Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/08/how-to-hatch-a-baby-chicken-in.html
…
“A little privacy, please.”
Amateurs
This is amazing.
This is awful.
Fun to try, right?
Even more fun to succeed!
(Because if you don’t succeed, you’ve got an unholy stinky mess in a cup.)
But then, you’ve got a live baby chicken.
Chicks need a specific temperature range to survive.
And a safe place to live, which will get stinky very quickly as the chick grows.
And you can’t have just one chicken if you want it happy. You need a flock.
So go get more chicks the same age.
Raise them successfully in your house. (Remember the smell though.)
Now you need a place outside for them, safe from predators. Better build that coop and fence.
Might want to rethink hatching a chicken in a cup.
The most amazing part of the whole process is where the chick learns to play the piano for the next chick’s experiment video.
I was sort of relieved when at the end of the video that the creators of this video are associated with a veterinary clinic and this wasn’t done in someone’s kitchen, bathroom or basement.
Well, not in a cup in the bathroom. . . .
(And note how these chicks did not conveniently stay in their brooders. There’s even one perched on the top of the shower curtain rod that you can’t see in this picture.)
I’m torn.
On one hand, very interesting to see on video (but in my kitchen? no thank you). On the other hand, absent of the shell and everything… this seems cruel and unnecessary.
Next up - human fetus incubated in a 5 gallon pail.
Lemme guess - there’s a restaurant somewhere in the world where you can order these things as appetizers.
This looks like a very good middle school or high school science fair project, as long as you have a place for the chick after it ‘hatches’. Document its development for extra points.
" Bye Baby Banting, soon you’ll need decanting "
In The Matrix for chickens we are the villains. Good luck L’il Neo chick!
The plastic cup isn’t like an egg, though. Eggshells are supposed to provide developing chicks with protection from bacteria (thus the disinfectant they knew they had to add below and seal in, like in an actual egg). IIRC, eggshells also allow a certain amount of airflow. The eggshell is an evolved piece of the chicken-delivery system, just like its contents.
I want to do this experiment with multiple eggs all started at same time, in front of a tied up pro-life activist.
every day or two I’ll grab a chicken cup and scream “lets see if it can live outside the cup!” throw the cup and then yell “nope! maybe tommorow’s cup!”
sigh ok that was over the top, but I’m frustrated.
Next up: 2 chicks, 1 cup