That’s right. We got a whopping 2 chicks out of the 42 we tried to hatch. 
Lots of different factors attributing to such a low hatch rate. Humidity and temperature mostly.
Here they are waiting for their cage to be cleaned. The black ones name is Joker and the one behind it is Penguin.
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
The other week we had a candling session with some of our staff. Candling is when you take the egg, shine a light underneath it in the dark and are able to see a shadows from inside the egg.
If you were to candle an egg from the supermarket you would see
NOTHING!
However, if you were to candle a fertile egg you would see
Something!?
That picture there is of a fertile egg.
In the video below you can see some blood vessels and the embryo moving
I tried to get images and video of our own eggs but, it didn’t come out really well. All of these images are from Backyard Chicken Forum which is an eggcellent source of information all things chicken!
When we candled our own eggs a different time we were able to see the embryos moving and we all became very eggcited (sorry its too tempting not to use the word egg). When we first candled them on day 8 we could tell that some were not even fertilized and some had developed. Candling another time proved that some of those fertile eggs had stopped developing which is not uncommon when incubating eggs.
We just wont know the whole truth until hatching day which is just around the corner.
I am still working on a blog about the chicks parents so look for that too.
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
Fourteenth day – embryo is in position suitable for breaking shell
Sixteenth day – scales, claws and beak becoming firm
Seventeenth day – beak turns toward air cell
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
Eighth day – beginning of feathers
Tenth day – beginning of hardening of beak
Thirteenth day – appearance of scales and claws
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
Fourth day – beginning of tongue
Below is a chart that you can check out. I find it to be an interesting view inside the egg
Jill, are we really keeping 42 chickens or do we have that many eggs just in case some of them aren’t viable?
It is VERY rare to have 100% fertility in most hatchings. Most of what I have heard is maybe you’re lucky if you get a 60% hatch rate. We will be keeping 4 and the remaining will be returned to Kents house.
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
Hatching Awesome Tiny Chickens Here
So, yesterday the eggs arrived all were given a number and placed on top of a turner inside the incubator.
The incubator is set at a constant 99.5 degrees at a 50% humidity rate. The turner rotates the eggs throughout the day so they do not settle on one side. If the eggs are not turned they will not hatch and if it stops turning the chicks will develop on one side and don’t grow properly. In nature the mother hen would do this for the eggs.There have been some cases where people hatch without turning, but we are turning.
All of the eggs may not have been laid on the same day but they should hatch within 24 hours of each other. When a fertilized egg is laid it needs warmth to grow. You can pause this process for a little bit and heat them all up around the same time so they develop at the same rate.
So whats going on inside the egg? Glad you asked.
Im sorry but you will just have to wait to see what happens later
Where were the eggs laid? How were they kept warm during transport?
That is really cool! When is the next update for them? To bad i don’t work there! I would love to see them!!!! 
:)
This is exciting! I can’t wait!! Are we going to see pictures??!!
How many eggs are there? Are the chickens going to have names? Are we going to count our chickens before they hatch?
42 eggs were brought to the museum that were laid by Kent’s chickens. I am going to do a blog about the parents of the chicks coming up. They are transported at room temperature in of course…egg cartons!
Im going to do a lot more blogs in the coming 3 weeks that will answer all the questions you have. I promise pictures of the cute chicks.
Great job on the Acronym, the most important part of any project.
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
The farmyard will soon be getting some new additions. If you couldn’t tell from the title, we have decided that we are going to incubate, hatch and raise our own chickens. I will be blogging about the whole process when we start which will be on April 4th. They will be placed into our incubator which will be set up in the vet room. They should hatch about 21 days later and wont be able to be viewed by the public immediately because they need to be in a controlled environment for a few days, but I promise to take pictures.
I will blog about the development going on inside the eggs themselves and what we are doing while we wait for them to hatch.
The whole process will be very hentertaining. Just keep your sunny side up, Jill. All the eggsausting, mind-numbing, adjustments of the incubator will pay off in the end. We won’t have to scramble around anymore to get things ready, my brain is fried un-oeuf for the time being. I’ll be happy when we can just set the eggs in the turner and leave them alone for a while. I do hope that we don’t have any bad eggs, Katy’s room will smell fowl if we don’t catch it in time. Hopefully, in 21 days, we’ll have something to crow about!
This will take me a few days to respond to…my brain is over easy.
