Or if you haven't got everything in readiness for your hatched chicks, that can be a serious problems as well, because if insufficiently cared for in a carefully controlled environment, newborn chicks can die wholesale. Every one of these incidents means disastrous losses for the entrepreneur, yet the fact is that school children often hatch chicks as part of a school project.

So how hard could it really be? Well, obviously, since the kids do it, not hard at all - so long as you're really careful to maintain temperatures and humidity and a safe environment for the new chicks. You also need to know how to inoculate the chicks yourself, or else bring in someone who'll do this for you, or it's likely that your chicks won't last past their tenth day. While the eggs are in the incubator, you need to turn them carefully at regular intervals. The eggs need to complete two full turns in the course of a day. This means that you need to be there, on the spot, turning all your eggs at least four times a day.

Remember that the eggs must lay on their sides and never in any other position. Don't be fooled by their hard shells, there's a very delicate little baby growing in each egg, and it needs to be carefully protected and nurtured. Just call yourself -mother hen'. But jokes aside, you need to take as much care of each egg as a mother would. It's all a question of attitude, you see, and if you know what you're doing, and you truly care for each young life in your charge, you'll see survival rates in your chicks that will astound your neighbors.

Now, when the time comes for the chicks to hatch, and when they're trying to make their way through their shells, you might be tempted to help them to cheat a little. But you mustn't do that - they have to do that all on their own, because that's part of what helps them to survive the incubation hatching process.


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