That's
fine. But you'll need to find the source of
those eggs yourself. The next thing I want to
talk about real quickly is other resources available. And
what we've got here is two books that I found
that that really are quite helpful in the program.
And the first one we've got here is called the
eggs. Just eggs, period nature's perfect package by
robert Burton. And this is a fantastic book for
school programs. Elementary and middle school especially. But
high schools can use it quite well too what it
does. And it has beautiful color photos throughout the
book. What it does is it covers eggs from
insects all the way through mammals. So it really
gets into the embryology quite well and explains the difference
between the different species. Fantastic book to look into
for the high school and even some of the middle
school programs. Something that is much more um specific
to embryology and development is it's a practical guide for
a lab manual, more or less it's called coordinate
development. And it is very, it has some
beautiful graphics, color graphics and mounts. It tells
about experiments that can be run how to discern against
the method erman ectodermal and get into the very specifics
of the project. It also has a number of
lab activities. It's a very good book to look
into. Finally, one other source of information are
two biological companies that are very accessible through the schools
and we've got them on the monitor right now.
We'll bring them up. And the two outside resource
companies that I really recommend you look into if you
have additional funds is Ward's National Natural Science Incorporated or
Carolina biological supply. Most biology teachers have access to
these catalogs or if not you can contact these companies
and get catalogs. They carry everything from live mount
are dead mounts in plastic. Two slides to film
to a number of different overheads and other educational resources
. Now, what we need to do since we've
got those resources, we've got our eggs, we've
got our incubators. What we need to look at
is the proper maintenance of your incubator within the schools
incubator. Um maintenance and cleaning is a very important
part of the project in order for the incubator to
work year in year out properly. You need to
clean it out well before and immediately after you get
done using it here's a TURN X which has been
used and you can see it's quite dirty and what
we'll do here is just go through quickly and and
show you what needs to be done to do this
properly. First of all you need to take it
apart a little bit and get some of the parts
spread out. The easiest thing to do is first
of all remove all the loose shells and any loose
down in these type of things into a trash container
. A brush, A fine brush will help you
do this also. But a lot of times they'll
be fastened to it quite tightly and you may have
to soak it. Mhm. After you remove most
of the solid waste material and the dried waste material
, it usually works best if you take and use
a sink which I have here just to soak the
container and I'm just putting it in the water for
right now to soak it while we're letting that soak
a little bit. What I'm going to do in
this case here is very carefully remove the fan units
so that I can brush out some of that down
. It's very important that you do not touch the
element with anything your hands never touched element no matter
what you have. Don't touch it. Okay.
And what I'm going to do here is very gently
, very gently take this brush and wipe out all
the down and things that have gotten up top and
in the fan unit get out as much as the
solid material as possible. Don't worry about trying to
get everything because some of it's gonna stick a little
bit, you're not gonna get it all out with
the brush. Don't worry about some of the solid
material. Because what we do then is we take
us any kind of glass cleaner dampen a paper towel
. Now what we do is we take a paper
towel and without touching elements. Again don't touch the
elements because if you get a chemical on there or
get them wet it may affect them or partially damaged
them without realizing it. Then very carefully wipe out
as much of this solid material as possible. They'll
clean it up. These are one of the more
difficult incubators to clean properly because you have some units
in the way. But with a little bit of
patience you'll get it pretty clean. Okay? After
you remove that material, you'll need to put this
top portion back in place. Don't force anything.
If something goes hard, take it look at it
and take your time and put it back properly because
you don't want to take any chance of damaging anything
. If you notice this one's been through a lot
. It's been scratched up and beat up pretty good
. But once you clean out and keep this dome
clean, if you don't clean this every time it'll
get to a point where this is nothing but solid
down and you won't be able to see in there
at all anymore. Okay, while I've done this
, as you remember, my bottom has been soaking
in water and when you're cleaning the bottom portion,
never never use any type of chemicals, harsh chemicals
. If you're gonna use anything, use some type
of a bleach, a straight bleach solution usually work
fine, maybe about 25% bleach solution at the most
in water, put it in the sink, let
it soak for a while if you need to if
you can't, if it just doesn't come off with
a little bit of spray. Use possibly a sponge
to wipe away some of the dirt materials that stuck
to the incubator bottom. Sometimes in some of the
other incubator units. A wire brush or a small
cleaning brush also is helpful but do your best to
clean out these little compartments and make sure you get
as much dirt out of there as possible because with
the dirt in there it gives bacteria a place to
survive and multiplying before you know it, you'll have
a badly infected incubator and you'll have poor hatch ability
from bacterial infection. Also fungus and other molds will
grow an incubator if you don't clean it out as
much as possible when you get it clean, make
sure that you rinse it and you're gonna want to
let it sit out to dry. Make sure before
you store the incubator after you use it that it's
very dry and it's been sitting out for a couple
of days but set it in a safe place where
it can't be knocked off a table top or in
a heavy traffic area. Remember the important things in
cleaning incubators never use harsh chemicals or detergents. What
will happen is that plastic and especially styrofoam incubators will
sometimes absorb the harsh chemicals and when you turn incubator
on next year, those chemicals will still be in
there and it will actually kill the embryos from the
toxic fumes. So be careful not to do that
. Also before you put your incubator away, make
any note of something that may be wrong with it
if it hasn't been heating up properly. If your
water bottles cracked, if your dome is cracked,
if there's something wrong with it now is the time
to replace it or fix it so that next year
when you pull it out of the closet and have
your eggs there that you don't have to do it
then because then it's usually too late. That's a
very important part of project for those who have been
in the program for a long time. But now
we're really going to get into the meat of the
program for everyone involved, the proper setup and operation
of the incubator. Embryology must schedule, there's some
things that you must do if you're going to have
a successful program. One of the first things is
make sure that you set your project up on some
dates when you're going to be around school, Don't
set it up on a holiday or so it's in
the middle of incubation cycle easter rolls around, make
sure you set it up well in advance. Also
secure your incubator well in advance. Don't wait until
a week before you want to start the program and
hope that you've got an incubator available. Make sure
it's there well in advance and it's working also before
you even get your eggs plan on how you're gonna
what you're gonna do with the chicks and how you're
gonna disperse the chicks after the program. Especially if
you're in the city schools, you don't have very
many farm kids available in your class to take the
chicks home with you. There's a couple ways of
going this route. You can contact the local farmer
and your unit, you can contact the local zoo
. Many local zoos are more than willing to take
care of chicks if they're set up for them or
if you've got a member in your class or teacher
in your school who has a small farm, they
can also take them. Also. Now once you
get to that point, order your eggs, order
your eggs through your local extension agent. And if
you're doing a science project, order an extra half
a dozen to a dozen beyond what you'd like to
hatch so that you don't use all your eggs up
doing experiments and are stuck with nothing hatching at the
end. Now also prepare your youth for the program
before you start the program explain to them why eggs
have to be turned, why temperature, humidity And
some of the things are so important that we have
already talked about. If they are aware of these
important aspects of incubation, they'll be able to watch
for some of the sure tell signs of failure setting
up the incubator. What I would do is 24
hours at least before you the eggs arrive set up
the incubator and have it plugged in so that everything
is working properly. This incubator is plugged in.
