More New Baby Chicks at the Farmlet

Back in mid-May I had posted that I had a Hen on the nest (broody), and had tried to get some fertile eggs from one of the ladies I had gotten them from before, but hadn't been able to hook up with her, and that I needed to find somewhere else to get some eggs for her to set on....

So I did, finally, visit another local farm and purchased 5 random breed eggs and stuck them up under her.

June 3rd was the predicted birth date for the hatching, but last time some of the eggs started hatching a couple of days earlier than expected. Even if any of these didn't hatch early, I figured it was a good time to go ahead and move Hawk and the eggs to the "nursery" today.

As I was moving the eggs from the nest to the nursery-cage, I dropped egg #4! Eeep.
(I numbered the eggs with Sharpie marker so I could tell them from the other brown eggs the other hens like to crawl in the nest and lay too.)

When I picked it up, I saw a small hole in the egg. I could still hear peeping from inside the egg, but wasn't sure if it still needed more time to cook, and was afraid I might have caused it to die before it could be born.

This evening, when I went to close the coop up for the night, I decided to check the egg, to see if I could still hear peeping.

Yep, I heard peeping alright!  Meet Baby #4.

Baby #3 should be here sometime tonight.

It was pretty freaky to see the chick, alive, in the eggshell like that. I have a fear of being buried alive (to the point I don't want to be buried when I'm dead), and it made me feel....uncomfortable to think of the new little baby chick, trapped in the shell, trying to get out. Sometimes they don't make it out alive. 
But you're not supposed to "help" them out, I'm not sure why not, but I don't want to do something wrong, so I stuck it back under the Hen, and hope everything goes as it's supposed to.