Fifth grade student successfully hatches quail’s egg bought from store

Fifth grade student successfully hatches quail’s egg bought from store

Isshin Nakasone holding a baby quail named “Uzupee” that he raised from the egg. Uzupee closes its eyes comfortably.


January 15, 2018 Ryukyu Shimpo

Ten-year-old Isshin Nakasone, fifth-grade student at Hagoromo Elementary School in Ginowan, successfully hatched five quails out of 19 eggs that he bought at a store last June. According to his mother Eri ,38, they did not have many expectations before they started the hatching process. However, with a great surprise, one of the surviving birds calls cheerfully to this day.

Isshin likes animals and takes care of two pairs of tortoises and iguanas. He especially loves hatching eggs and raising baby animals. He commented on the quails, saying “they were really cute,” and he also made a one-meter tall poster to explain the hatching process. The poster received a gold award at his school.

When the egg incubation project started, Isshin had been having difficulty going to school. Now he has gained great confidence after raising the quails and grew through the process. As her son insists he can raise quails again, Eri responses with a worrying smile, saying “there is no more room.” She continues as she smiles, “we parents want to trust our children, let them do what they are interested in, and help them grow.”

Baby quails hatched from eggs sold at a store


There is an array of tanks for his animals in the apartment in Ginowan where the family lives. The boy was determined to take care of birds, so he studied how to raise them and convinced his mother who previously said “we won’t have any more animals in house.” He bought two packs of quail eggs from a neighboring super market with his pocket money on May 28.

He placed 19 eggs, except for one cracked one, in a case filled with cotton and thermal equipment for turtles to control temperature and humidity. Checking the eggs was the first thing he did every morning, and his 14 years old sister Kokona also took care of the eggs by rotating them every three to four hours. He also did not stop taking care of them on the days he could not attend his school.

Eight days after the project started, they were able to observe growing blood vessels in eight eggs when they held the, under lights. Isshin was excited about the possibiltiy for having all eight eggs hatch, and recorded the development process throughly on photos.

Most eggs sold at stores are usually infertile and do not hatch. His mother Eri laughs while saying, “We heard that it’s hard to tell a quails’ sex and that the eggs sold in stores tend to have more sperm eggs by accident. But I didn’t think eight of them would hatch. So while I was excited, I worried what we would do with them.”

They watched the eggs every couple of days by placing them under a light, but since they learned it is better to leave them untouched, they waited in patience after day 13. The baby birds started calling in their egg shells, and the first egg finally hatched on day 16. Five birds hatched in three days.

There were many discoveries as they hatched the quails – the babies start walking right after they hatch, the baby quails eat by themselves, they sleep face-down with their legs spread “as if they were dead” and although each bird has different patterns on their feathers it becoms difficult to notice once they are grown. The family enjoyed having active conversations while raising the birds.

Isshin currently goes to an adaptation class hosted by the city educational board away from his regular school. His mother, Eri smiles, “we were worried about him not going to school, there wasn’t much to be done since he himself wanted to go to school but could not. We want to nurture our trusting relationship with our child and work with him to do what he wants to do.”

(English translation by T&CT and Sayaka Sakuma)

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