It's working it's starting to give us heat and everything's
in place. When you set up the incubator for
two days, make sure you've got two thermometers inside
the unit. Place the thermometers as such so that
the ball with the thermometer. Is it about that
egg yolk height Because that's where you really want the
temperature to be effective. Then place the incubator back
on top of there and make sure the temperature comes
up. Make sure that in the still air incubator
, the temperature reaches approximately 101° in the forest area
computer one with a fan, make sure that the
temperature reaches about 99 a half degrees to 99 degrees
. Never let your incubator get above 103°. If the
incubator gets above 103° for a prolonged period of time
. When the eggs are there, it will kill
the embryos once you get the, you know that
the temperature is up and you don't have to do
any repairing to the incubator and such, add your
water to the incubator unit. And as you notice
here, when I removed the incubator surface, I
always set it down and trap the heat back between
the table and the incubator. I don't turn the
incubator up and let all the heat and humidity out
. I trap the heat and humidity under the incubator
surface. When you add water, make sure that
you add water that's warm to the touch. Just
like you're testing a baby bottle. If it's warm
to the touch of your wrist, it should be
the proper temperature. In other words, you don't
want to add cold tap water, That's 55,
60° into 100 degree incubator. You want to add
water that's approximately the same temperature. So you don't
shock the eggs or the incubator once the program has
started. However, beforehand, it doesn't make much
difference if you're just testing, but fill the trays
with water. So you build up some humidity in
this type of styrofoam incubator, it's always best to
add a few trays of water in the incubator before
you add your eggs. That way you can keep
your humidity very high and not have to worry about
the eggs drying out. Now that the incubators ready
, you've had it going for 24 hours, it's
held its temperature for about 24 hours. It's all
ready to go. Now. Get your eggs when
you get your eggs, let them sit out at
room temperature for approximately two hours before you want to
sell them an incubator. What this does is it
takes them away from that proper storage temperature of 55-60°F
and helps them warm gradually up to room temperature.
And then you can put them in an incubator and
it won't be nearly as much of a shock for
the incubator or the eggs. Also at the same
time that you're getting your eggs while you're putting your
eggs out to warm. Warm up to room temperature
. You may want to start getting your calendar ready
. And what I suggest that all schools do is
they get themselves a calendar and they make sure that
they put the eggs the day they set the eggs
and you can even make up a nice fancy calendar
if you'd like. But all you need to do
is have a calendar in which you can make check
marks so that every time you turn them you put
the mark that's facing up on the egg and we'll
mark the eggs in a second. But whoever turns
the egg, make sure that they put that mark
that's up when they turn them. So each day
you should have three marks on the calendar. Also
have a calendar there for the what the day that
the eggs are expected to hatch. Many schools as
in this room. Salem school that we've took footage
from last spring. They will set up a wall
calendar in which the youth can write in things that
have happened along the day. The daily cycle of
the embryology period. This may vary from just writing
down what you the youth observed through some of these
other experimental projects that we do. Or it may
just be in writing down the daily temperature or writing
down who turned the eggs and these type of activities
. But this wall calendar works quite well in most
programs now that we've got the calendar ready and the
eggs are at room temperature. We need to do
a few things first of all we need to take
before we set the eggs in their place. We
need to write it. Mark an X. With
a pencil On one side of the egg, turn
the egg all the way around and place an order
on the other side of the egg. X.
And O. The reason we do this is so
that when we turn the eggs, we always know
that the same sides are always up. Otherwise you
wouldn't be able to tell if you've turned the egg
a full turn what you need to do, you
need to go through and mark all your eggs before
you set them. For purposes of example, I'll
only do a few eggs here today so that you
can see what I'm trying to demonstrate. It is
strongly suggested that you don't put the use names or
initials on any in given egg. Some teachers have
been known to do this, but the problem with
that is is if that certain use egg doesn't hatch
, they seem to be less important than the rest
of the youth that have their eggs hatch in the
class and it becomes a more of a game and
a little battle than a successful program now that you've
got your eggs marked, set the eggs in the
incubator. I'll set all the os up in this
incubator. Now in most school programs, if you've
got a large number of eggs, this incubator will
be quite full at this time. You can remove
one therm thermometer because this by now one of the
two thermometers should be accurate and you should have said
that. So removing one thermometer will be helpful in
adding room. However, in this still the still
air styrofoam incubator, I still recommend that you use
the two water pans. Either be it a Petri
dish or pot pie pans as extra water pans that'll
keep your humidity up as soon as you put those
eggs in close the incubator up, you will notice
that the temperature and the incubator will not be back
to the normal temperature immediately. It'll usually take anywhere
from six, 3-6 hours for that temperature to come
back up to the proper temperature and hold their at
a constant pace. Do not adjust the thermostat to
change that temperature. Once you've got set, the
temperature will come back to normal as soon as it
gets the eggs warmed to the incubator temperature. One
thing that you need to do before you set the
eggs. And it would be helpful for the program
since they usually go through a lot of traveling before
they get to your program is to candle the eggs
with the candler that you may have made earlier.
And canceling does nothing more than putting an egg up
to a light and looking for a distinct crack in
the egg structure. It'll show up as a real
white line when you put it up to a candling
light, don't set these eggs. These eggs will
not hatch when you crack an egg. What happens
? It increases the possibility of bacteria getting into the
shell and at the same time the egg loses its
moisture much more rapidly, causing it to more or
less dehydrate and not hatch Now daily. You're gonna
have to turn these eggs at least three times a
day. The reason I say an odd number of
times a day is because that way the same side
doesn't end up for the whole night period every time
. And I'll show you that in a second.
Also before you turn your eggs always have your water
available to add and remember it needs to be warm
water so that you don't shock the eggs and incubator
but have it ready when you go into turn the
eggs so you can add everything at the same time
. When you turn the eggs, do it rapidly
, make sure always to put that incubator hood down
normal so that you don't let all the hot air
out, add your water to any pans that might
be low, then turn your eggs and just give
them a solid rotation. You don't have to be
real careful. You don't want to be too rough
but you don't have to worry about being extra careful
. But some of the kids can be a little
rough now just for demonstration purposes, I'll explain to
you why we should turn the eggs three times a
day. If an egg starts up at eight o'clock
in the morning with the X. Up and you
get the school in the morning. You turn the
egg the os up. If you only turn it
two times a day and turn them. When you
go home, you turn it at night, before
you go home, the X. Is up again
all night long, the same side that was up
the night before. What that means is that the
Exide tends to be up for about two thirds two
thirds longer than the other side and what happens is
the yolk slowly and gradually floats towards the surface of
the egg. And when that happens the member it
will stick to the membranes damaged embryo and many times
will not hatch. So what you wanna do if
possible, doing an odd number of times a day
. Three times is usually best but go from the
X to the old. Then at lunchtime, turn
it again, then just before you go home at
night, turn it again and he owes up.
