Baby Pheasants

It was pretty exciting to get to school and to see that two of the pheasant eggs we have been carefully tending since March finally had tiny peck holes in them.

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We watched the eggs carefully all day but despite lots of rocking and squeals of delight from the children, nothing else happened. Finally, in a break near the end of the day, I went to pick up a couple of chicks that had hatched in another classroom who had had better luck. As you can see from the pictures below, this was what the children had been hoping for.

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Several years ago, when the pheasants were more cooperative about hatching, I made this video of the process. It captures the students’ excitement and how the babies “get out of there”.

Pheasant Eggs!

For the next twenty-one or so days our class is looking after thirty pheasant eggs. We’ll need to turn them regularly and keep them warm and moist. To the students, it seems like a long time to wait. I was asked a couple of times today if they had hatched yet.

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Pheasant Memories

While we had the pheasant eggs and the baby pheasants, the students were able to take pictures with their iPads to create memories of that special time. Last week, the students made those pictures into a story and then used the pages of that story to make a video. They also each chose their own background music for the video. (It’s interesting to see the music choices each student made!) Check out the video below and the others on the individual student blogs on the right.

Baby Pheasants

After weeks of faithfully turning the pheasant eggs in our classroom, the long anticipated hatch finally began to happen. On Thursday we saw that two eggs had a tiny peck hole and when the students arrived on Friday, they were greeted by three chicks that had been born the night before. While it was interesting to inspect the not yet hatched eggs and the empty egg shells, the high point of the day was definitely watching and holding the new babies.

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Pheasant Eggs

This tweet says it all…

For the next 25 days, our class will be looking after 30 pheasant eggs. If all goes as we hope, we should be able to watch some of them hatch before the long weekend in May. All of the children get a day to help turn the eggs, so excitement is running high!