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
Hi everybody! Hope you guys are doing well, I am all kinds of fine and ducky, thanks for asking! For this post, we’re going to have a bit of a game. Now, I know you guys are all aware of my intellectual awesomeness, but now I’m going to give you a bit of a test. Ever play those “What doesn’t belong” games when you were a kid? Well here it is in blog form! I’m going to write a fun little blog post. And there will be an undetermined number of mistakes in it. your job is to go ahead and find them!
Opossum and young
For instance, I may be talking about opossums. And I say “Opossums are wonderful arboreal mammals. They have a prehensile tail, a great sense of smell and are one of only two marsupials that live in North America naturally.” What about that statement is wrong? Their tail IS prehensile, they DO have a great sense of smell and they ARE arboreal. The wrong fact is where I said they are ONE OF TWO marsupials in North America. Actually, they are the only species of naturally occurring marsupial on this continent. You guys got it? Find my mistakes and catch my errors – enjoy my friends!
So it’s almost spring time (sorta). Some days it’s freezing and rainy, others it’s almost 80 degrees and sunny. But even if the weather can’t seem to make up it’s mind, the animals already have. Anyone who was getting a little lazy with the coming of the colder weather is definitely starting to bounce back. Henry our Woodchuck has been eating more of his daily diet, plus is much more active. All four of our bears are out and moving for more time during the day instead of sleeping in the cave or on the cliff and only rousing themselves at meals or training times. Of course none of our reptiles were affected too much by the winter season. They all live inside in a climate controlled room. So both the native and the exotic species fared wonderfully. From the Banded Water Snake to the Asian Bearded Dragons, our cold blooded friends didn’t miss a beat. And everyone in our Farmyard is also doing just great. Time for some of them to shed though!
March is also a fun Month of novelty days. And not just for animal stuff. Just to name a few, March 3 is “If Pets had Thumbs Day”, March 9 is “Panic Day” -All I can say is “Danger! Danger Will Robinson!”, March 12 is “Plant a Flower Day”, March 14 is “Learn about Butterflies Day”, March 19 is “Poultry Day”, March 22 is “Give a Calzone to a Zookeeper Day”, & March 28th is Something on a Stick Day (I recommend some kind of meat, preferably wrapped in bacon. Like a corndog, but better!)
Also, with the coming of spring many of our outdoor species are beginning to pop up again. Ranger Greg has been sighting more and more species in the wetlands and around the rest of the park. The past few days of warm weather have started many aquatic turtles sunning on the rocks, a number of waterfowl are enjoying the Explore the Wild area, and I have been finding Bullfrogs in the bear filter baskets again each morning. I know this is just the beginning. Soon we’ll have all the bugs out (oh, and Aaron found the first ticks of the season in the Wolf yard the other day! Marilyn is so thrilled!), the trees will be blooming and the we’ll be getting calls to go out and move snakes from the paths. If they’re the usual rat snakes we usually just let them go on their way, but sometimes we have to move the poisonous copperheads to a different location so they’re out of visitor range. You’re all welcome!
Turtles do love soaking up some UV rays!
By the way… if you keep up with my earlier posts, it seems Katy has struck again! Definitive proof that she is too environmentally minded and attempting to recycle our animals!
The Woodchuck got chucked!
A very large sewer rat has somehow gotten into our department... I feel like I'm back in the Bronx...
And while the above picture may look like Galileo is getting into the trash himself, don’t be fooled! He’s being coerced from off camera! His breakfast is being held hostage!
Okay Guys and Dolls, it’s time for me to pack this one in. I’m going to go and close up, tuck the animals in for the night and make sure all is right with things. Plus, I have to feed the alligators before we start. They’re growing well, just about up to eating whole capybaras now See how many mistakes you can find and I’ll put up the answers soon. Until next time!
P.S.- The Loch Ness Monster exists! 
This is a really cute pic!! Where did you find it?
Hey Gabriella,
Depends on which picture you’re talking about- some came from us taking them at the mueum and some came from Google
I love the pic when the woodchuck got chucked!! That one is funny! Any more animals in the trash yet?;)
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
One of my favorite duties as an Animal Keeper is training with the Ring Tailed Lemurs. We train many of the animals at the museum using operant conditioning. When I first started here, I was familiar with training, I used positive reinforcement for several animals at my previous job- a Serval, African Crested Porcupine, Binturong, several birds including large Macaws, a Raven, Crow, Hawks and Owls.