So you have a different side up each night.
Make sure that you only go in the incubator to
briefly take out a few eggs. To do an
experiment turn the eggs or to add water and that's
all. Don't let the incubator open any longer than
you have 23 days before they plan to hatch.
Stop turning the eggs only go in incubator maybe once
a day to fill the water pans with water.
And if you're successful In 21 days, the end
result should be, yeah, hatching eggs and chicks
. One thing to remember if you do have a
styrofoam incubator and have extra water pans, remove the
water pans before the chicks begin to hatch. To
remove any possibility of the chick falling in and drowning
and making it a negative experience. one thing that's
really interesting about a chicken is it's got a thing
called an egg tooth and the egg tooth serves for
nothing other than a tool to get out of the
egg. And you can see here on a chick
that's starting to come out of the egg at the
very tip of its beak, there's a little bit
of a yellow or a slightly different colored segment on
the tip of their beak and there's a little hump
on that. But what that is, that's the
bird's egg tooth. And what he does is he
uses that as a chisel to help him work his
way through that hard shell all the way around the
egg. And you can notice on 11 that has
hatched here that this chick also has its egg tooth
left, but you're starting to see a white edge
along the top and side. And what happens as
soon as he's done using that tool, it dries
up and falls off and then it has a normal
beef, just like a chicken would But you can
see this one here hasn't been out too long either
. But after about 12 hours they'll lose that and
fall off. So make sure to pay attention to
your chicks as they're hatching and look for that egg
tooth because within the 1st 12 hours that will fall
off and you'll never see it again. It's just
a quick summary of the proper setup and operation of
an incubator Be sure the incubator operates properly for at
least 24 hours before the eggs are set. Use
two Thermometers to ensure proper temperature readings. Set up
the incubator in controlled environment. Do not set it
up near sunday windows heaters or drafts number each egg
and mark each egg with an X. And an
old before setting. Turn eggs three times daily and
at least once daily on weekends. Never go longer
than 24 hours without turning the eggs. Keep water
trays full at all times, add additional water,
two trays if necessary, observed the incubator and eggs
to monitor success candle the eggs on ninth day to
ensure embryos are developing. Stop turning the eggs three
days before hatching time, Prepace Bruder three days before
the hatching time. Do not help chicks out of
the egg, Remove the chicks as soon as they
are dry and fluffy or within 6-12 hours after they
hatch. That's some real quick success ways of operating
an incubator. If you follow all those steps,
your chance for success is very great. Now we'll
take a quick eight minute break and come back and
show you some of the activities that can be done
along with this program on and look at some of
the process of embryonic development with some slides here Here
we have a 24 hour embryo. Notice that the
blast co Durham has the cells have divided thousands and
thousands of times until we've come up with this large
halo type ring. In the next slide we have
an embryo that's just a little over 48 hours old
. You can start to see the blood vessels and
blood vein networks developing. Here we have a close
up of about a 60-hour embryo. Notice the very
question mark like shape of the embryo at this time
. In the middle there you see a very dense
red area in the middle of the question mark.
That is what's beginning to be the heart. It
is a three chambered heart at this time and you
can see it pumping blood. In this slide we
have an embryo which is more around the four day
age mark. You can see already in the very
uh there's two distinct dark spots in this embryo.
The one highest in the in the monitor is the
developing of the eye. Just below that. You
can see the heart. Now just to the left
of both of those dark areas. You see a
small bulged area that is the beginning of the brain
and the next slide We have a six day embryo
Again here you can see the eye very well formed
at this point, just above the eye. You
can see the bulge which is becoming the brain at
this point. The heart is encased within the body
cavity. Then just a little bit lower and to
the left of the eye. You see a light
area that is the starting of the wing bud.
In the next slide we have removed a six day
old embryo from the membrane sacs here. You can
really see the I. And the bulge at this
point. It really doesn't even represent or look like
an embryo. The next slide we have an eight
day old embryo. You can see here that the
membrane sacs, the yolk sac, al intoned alito's
. All these membrane sacs are getting so thick that
you can barely see the embryo anymore. In the
next slide, we have separated an eight day embryo
from the membranes here. You can see even at
the very far left there, the foot, the
actual forming of the foot. You can see the
beak the eyes and the other limbs coming into form
. Now from 8 to 14 days of age,
you're going to start to be able to see it
to look like an embryo. And that's where you
have to start deciding if you're going to stay with
it and observe it after this point or not.
Some important things that we need to discuss at this
point. Our how do you handle these eggs to
make sure that you've got more of a success and
you get that kind of embryonic development to see in
the first place. Let's talk about a couple of
these things. Transportation handling and storage Transportation is very
important that before you put these eggs in the incubator
that you storm no longer than 10 days. I
say seven usually at the most but 10 days can
be done if it's done properly But keep them as
fresh as possible storm at a temperature around 55°F With
about 75-80% humidity, ideal storage conditions and embryo will
last a long time in this condition. However,
you put that egg in a 75 degree room for
23 hours. You can drop the quality of the
egg so far and absorb, have so much moisture
evaporate from that egg that it could be very detrimental
to the embryo. So keep that in mind if
you are stuck and forced to store the eggs for
more than a day, More than even 12 hours
outside of a perfect environment. I'd rather see you
put them in a styrofoam egg carton and place them
in refrigerator. I don't want you storing them that
way for a long period of time, but for
a short period of time it is much more beneficial
to that embryo that it is storing it in a
warm office, a warm library or wherever you're storing
these eggs. Finally, why is humidity temperature and
turning so important to this program. First of all
, the turning, like I said earlier keeps that
embryo from getting close to shell, man brains and
sticking well turning them prevents that. However, the
lack of humidity can complicate the matters more by losing
moisture within that egg during the incubation cycle. If
the water turns to more like a jelly solution and
embryo has to exercise to form properly and live well
. Have you ever tried exercising in jelly versus maybe
taking a swim in a pool? You wouldn't get
real far? I would bet in a jelly jello
swimming pool versus a liquid swimming pool. And it's
the same situation for the embryo. And I just
want to discuss those now before we went on to
some of the other activities and I'll discuss more at
the end of the program. Now let's get on
to some of the act other activities that you can
do in this program. And the 1st 1 is
teaching life skills. This program can be used to
teach life skills such as math percentages and fractions.
Can also be used to teach graphing graft, weigh
the eggs to the length of the cycle and see
the slight decline in and wait and graft it,
read the temperature dr off thermometers. You can read
the temperatures, wet bulb thermometers and develop a humidity
reading and then compare or translate the difference between Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit and centigrade writing. You can write short stories
about the experiences or brief. Um Experiment that you
might do reading, tie this into reading books related
to eggs, birds and human development calendar skills.
