The Circle of Life
It’s quite well known amongst my workmates and friends that we keep chickens. It’s even reached our kids nursery.
I’m not sure who’s idea it was but my wife managed to source an incubator and 10 eggs for the toddlers to hatch. The nursery got right into the swing of things and the daily activities involved things to do with the eggs and how to look after the chicks when they hatched. Everything was going great and I think they were prepared for the odd one or two eggs that didn’t hatch and maybe a couple of chicks that wouldn’t make it past a day or two before passing away. What they were not prepared for was precisely what happened though. Not one single egg hatched. Something happened at the 4-5 day mark which caused the eggs to stop developing. It could have been a powercut or any number of things but until the day they were due to hatch we didn’t know how bad it was going to be.
We were gutted when only 5 of our 14 eggs hatched the first time we tried it so I can only imagine how a group of toddlers might feel when none of them hatched. We managed to lend them our Indian Runner Ducks that had hatched a few days before so they got their fix of small fluffy animals eventually but I can’t help feeling the kids lost out by not seeing their eggs hatch. It’s been great watching our kids get used to the chickens and the ducks. I’ve always been worried that Nairn would hurt them but he’s always so gentle when he’s handling them. Fair enough he still chases them about when they are in the garden and has been known to throw a kick at them and never make contact but he’s learning so much. Not just about the chickens but about life in general from seeing these wee fluff balls grow up.
