I am so excited to announce that the library is incubating chicks in the Family Room during the month of April! At the beginning of the year, I was notified of a program through the Suffolk County Farm, which allows schools and libraries to incubate eggs in their classrooms and learning spaces. I thought this would be something really interesting to have at the library and made arrangements to bring this wonderful program to our library!
In February, I attended a chick incubation and embryology training session for educators, the first step in obtaining eggs to incubate in the Family Room. After completing the class and ordering all of the equipment, I just had to wait to pick up the eggs at the farm! The eggs finally arrived at the library on April 3rd and have been in our incubator since they got to Montauk! The incubator is located right as you walk into the family room, under the monitor that displays our event flyers, and has a clear window built into the cover so that everyone can see the eggs as they are being rotated! They are rotating at a very slow pace, but the incubator moves the eggs from side to side to mimic how a hen would rotate her chicks once she is sitting on them. The incubator keeps the chicks at a toasty 100 degrees Fahrenheit and at a humidity level of between 45% and 55% so the chicks can develop inside the egg.
If you visit the eggs before they hatch, you might notice that they are all different colors; some are a blue-green color, some are brown and some are white. The different egg colors indicate different cross breeds of chicks and when the chicks hatch, they will look different depending on the egg they hatched out of. The chicks are due to hatch on Monday, April 23rd and will live at the library for about a week until they go back to their home at the farm! We will be having a birthday party for the chicks on April 28th that children can attend – more information is available here. Also, you can keep up with our eggs incubation and chick hatching from home on our Chick Cam that is streaming live on our website here. We hope you stop by and visit us and the chicks soon!
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