This is especially important for elementary schools, teach them
how to use a calendar and keep records, recording
temperature yearly hatch records and observations are very, very
important measuring skills. Again, the dimensions with a
ruler, temperature with a thermometer and wait with the
scales. These are some of the life skills that
can be taught in this program for an example.
Now the next thing we want to look at is
something I think everybody that does this program should do
and that is canceling the egg to construct an overhead
candler. Some of the things that you'll be needing
first of all as an overhead, Then what you'll
need is 11 x 11 or a foot square piece
of cardboard, a pencil box or an old slide
box. Any kind of box that you have around
the classroom will do and some tape. Then what
you need to do basically is you need to take
your foot by foot piece of cardboard and you want
to cut a hole in that cardboard, the same
exact size is the box that you're planning to use
so that the box very simply slips to the whole
. Once you've got to come to that part,
what you want to do next is to cut an
egg shaped hole in the top of your box.
I've already done this because it's going to take a
little time in planning the whole. Usually if it's
approximately 1.5 inches by one and three quarter inches is
usually approximately a proper size for a large egg.
Now you're going to need to adjust this slightly as
you use your eggs. So you don't have a
lot of light leakage around the outside edge. Light
leakage will cause too much blow on the outside of
the egg and you won't be able to see what's
really going on inside the egg. Once you've cut
your hole in the cardboard, cut the hole in
the box, all you need to do is fasten
the box a piece of cardboard. I found that
using heavy duty packing tape probably works the best.
All you need to do to fasten it. Mhm
was to run a few pieces of tape on each
corner and you've got an overhead candler. Now the
purpose of using it, you may want to in
the classroom also make this a bit stronger because when
a lot of people are handling it, if you
tape all the way around the top and the bottom
, it'll be much sturdier and last for a longer
period of time. All you need to do then
to candle the eggs is place the one by one
ft square or 11 by 11 piece of cardboard over
the top of the glass and the overhead projector so
that you cover the whole surface area of the light
. Then you can turn on the candler or the
overhead and you'll notice that the light shines directly through
that hole. Then the candle your egg, all
you need to do is set the egg on top
of the egg shaped hole. You'll notice that there
will be some light leakage around the outside the egg
. But hopefully you can limit that as much as
possible. And cutting a smaller than smaller hole than
the size of the egg. As you notice the
egg stands well above the candling surface and you can
also see the glow of the egg. Now if
you do this daily or every three days with your
incubated eggs, you will see the following results.
This is a cracked egg. Do not incubate cracked
eggs. It will not hatch because of the crack
in the shell, it loses the moisture and has
a chance for taking on bacteria during the incubation cycle
. This is a non fertile egg. This is
distressed importance of candling the eggs. If you notice
that this egg is totally clear and has a glow
a half moon glow to it. Here is a
late stage non fertile egg. Notice the the air
cell and unobstructed glow of the egg. This is
a 60 hour embryo notice the very fine vein structuring
and the small embryo in the center. Here's a
90 old embryo. This one here is not nearly
as easy to see the embryo because it is surrounded
by various sacks. At this stage. Here's a
12 day embryo notice the movement. What is going
on right now is the embryo is moving around and
exercising. Here's a 15 day old embryo again,
you'll see some movement but also noticed is very dark
. You cannot see much clear fluid area. All
you see is some veins and some large dark shadows
. Here is the 18 to 19 day Embryo who
has broken through the air cell. Notice the beak
on the air cell end of the egg. At
this stage, the embryo is making a transition from
a non breathing to a breathing animal. As it
breaks through the air cell. It takes its first
breaths and you may hear it beginning to cheap.
And here is a 19 day embryo which has not
broken through the air sac. Yet notice the large
air cell and the other end of egg is nothing
but a dark mass. That was a real quick
candling segment and I think that's a real important part
of the program that can really help you eliminate problems
along the way. Now I want to look at
something else that is a really good activity. The
shell window and in vitro observation of the embryo.
The shell window is a fascinating way of displaying live
chick embryos at the same time. It's playing the
day to day development of the embryo. What we're
gonna do here now is put together or develop a
shell window as we call it. And shell window
is nothing more than opening up the air cell end
of the egg And displaying the embryo from about 48
hours and watching it develop in a daily process by
covering it with possibly some some some saran wrap.
What we will do first is we'll need to break
the air cell end of the egg. I suggest
that you candle your eggs before you do this experiment
to make sure that the egg is fertile and at
the same time make sure approximately where that air cell
is located in the large end of the egg.
I find it much easier if we have a pedestal
or stand. And what I've done, napkin holders
worked pretty good also. But what I've done is
I've just taken an old wood block and drilled a
hole through it and the whole the whole somewhere around
an inch to an inch and a quarter in diameter
. That's approximately all you'll need. Yeah, all
you need is something mainly so the egg can stand
on its small end egg carton will even work.
What I've done is set it on the pedestal.
The first thing I'm going to do is take with
the blunt end of the tweezers, gently crack that
portion in the large sell air cell end of the
egg. Once you've punctured that very carefully remove some
of the shell away from the whole. Be very
careful not to take off large chunks of the shell
because you may rip off more shell and more membrane
than you want to and rip into the developing embryo
. On accident. Once you've developed a small hole
, take a small scissors, manicure scissors or any
type of small scissors works just fine. Then what
you'd like to do is you wanna very gently cut
down the side of the eggshell until you can see
where the membrane membranes touch. Once you get to
the point where the membranes touch and you can see
in there quite well when you're close, you want
to cut a circle around the air cell where the
membranes meet. Have the tweezers handy because you'll have
a lot of small Shelby breeze and membranes fall into
the air cell end in most middle schools and high
schools. The students do this type of experiment by
themselves in elementary schools. It suggested that the teacher
does it for the youth. Okay, we're just
about to a point where we want to be.
You want to meet up the edges a little bit
because you're going to be putting a piece of saran
wrap on here or a cover sheet to cover and
keep from keep the bacteria from getting in there.
Because this year embryo after you open this up will
live From anywhere from 6 to 12 days. We've
had some live longer. Okay, now that we've
removed the shell all the way around, what I'll
be doing is taking a small eye dropper. And
putting some water on this membrane. The inner shell
membrane. What this water does. Is it moist
thins the membrane so that's easily removed without breaking some
of these fine blood vessels that are just under the
surface. Now with the tweezers. Very gently,
just real carefully pull up on the membrane until you
puncture the membrane After you puncture the memory just grab
ahold of an edge and very slowly, very slowly
tear the membrane off across in a circular motion and
you'll be able to start seeing when the membranes pull
off and are free from the area. It starts
to look quite fascinating at this stage. This is
approximately 60 our embryo And most people do it between
48 and 60 hours is when they'll make their shell
windows so they can see the drastic development from this
stage through the next four days. Then what I'm
going to do here is I'm gonna take some Vaseline
petroleum jelly, any type of material do. And
very gently put a coating all the way around the
outside edge of this shell window. What we're doing
right now is we're forming a seal by putting a
little bit of Vaseline on on the edge of this
shell and putting some plastic wrap over that we will
be creating a sealed environment so bacteria and air can't
get in if you seal it up properly and don't
let those bacteria or Aaron. What you will do
will be able to keep the embryo alive for a
longer period of time, mm hmm. And the
longer you keep it alive, the more the youth
will gain from the experiment. Open up the plastic
wrap and very carefully center and set it on top
of the opening. Then what you need to do
just very carefully with your fingers. Just run your
fingers along the outside edge of it and help create
a seal. Now this here creates a small glare
when you've got bright lights on in your classroom.
