Hobbies And Interests
Fresh Eggs
When you are dealing with a science fair project that involves live chicks, it is important to obtain fresh eggs from a local farmer or hatchery. These eggs have not been refrigerated and can be hatched with the help of heating lamps. Any eggs that are purchased from a store or that have been refrigerated or otherwise treated will never hatch and are not good to use in your experiments. Eggs should be no more than a week to 10 days from hatching for your experiments. For some experiments, you may need to ask the farmer for some eggs that are unfertilized.
Incubation
Hens spend a lot of time sitting on their eggs until they hatch to keep the eggs incubated at a specific temperature. The appropriate temperature for chicken eggs is between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. An additional 10 degrees either way also can be successful. You can acquire a large number of eggs, between 20 and 30. Incubate groups of five or 10 eggs under lamps with varying temperatures. Monitor how quickly the eggs hatch under each temperature and what percentage of the eggs do not hatch at all. Under ideal conditions, chicks should hatch in around 21 days.
Chicken Feed
If you can obtain some young chicks from a local farmer or hatchery, determine the growth effects of feeding the chicks different kinds of food. You can also hatch your own chicks to control what they eat from a very young age. Choose several types of chicken feed, such as one that is high in protein and one that contains steroids. Use an average chicken feed with one group of chicks to serve as your control group. All of the chicks should be the same age. Set up groups of at least three chicks and feed each group a specific kind of food. Monitor the growth of the chicks by weighing them every few days, and track their growth in relation to the food they eat.
Gravity Theory
While hatching chicks or feeding chicks different foods are fairly common science fair projects, you can also use live chicks to prove gravitational theory. For this experiment, obtain both fertilized and unfertilized eggs from local farmers. Unfertilized eggs can be found at farms that do not keep roosters. Place all of the eggs on their large ends in an incubator and keep the temperature between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Rotate all the eggs for the best results. Note how they all stay standing on end until the chicks in the fertilized eggs grow and begin moving around in preparation for hatching. At this point, the fertilized eggs no longer stand on their ends, showing how gravitational field lines are broken by movement.