Determining if the Weight of a Chicken Egg Affects How Large the Chicken (Gallus domesticus) Will Grow

Overview

Objectives/Goals To find out if the weight of a chicken egg affects how large the chicken will grow. Methods/Materials Methods: 1. The incubator was set up to the right temperature (37 to 38 degrees Celsius). Then each was weighed, marked, and put in the incubator. 2. Each egg was turned three times a day (every 8 hours). 3. After the chicks hatched they were weighed and each day after that each chick was weighed. Materials: 1 commercial incubator w/fan, 1 electric power bar, 30 chicken eggs, 2 thermometers, light fixtures, light bulbs, chick feed, water, triple beam balance, pine shavings, 2 110 L clear plastic containers, 2 poultry water bottles, 2 poultry food troughs, newspaper Results The results of this experiment indicate that the egg weight did affect how large the chick was at birth, but not as the chick got older. My data showed that at birth the larger eggs did produce larger chickens and the smaller eggs did produce smaller chickens. As the chickens got older, however, more and more of them that came out of smaller eggs grew larger than those that came out of larger eggs. Conclusions/Discussion After completing my experiment, I found out that the first part of my hypothesis was right but the second part of my hypothesis was wrong. In the first part I predicted that the larger eggs would produce larger chickens than the smaller eggs at birth. This is true because when they were born all of the larger eggs produced larger chickens and all of the smaller eggs produced smaller chickens. Through their growth, however, the egg size didn't matter because at the end, some of the chickens that came out of the smallest eggs surpassed Sumo (the chick that came out of the largest egg).

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Zoology · Entry S1902

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