But you, once you put it back in the
incubator, you'll be able to see it just fine
. What many many teachers will do is they'll open
up the egg on a friday afternoon At this stage
, somewhere between 48 and 60 hours and then come
back monday. And he will show the kids with
the youth what had happened After a three day weekend
. And you see quite drastic changes from this stage
To approximately six days. Most of development will take
place in those three days and you'll come back and
you'll have what will resemble a chick on monday now
that we've put the saran wrap all the way around
the egg like this, you've got your shell window
. Then what you can do is you can take
the pedestal and very carefully put it back in the
incubator. Always let it on the pedestal because the
pedestal helped keep the liquids from flowing out. Okay
, one thing that you may want to consider is
when you do take these embryos out to observe when
you do take these embryos out to deserve and you
really want to look at certain things very specifically.
You can very carefully remove the saran wrap each day
. But I recommend you put on a new piece
of saran wrap every day when you get done doing
this. Also for viewing purposes, a magnifying glass
comes in quite helpful in observing the very intricate details
of the embryo in its developmental stages. Now we'll
go into and show you some of the different stages
of development through the shell window. The first one
here is you're 48-60. Our embryo here, you
notice very small vein structure. The embryo is in
very center. It barely looks like a chick,
what it looks like. It's just a long column
. The center Embryo is a six day old embryo
. And here you'll notice you can start seeing more
defined vein structure. And you'll also see a dark
spot in the center there, what you're seeing there
is the chicks, I the I the brain,
the heart, the most of the sensory organs and
that really defined hardworking organs that we do have developed
first. That's why the head and the eye is
so much larger in proportion to the rest of the
body as we see it. Now, the limbs
and the other things have not quite developed to a
point where you can make them out yet in this
embryo we move on to the nine day embryo,
which is the farthest one to your right. We
have a number of large vessels what you're seeing here
is one of the sacks you're not quite seeing the
chick because the chick has turned itself around. The
chick will move when it starts getting this age quite
a bit and by doing its movements and its motions
. It moves itself around in different portions of the
egg. But you can slightly see it there in
the corner. And if we sat long enough we'd
probably come to the surface again. But you never
know now I'm going to show you how we open
an egg into the plastic so that we have a
viable embryo for display. This is that piece of
PVC pipe that I told you about remember that was
10 ft in length. And we cut it in
this case we cut it with a band saw,
but you can cut it with a hand saw most
anything. And then we touched it up a little
bit with sandpaper to get rid of the rough edges
. So that's that apartment. This is going to
be the cradle for that embryo. The next thing
we do is we take a piece of plastic wrap
, tear it off and lay it across like this
. Now the next thing that you do is you
take a rubber band Like this four fingers like that
and slide that over the top of this. Now
this makes the plastic wrap drum tight, like a
trampoline. You don't want that, you want to
take that rubber band now and raise it up so
that you have made a little cradle for that embryo
. Normally you would use a three D. Embryo
but we had an accident. And as a consequence
these embryos that I will be opening today are only
two days to day embryos. And what you do
is you mark on the egg, the date on
which the egg was set In this case it was
the 11th. You don't have to put the months
Because if you go to the 11th of the next
month, you're in trouble. You're going to have
an explosion. And so just put the date on
which you said it and then you know the days
from them and today happens to be the 13th.
And so this is a two day embryo. I
would wish that it was a four day embryo,
three day embryo. But it is not Now.
You may ask, why do I insist on a
three day ambulance. Well, we have found in
our research that we can break a fresh fertile egg
into here and they will grow and develop and live
to be about seven or eight days of age.
But when we open a three day embryo, somehow
or other, it has gotten a superior start and
they will live to be 17, 18 day embryos
. In fact in the last two months we've had
to Embryos live to 22 days of age Right away
. That brings up a question embryos. Chicken embryos
normally hatch in 21 days. Why 22 days.
Well they may be 22 days chronologically. But physiologically
there only about 17 or 18 days. And the
reason for that is simply this. We've taken away
the shell. You will see that in a moment
. We've also put it in an environment which is
very unusual. And yet thankfully this membrane, this
plastic is permissible, permits oxygen, carbon dioxide transfer
and things of that sort. And so this is
only a two day embryo in there. If there
is an embryo in there, it could be that
the egg is infertile. Heaven forbid since we're on
television. But we're going to chance it. Normally
you would have candle this egg to see that there
was an embryo in there. And this will be
another sequence that we will have in the future on
candling eggs. As a means of observing living growing
embryos. Okay, so here we go. Now
then you take the egg. And and you can
do this, we're going to give the egg a
good crack from the bottom. And the reason we
can do that is that at this time the embryo
is near the top service City. And and we
will not be harming any of the the parts of
the embryo. It's extra embryonic membranes and things of
that sort. So with that we're gonna give this
a good crack. Making sure that I rupture the
shell and the inner shell membranes and into woops there
it is. Okay, so there's the shell.
now we're putting that aside and now we're losing the
calcium and the various other minerals that are essential for
the full development of the embryo. Someone observing this
uh film will come up with the answer that we
can get these embryos to live that will come in
the future. The embryo at this moment is on
the bottom. And you want to see the embryo
. So what I'm going to do is take my
finger and gently rotate this egg or the yoke so
that the embryo is up on top. And right
now I don't know how close that camera can get
in but there is a little tiny blood ring right
there. Remember this is not a three day embryo
. It was a three day embryo. You would
see the question mark shape of the embryo and the
heart beating in it at the moment. Right?
There is a blood ring from which the embryo is
receiving the nutrients which will help it to grow and
develop. Alright now then after we've done that,
we now want to we now want to put a
piece of saran across the top. Cover it up
. It's a half a foot mm hmm. They're
off another piece of saran. I shouldn't have said
that commercial there plastic wrap. Take another rubber band
. Same technique like this. Put it over there
now we want this to be drum tight. All
right, okay now we're ready to put it back
in the incubator. After we trim it up.
You could put it back in with uh this access
on there but you'll find it gets in the way
. So I cut that off and before we put
it back in, we're going to label it.
We're going to label it with the date on which
the the egg was set and the date on which
it was opened. And then you have all of
the information that you need on that particular embryo.
