It was so hard to hold back.
I could hear the sound.
The sound of a struggle.
The chick trying to come out.
The hammering blows
By the egg-tooth on the beak,
Trying to make a round hole
To crawl out from the egg
To escape death and survive.
It was so hard not to help.
Every blow on the shell
Was making the chick stronger.
It needed that strength to live
The harsh reality of this world.
It needed to struggle now
To be strong to survive later.
My help would have brought
The chick out prematurely and
It would have died later.
We have to let our kids struggle to
Acquire the strength to be strong
To survive this harsh world.
Spoon feeding on every step
Will make them weak and will
Not survive when we are not there.
But when I saw a line by the
Hitting of the egg tooth,
Instead of a circle for the
Chick to crawl out of a hole,
I knew that the chick could not
Move around and was stuck.
An Egg has a limited amount of air
And the chick has to crawl out
Before the air is used up.
It was a life and death crises
For the trapped chick in the egg.
I was prepared for such an emergency.
I slowly broke the egg, enough for
The chick to breath and allowed
The chick to get strong enough to
Crawl out of the egg and survive.
That was my first assisted hatching
By the struggling chick stuck inside
The egg and could not make a round hole
To crawl out to escape certain death.
NOTE: This is a story about an Umbrella Cockatoo chick's struggle to survive.
An egg contains an air pocket for the hatching chick to breath during the hatching. The chick has an egg-tooth at the end of their beak. The chick makes a round hole with the egg-tooth by striking the shell from inside and turning around. If the chick is stuck inside the egg and cannot turn around then you see a straight line of the blow-marks on the egg. This is an emergency and the chick needs help in breaking out of the egg. I used the Dentist's tools to help the chick in breaking the egg.
Sometimes the chick could be upside down and when tries breaking the egg, it hits the blood vessels and the internal bleeding shows out-side the egg as a black spot. This means the chick has no access to the air-pocket and each blow is cutting the blood vessel. You have to provide a breathing hole to the chick and wait for the right time to break the shell to get the chick out. I had to do this twice to save chicks.
Kris~Dreamweaver