Serval
Binturong
Even Rats- But it wasn’t until working here at the Museum that I really got into Operant Conditioning. We use training for 3 reasons- husbandry, enrichment, and bonding.
Husbandry – anything having to do with taking care of that animal. Shifting between areas, vet care, travel (crate or trailer) etc
Enrichment- let’s face it these animals live in the same place all the time, training allows them to move, think, react, predict, interact with other animals. They are using tons of physical and mental energy during training sessions.
Bonding- if an animal is sick, injured, or, in the rare case, has escaped- their trainer would be the first to respond and hopefully have a strong enough bond with that animal so that help can be provided.
Can you see Jill's hand signal and clicker?
Each Keeper here trains a group of animals
Katy- Bears (4)
Mikey- Bears (4)
Marilyn- Red Ruffed Lemurs (3)
Kimberly- Ring Tailed Lemurs (3)
Jill- Pigs (2)
Sarah- Donkey and little goats (3)
Kent- Steer and big goat (2)
Mikey training Gus bear for our training consultant Julie Grimes
And each animal has been trained to do different behaviors. The Ring Tailed Lemurs for example have learned the following- scale, up, down, left hand, right hand, touch, jump, follow, off, here, come, target, crate. Chummix may know the behavior “come” but Kent may have a completely different hand signal for it than I do for the ring tails.
Cassandra during a training session
Below are a couple older blog posts about training-
Marilyn’s post about training Chummix- here
Kristen’s post with video of Cassidy training- here
Larry’s post shows Yona’s first session with Katy- here
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
From left to right: wolf exhibit, bear exhibit, farmyard exhibits, lemur exhibit.
Anyone who has been in the animal keeping profession knows that part of the job includes the unfortunate task of pulling trash out of the animal exhibits. On some level it is expected that a random object will occasionally be found in an animal’s enclosure, due to a visitor accidentally dropping something and not being able to recover it (please don’t try to retrieve the item yourself!). However, we have noticed the amount of trash in the exhibits increase significantly over the last couple of years.
By far, we find the most trash in the farmyard exhibits.
Keeper Katy focuses in the vet area of the animal department, so she is notified whenever anything is found in an exhibit so that we can put a “watch” on the animal for behavioral changes in case it ingested part of the item/food/trash. Since the keepers started finding items more frequently, Katy decided to start saving all the trash to see just how much was collected over the course of 2011.
The amount of trash in these pictures might astonish you, but what’s even more astonishing is that Katy didn’t start saving the items until the Spring of 2011. So there’s a good four months worth of trash not included in these pictures. On top of that, there were times that the keepers forgot to keep the items for Katy, so those weren’t added to the bags either. I know there were at least three occasions where I forgot to save the trash for Katy, and I threw it away after pulling it from the enclosure.
The contents in this picture are a prime example of why we don't allow balloons on grounds. The outcome could have been very bad if one of our bears had ingested the helium balloon you see in the bag on the right.
There are times when a visitor accidentally drops something in an exhibit and they find a museum staff member to let them know. This is the best thing to do because the staff member will radio the keepers, and it allows us to remove the article from the exhibit as soon as possible.
Above: Here’s a closer look at some of the items we found in the farmyard. The mangled Mountain Dew can you see to the right came from the donkey and goat yard, and clearly it had been chewed on and ripped up by one or all of them. Worrisome for the keepers!
Here’s my personal favorite, and it was found in Lightning the donkey’s stall one morning. Unfortunately it was mixed in with some of his hay and could have been ingested fairly easily. It’s a hair attachment with feathers, and Kent saved this one and has it hanging up above his desk.
It’s nice to see that when our visitors are eating chips and drinking soda, they are trying to be healthy about it. However, these items are not healthy for our animals, even if they are “baked” or “diet”!
Katy has already started collecting exhibit trash for 2012, so watch for the blog post in early 2013 to see what we collected over the course of this year.
It’s not just things being dropped in that are worrisome. Some of our animals will steal things from guests right off the railings or even from their hands! I rescued many applesauce coated toddler spoons from the donkey and goats last summer and the pigs have stolen plastic snack baggies right through the fencing. I like to ask guests to stand an arms’ length away from the fences if they have food or drinks, just to be safe.
If you have an account on any of the Museum's blogs, you can sign in with the same login to contribute to the discussion.
If you don't have an account, signing up is free and easy.
Holy Chicks Batman! Nice choice for names!