Now, as you observe this five day embryo,
the most conspicuous part is the eye with the hole
in the middle of it, The pupil About 7
30 from the eye is the heart beating and directly
over the heart is a little finger like projection,
which is the wing bud. And then continuing down
from there is the I don't believe you can see
that at least I can't would be the leg buds
. And then of course the large uh tail.
But notice even at this early stage the embryo is
rocking, exercising. All living things have to move
if they're going to do grow and develop and the
supplies and to the intellect the spirit. All parts
of us. This is an eight day embryo and
notice that it is considerably larger than the five day
embryos. The embryos essentially double their size each day
. Notice this embryo rocking. Let's see the motion
in there in the amniotic sac. But again notice
the eye. The embryo is on its left side
looking at you with its right eye, the heart
, the curvature of the neck going down around from
the eye down to the body. The wing buds
over the heart. And you can see the heart
pulsating in there and notice how the network of blood
vessels is extending out to pick up the oxygen for
respiration and the underlying network of blood vessels. To
pick up the nutrients, observe the embryo rocking rolling
, exercising in the amniotic sac. Clear fluid.
Later on that you actually will see the embryo or
at least I hope you will see the embryo swallowing
. In the meantime the network of blood vessels coming
up the Corio alan toy network to pick up the
oxygen and the lower network madeleine area, picking up
the nutrients, proteins, minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates
, fats, everything integrated. A networking. And
now we have an embryo when we looked at the
label, it was set on the second. Today
is the 13th and so this is an 11 day
embryo. Notice how it has increased in size is
three days older now than the eight day which we
showed you a moment ago and for a moment now
it's fairly quiet. I can see that wing moving
a little bit. That wing tip and notice the
definition that we're starting to get notice the feet.
And if you were to look very close you could
actually see the toenails on those feet. And we
discovered that this embryo, in a way has to
have the oak there to push against so that it
can properly exercise and develop its legs, its wings
, all of its price. This egg was set
on November 29, So that's one day in November
and this is 13 December. And so you have
a 14 day embryo. Notice that the embryo almost
completely fills the amniotic sac and I can see the
faint beginning of down. Now let's view our final
segment on brooding chicks in the classroom. It's very
easy to make your own in school Bruder which can
include any number of chicks first. What we're going
to make here today is probably the most popular router
used in the school systems in Virginia. What we
have is a large box, Approximately 24 x 36"
or larger. And another slightly smaller box, which
is approximately 12 x 18" and at least 18" to
15" high. First of all, what we do
is we want to make what we call a chick
courtyard and I've already started cutting some of this,
but I'll finish the cutting. All we do here
is cut it down so that's at least 6-8" high
. We don't want it much higher than that because
if it gets much higher, then you won't be
able to see the chicks running around in the environment
and the Children won't get as much out of the
program. This is something that the kids can make
real easily in the program themselves and it makes them
feel like they've really accomplished something because they're making the
home for the chicks that have hatched. The teacher
doesn't even need to do much more than supervise as
part of the activity. Now, what I've got
here is what we call the chick courtyard. I
just let some handles on here because they are in
the box. Easy to move around. If your
box does not have handles, you may want to
make your own handle structure to carry the Bruder around
the classroom and move it at free will then what
we need to do now that we've got this courtyard
made. We need to take the other box and
we want to remove all of the top fixture and
he flaps, they're on it or whatever because this
will be the bottom of their home. Then what
we want to do and I've already started doing this
. We want them to create doorways. So we
want to cut approximately 4" deep doorways in the side
of the box. Again, I've already started just
to save us some time here today. But what
we want to do is cut these holes in three
sides of the box except depending on the size of
your box. These holes could vary if you've got
a box that's very long and rectangular. Obviously your
door is maybe a little bit larger than they are
in this box. But three doorways should be enough
Here. I've got the three doorways in the box
. Then what we need to do and I've already
drawn a circle up here. But what you need
to do is you need to get yourself a light
fixture accord with a light socket. Then what you
need to do is take a pencil for marker and
trace around the outside of that fixture. Then what
we need to do is cut a hole or that
line was Yeah. Now we've got our whole what
that hole is for so that the light fixture will
easily fit down into the fixture to make it a
little bit easier to slide in and stay there permanently
. What I normally do is I cut 43 or
four slits in that round hole. What these slits
do is they act as a sleeve for the fixture
and it's easier to slide it in. Now I
have the light fixture in place, this is the
chicks heat source, then take a lightbulb. I
recommend somewhere around 40 to 60 watt bulb at the
most if it's in a schoolroom which is quite warm
. Already a 40 watt bulb is all you'll need
then just take the light bulb and screw it into
the socket. You now have your heat source in
place now that you've got the main part of the
Bruder may. You've got the heat source, you've
got a small shelter to trap the heat in,
you've got the courtyard, you're gonna need to prepare
the brooding area for the chicks to live on.
So what I take is some old newspaper, yesterday's
paper And you lay it in the bottom of the
box and if you put about 2-3 sheets depth,
at least some people go thicker because it's easier to
clean out later on. You just get to pull
up the edges and roll it up in a ball
and burn it after you do that with the slippery
paper. I recommend that you get yourself a paper
towel with a texture to it. Now schools also
have paper towels in the restrooms and labs and such
that work. But you need a paper towel with
some texture. It doesn't make any difference. If
the roll type or sleeve type then what you wanna
do is you want to take these pieces of paper
towel and lay it slightly overlapping inside the box on
top of the paper. The reason we do this
is if you keep them on the cardboard surface or
just the newspaper, the chicks have no traction,
their feet slide out and they hurt their legs and
you'll have what we call spread legged chicks, spread
legged chicks. What happens is they wrecked their muscles
and their joints at a young age and they cannot
repair them and they'll be lame and probably die and
that becomes a bad experience in the classroom and you
don't want that. So after you take and put
this in place the towel in place, you're now
ready brothers. All ready to go. All you
need to do then is pick up the box,
place it in the Bruder check field, plug it
in. And what I recommend you do to in
most cases here in the schools is you get some
tape and tape the cord to the top of the
box. This way, if it gets jostled around
or the kids start leaning on it and so on
, the light bulb and fixture is pretty well attached
to the box so that it doesn't fall in and
start a fire or burn somebody in an accident.
A 40 watt bulb usually isn't a problem because it
doesn't get as hot as some of the larger bulbs
. That's why we do use some of the smaller
bulbs in the schools. But by taping it to
the box like this, we keep the cord and
the light in place now that we've got the brooder
in place, All you need now do is add
to feed and the water and then the chicks,
I've got a variety of feeders that you can use
very easily into school. One that's real commonly used
is just the corner of an egg carton. You
rip off one corner of it and put the feed
in the compartments for the where the eggs used to
be a jar lid. Works very good. Very
, very practical, very small. And you're not
normally keeping the the chicks around a long time.
