Today is the due date for eggs in my incubator, and I’m one nervous Nellie.

I know 21 days is not a long time, but it’s felt like forever while I waited to see if the eggs were developing. Then, two nights ago, I was startled to hear peeping coming from the incubator.

The next day, I tried to hold the cell phone to the air hole in the incubator so my partner could hear the getting-louder, getting-more-insistent cheeping while she was at work.  I watched, transfixed, as a chick poked a hole in the egg (known among poultry types as pipping), then made a little zig-zag crack (called zipping) and then kicked and flailed until the two ends of the egg separated. It reached a foot up and pushed half of the egg away.

Some of you fine GG readers might remember the opening scene of “The Partridge Family” on TV, as a partridge emerges from an egg with glee and David Cassidy bursts into song (go ahead, refresh your memory and you’ll have it in your head all day long).

At my house, it happened kind of like that, only instead of unfettered verve and verse, there was one wet, tiny, prehistoric-looking chick, cheeping plaintively with utter, but heroic,  exhaustion as it fell asleep. I felt for it. I’ve had days a little like that myself.

After another few hours of struggling and resting, the chick got to its feet and staggered around, bumping into other eggs like it was wandering in a forest of giant bowling balls. Over the next 24 hours, I watched a few more chicks pip, zip and hatch. You’d think I’d get used to it after a few, but I find myself cheering each one on and being impressed with the effort it takes to make an entrance.

Before I get all sappy, let me just show you (sadly, no webcam) :

Today should be a big day for “Farmette TV” at my house, even though the warmth outside is beckoning me.

But enough of my chick update.

What are you doing inside reading this when it’s super summer-like out there?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 am and is filed under Chickens, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.