28 August 2026 

Today was a very exciting day in the hatchery because our five remaining eggs went into lockdown!

Before lockdown, we had one final look at the eggs. We could still see blood vessels and dark chick shapes inside, and we even spotted some little movements. It was amazing to think about how much they have changed since we first put them into the incubator.

We then carefully removed the turning tray and placed the eggs flat so the chicks can begin getting themselves into the right position for hatching.

We also increased the humidity inside the incubator. From now on, we need to keep the incubator closed as much as possible so the temperature and humidity stay steady.

Now comes the hard part…

We wait! 👀

Over the next few days, we will be watching for:

• eggs wobbling or rocking

• tiny cracks called pips

• little holes appearing in the shells

• and, hopefully, our first chick!

Our expected hatch day is Tuesday, but chicks do not always follow the calendar. Some might decide to arrive a little earlier or later.

Will anything happen over the weekend? We’ll be keeping a very close eye on the incubator camera.

 24 August 2026 

Today was a big day in our hatchery!

We candled our eggs again to check how our embryos were developing. Since our last check, some eggs had changed a lot and had become much darker as the embryos continued to grow.

Unfortunately, some of our eggs had stopped developing. We call these eggs quitters. After carefully comparing what we could see today with our previous candling observations, we made the difficult decision to remove 7 eggs from the incubator.

That means we now have 5 developing embryos still in the incubator! 🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥

We also had an incredible opportunity to investigate some of the eggs that had stopped developing. With Miss Reisima's help, interested students were able to see what was inside and compare embryos that had stopped developing at different stages. We even saw a very clear blood ring in one egg, just like the ones we had been learning to identify while candling!

This helped us understand an important part of incubation: not every fertilised egg will successfully hatch. Sometimes an embryo begins developing but stops, and this can happen naturally for many different reasons.

Our remaining five eggs are staying warm and cosy in the incubator, and we'll continue watching them carefully as we get closer to hatch day.

19 August 2026 

Today we candled all 12 of our eggs, and now you can take a look too!

Some eggs gave us exciting signs of development. In others, the evidence was much harder to interpret. We saw possible veins, dark areas, unusual lines and even some features that made us wonder about blood rings.

What can you spot?

Watch each egg's candling video* and make your own observations. Which eggs do you think are developing? Which ones would you want to keep watching?

We aren't making any final calls yet. All 12 eggs are staying in the incubator until our next candling check on Day 13.

Then we can come back to today's videos and ask:

What changed? Were our Day 8 predictions right? 🥚🔦🐣

*A quick note about our videos: To protect our students’ privacy, the candling videos have been muted and cropped. This can sometimes make the tiny details inside the eggs a little harder to see on camera. If you see Miss Reisima’s finger tracing along the egg, she is showing the students where we could see veins. If you see her stop and point to a darker shadow, she is showing them an area we thought might be an embryo. Some of these details were much easier to see in person than they are on camera, so you may need to look closely!

17 August 2026 

We snuck in an early candling today - we just couldn't wait until Day 7 to take another peek inside our eggs!

Because we're still a little early, we knew we might not be able to see development clearly in every egg just yet. But we had some very exciting discoveries...

We spotted clear veins in 5 of our 12 eggs! These tiny blood vessels are part of the growing embryo's developing circulatory system.

Even more excitingly, in Egg 6 we could see the veins leading towards a darker centre, and we spotted the developing embryo itself! 🐣

A couple of the other eggs had us wondering if we could see something too, but it was too difficult to be sure. We'll give them some more time to grow before checking again.

We also numbered our eggs 1-12, which means we can now follow each egg's individual journey as incubation continues.

Today's Hatch Watch:
🥚 12 eggs incubating
🩸 At least 5 showing development
🐣 1 embryo sighted!

For now, our little scientists are very excited — and the eggs are going back to doing what they do best: growing! For more updates, check out our Inside the Egg page to follow along with our interactive incubator!