Also a Petri dish works well, but don't overfill
the Petri dish because they'll make a mess in no
time at all. Also old shoe box or box
cover works real good because they can jump in there
and eat all they want and get in there and
eat. But all these are adequate homemade feeders for
watering. You can do the same type of things
you can use even a pie pan. However,
I recommend with young chicks that you put marbles in
the water. What this does is it keeps the
chicks from accidentally drowning in the water because you can
fill up around there. As you can see the
chicks have to pick out the water around the marbles
, they cannot get their heads and their beaks and
their enough to drown. So this works quite well
. However, it's really easy to pick up a
quart jar water at any local feed and supply store
. And even many pet shops carry these for other
animals. All it is is a court glass jar
And a lot of times this will be plastic,
but this is a metal screw on type, but
it's very easy to pick these up for maybe$2
, at the most and they're available almost everywhere.
So there we have it, we've got the different
waters, we've got our feeders, we've got our
heat source which is underneath the box, we've got
our paper toweling for traction and absorption right there.
We've got ourselves a perfect Bruder. However, there
is one variation to this brooder that a lot of
school teachers like and what it basically is is taking
some saran wrap and adding it to the same box
. So what you'll need for this is some saran
wrap scissors and some tape. What I've done is
I've already prepared one here and what I have basically
done is taking the back side of the box that
I've already built as in this case here. You
can see it's solid what we've got here is the
same type of Bruder unit. Again, you can
see the three doorways and the hole in the top
. But what we've done is in the back side
, we've created a window, we've cut out a
hole in the box. We've added some saran wrapped
and taped it in from the inside. And all
we need to do in this case is at our
light fixture again. Yeah, okay, plug it
in and you can see once again, what we've
got is the same Bruder unit. It would usually
be backwards like this in the pen and then what
you do is when you turn the boat around,
here's the doorways for the chicks to come out and
feed and drink and so on. And then what
you can see is you've got the heat trapped inside
this box where the chicks will live and when the
chicks are cold, there will always be in the
warm environment of their little brooding area when there are
plenty warm and want to feed and drink and they'll
come out of this house. But what you can
do here is a youth can see them sleeping and
and and living in their own environment. So here
we have real quick cardboard Bruder. All right,
here's another example of a very commonly used Bruder for
the school systems, which is real simple. All
you have is a goose neck lamp. And what's
nice about the goose neck lamp is that you can
move the bob closer or further away from the chicks
depending on how warm they are. And I would
say use a 40 or 60 watt bulb in this
case. Again, if the chicks seem to be
cold, you can bend the goose neck lamp closer
to them in the box if they seem to be
warm and well away from the heat, you can
lift the goose neck Up approximately three or 4 more
inches until there to adjust the temperature. Here is
a more permanent fixture for your classroom. If you
plan on doing this project every year and especially in
high schools where you do a lot of different brooding
type of projects in your science curriculum. What you
can do here is real quickly out of some scrap
plywood and a piece of plexiglas make yourself a very
nice see through Bruder, what you notice on the
left side, you have your light fixtures, that's
where the heat is. That portion is covered with
a lid on hinges and that keeps the chicks warm
. It traps the heat on the other side.
That end is wide open. The reason it's open
that if the chicks are too warm they can go
over to that side of the Bruder and do their
eating and drinking and the heat escapes through the lid
so it stays reasonably cool. And outside the Bruder
. Now let's go into a brief summary of what
we just covered with the Bruder. The temperature in
the Bruder should be 95°F for the first week,
Then decrease the temperature by 5° per week until you
reach room temperature. Put marbles in the water.
Trade to prevent drowning. Put textured paper towel or
other materials on the Bruder floor to provide traction for
chicks, Supply food and water. If you plan
to keep the chicks more than 24 hours clean out
the Bruder daily. Now we've come to the portion
of program where we'll be able to take some live
questions, they're going to be putting a number on
the screen shortly so that you can call that number
and phone in any questions you might have put together
during this session. There's the phone number. So
just call on in with your questions while we're waiting
for some questions. I've got a couple of unique
other little trick things that I've developed in time here
. The first one I've got is a, it's
a little plastic cup, a string hole through the
cup with a knot in the back side of the
cup. So what you do is you put it
in and with a wet cotton cloth, you can
make your own chicken clucking noise. It's kind of
a neat little thing for elementary school kids. They
might kind of take a liking to it. One
other thing that we do have up here is behind
me to my right, we have a little thing
that we use in a lot of elementary schools.
It's feather your nest with good work and what it
is. You put up a billboard, put a
little cute chicken on there. Take some paper and
make a straw base and if they have a grade
papers or something like that during the program that they
should be proud of. You can paste the papers
to the straw area on their other things would be
a good egg. So those are some neat little
examples of things that they do in elementary schools and
some of the younger project areas since we've looked at
a lot of the more high school level experiments here
today. Now let's go over here to our little
hand and see if anything's happened here during our program
today. It looks like she's been a pretty good
mom. It looks like we've got a couple little
chicks hatched out here and she's had a successful project
. I hope you all do during your school projects
this year. Well, if they're at this point
, there aren't any calls, what we could do
is discuss one other thing that I have neglected to
discuss during the program today, and that's the fact
of what do you do to prepare the youth for
failure within the program? There's a couple of things
that you can do ahead of time to prevent the
failure first of all By using two thermom and making
sure you're temperature doesn't get too hot. That's one
of the biggest problems we have during the early stages
of incubation cycle, don't fry the eggs. What
you can also do is use that canceling project for
a preventative measure. Also, even if you're not
going to candle the eggs to really look at what's
inside of there. If the teacher would take the
time And candle some of those eggs with a flashlight
or some other object in a dark area real quickly
and see if there's something developing in that egg in
about 7-8 days. You can't miss it. If
it's happening. If something's happened there, you can't
miss it at that point, you'll know if you
don't have fertile eggs or if they've died at a
very early stage. And if they've all died at
eight days, you know, in 21 days you're
not gonna have chicks hatching. And what you can
do is start warning and start preparing the youth for
that at that time. Okay? We've got a
phone call. Let us take the question from the
phone call because I picked it up in the beginning
. Okay. I didn't hear your question. Could
you please repeat it please? Yes. I picked
up your program in the middle of it and I
was wondering whether you're going to air it again because
my son and I are very interested in it and
I would like to see it from the beginning.
Okay. What you can do, we will have
this videotape available through my office and if you're in
a Virginia extension service, we will have copies of
this videotape available for to take out and check out
of the learning resource center library and all you need
to do with that is contact your local extension agent
and tell them that you would like to check out
the video for this program through the Learning Resource center
. And this whole program has been taped and will
be available for further training purposes. If you're not
in the extensions Virginia extension service, you'll need to
contact my office. Are there any other questions?
Okay? Going back to what we're discussing their how
to handle some failures in the program. You have
to realize that you're not necessarily going to have success
every time. You can be a teacher who has
had success for 10 years straight and find out that
you don't have success one given year. And it
could be from anything. But if you do all
the things we discussed discussed during this program today,
the proper setup, storage, prepared the incubator properly
and prepared the whole program ahead of time and go
right into the program. Your chance for success is
very great and it varies statewide. Okay. We've
got another phone call. Yes. We're viewing your
program from Oklahoma and we were wondering if you had
some written materials that might supplement the tape that we
might be available to us. Ok? We had
contact with joe barry at Oklahoma. He's an area
specialist there and he has my address and I told
him if you would contact him and tell him how
many that you need a packet. What I'll do
is send him a complete pack of the materials I
have available at this time and I will send those
to him and then he can send them on to
you. It's a lot easier than everybody trying to
write me and and getting everything straight. So contact
joe barry and have him get in contact with me
and we'll get you the materials. That sounds perfect
. One other thing in Virginia that I would like
to mention is we are putting together all the leaders
materials. Leaders guide and members guides. We are
totally redoing that starting this year because of new public
policy foreign policy. These type of things and we
have put together a contest for those in Virginia who
would like to us put in some experiments and activities
through the school system for free incubator. It's a
contest that we've kind of put together. If you
win and have the winning one in your area we'll
put it in part of our leader supplement and you'll
get a free incubator in recognition within the leader supplement
from that activity. I have extended the deadline for
that to April one. We have not gotten a
lot of entries yet but I have extended that deadline
to April one. So get those entries into me
by April one. We also have a cover photo
or cover drawing to the students in which I'm giving
a$25 savings bond to a student in the state
who gives me an artistic drawing for an embryology cover
. That we apply. We have another phone call
. Mhm. Also it is if all it took
take the hat. Okay how long it takes a
chick to hatch. That's a good question since I
guess I haven't really covered that specifically. I've let
it up the materials Chicken takes 21 days to hatch
. Some strains will hatch a slight bit earlier,
slight bit late but we're only talking a matter of
12 hours. The quail, the Japanese quail.
We're using this program takes 17 days to hatch,
waterfall duck skis normally take 28 days to hatch.
However, the muscovy duck, Which is an exception
to the rule. There always has to be one
that takes 35 days to hatch. Okay. I
guess we're getting close to the end of the program
now and if there's any other calls be glad to
take them. Okay. Well I was just told
we've got time left. So since we've got time
left, we'll discuss a few other things dealing with
the program itself. Ah, I just happened to
bring an incubator along today. So if we got
into this situation, we could, we could look
at some of these things and going back to your
leaders packet that we discussed earlier, we got another
phone call. Okay, We'll take the phone call
first, Fairfax County calling. We have two questions
to ask you the first one we were listening so
intently and discussing while you were making the little chicken
squeaking noise that we missed the directions. I'm glad
you're getting a laugh out of it. I always
do. But I'll tell you another thing about this
though. If you're gonna do this in your classroom
, I really recommend that you don't let the kids
do this early in the day as a project because
if you get 20 kids doing this, it'll drive
you crazy. I learned about this at a convention
. Believe it or not. On the way back,
I had four kids in my van and they
drove me crazy, but it works quite well what
it is, it's nothing more than a hard plastic
cup. Okay, just a small plastic cup and
any string, any thread string and you pull it
through a hole, you drill a small hole in
the very end of the bottom end of the cup
, you tie a knot at the end of the
string and then pull it through the cup so it's
in a bell that that string dangles like a bell
. Then you take a damp piece of cotton cloth
. That's all this is is a damp piece of
cotton cloth has to be damp. And then you
take and apply the cloth to the string and pull
. And if you've been around poultry before you can
make any kind of chicken noise you want with.
It's amazing how well it works. Your second question
. Okay. The second question is an in vitro
um chick observation. How did he know the embryo
was on top? How did he know the embryo
was on top? It really doesn't make any difference
. Okay, when you break out the egg,
you break the egg into its little bath or environment
and as soon as you open that up at that
2 to 3 day stage, depending on when you
do it, I'd like to see it done in
three days, but you will definitely see where the
blast or disk is or Glasgow Durham is excuse me
, because it's fertilized, it will be a much
larger haloed area. It'll take up up to a
third of the yolk surface. If it doesn't show
up right on the top that third of the area
, what you'll run into is you'll have to take
very gently with your fingers and roll that over and
it's something that you've got to be delicate about.
You've got to be real careful to roll that yoke
over so that it shows up. Um at I
would say three days you'll be able to see the
question mark shape and the blood veins. Okay?
If you don't see that directly in your vision when
you open up that shell, all you have to
do is very carefully. In a matter of fact
I've got a yolk right here from my egg segment
in a ditch and what I did, if the
cameras can come on down to my egg, what
I do is that you just take your fingers very
gently and you get under that and you can just
roll it over. It rolls right over but you
got to be somewhat careful in the bath, you'll
be able to get your finger underneath a little bit
and roll it over and the blast disk will be
very large. You'll be able to see that any
other questions, do we have any more phone calls
? Okay let's take another phone call. Yeah there
is a question here at our meeting, what was
the name brand of the incubator that you had there
in front of you. This the square styrofoam.
Okay this is an incubator. When I first came
here in Virginia, we had the round styrofoam incubators
. Those are no longer made this type incubator has
replaced that. The company that makes this is in
your incubator resource list, that's there. The company's
name is G. Qf. They're the ones who
make this incubator. I believe the one without the
fan with a clear plastic top like this which is
just gorgeous. And I can put this on my
pizza. The camera can get a better view at
it. Okay but you can see everything inside that
incubator. Um the one without the fan unit you
can get for around$45 I believe. But I
recommend that if you could to put the fan in
there because the fan helps circulate the air and by
circulating the air you don't have to worry about the
stratification. So you can drop your temperature to about
99 degrees in the incubator 99 to 95 90 95
99 1 half degrees. And that really aids in
taking away the chance of cooking the egg by possibility
. Okay? But G. Qf is in your
resource sheet and that's the company who does manufacture this
incubator. If you make a group order, you
may be able to talk to them and they may
be able to give you a pretty good deal on
this. Okay. I can't quote that, but
I've known people have gotten a pretty good deal in
the past from that company. Any other phone calls
. Okay. At this point we have no more
phone calls. We have about three minutes left in
our broadcast, maybe a little bit less. So
if you've got any phone calls, please call them
in. Now if you think of questions after this
broadcast is done and you have some on site discussion
and would like some information or have some questions.
Tell your facilitator to write down the question and have
the facilitator through your extension agents send me the question
. I'll be more than glad to answer it by
letter. If not, the extension agent can call
my office and we can get you a direct answer
tomorrow. I'll be in the office all day.
We're told now that we've got close to a minute
left, so we'll have time for about one more
call if we've got any calls out there. If
not, I've really enjoyed giving this program today.
This has kind of been a first for us and
I hope that we get to do more in the
future. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Mhm.
Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm, mm hmm.