A woman in the UK was in for a quacking good surprise when she embarked on a science experiment with a half-carton of duck eggs.
When the coronavirus forced Charli Lello into furlough, the bored 29-year-old former retail manager found herself in the market for a new pastime. Like many others with time on their hands, she decided to get herself a pet — or, in this case, hatch three ducks named Beep, Peep and Meep.
“I got the idea from a video that popped up on my Facebook feed of someone hatching quail eggs,” Lello, from Hertfordshire, in the north of London, tells CNN. So, the next time she went to Waitrose, a UK-based supermarket chain, she picked up both quail and duck eggs.
“Mum and I had briefly spoken about getting some ducks after lockdown anyway,” says Lello, who kept chickens already.
Lello says she didn’t expect the stunt to work — and, for the quail eggs, she was correct.
“None of the quail eggs developed but after 6 days in the incubator I checked the duck eggs and could see veins and a very tiny wiggly embryo,” she says. “Then, the excitement kicked in.”
With the help of her friends who she said “helped keep [her] calm,” Lello waited by her incubator with bated breath.
“I spent the whole two days that Beep was hatching glued to my incubator,” she says. “He was a lone chick for two days so I had to make a little sling out of a beanie hat and carry him around until Peep hatched. Meep joined a week later.”
A spokesperson for Waitrose told CNN in a statement that it is “rare” to find fertilized eggs on their store shelves.
The supermarket explained that because it is “notoriously difficult to identify the sex of egg-laying, white-feathered ducks,” male ducks are sometimes accidentally housed with females. Alternatively, wild female ducks may occasionally escape into the male duck pen.
They add that fertilized eggs are “entirely indistinguishable from normal eggs” on the breakfast plate.
The duck egg producer, Clarence Court, also said in a statement that “it is a feat of remarkably slim odds that a duckling has been hatched.”
“Duck egg production is a very small industry, and the separation of males from females relies wholly upon the skill of very few qualified people,” the company says.
They also claim that hatching chicken eggs would be even less likely as their gender markers are more distinguishable than those of a duck’s.
“Most drakes [male ducks] can be spotted by a little curl to the tail feathers, although not all of the drakes possess this visual marker,” the company says.
Indeed, it may have been that flirty tail feather that made this grocery miracle possible.
“Our ducks are kept in small flocks with access to the outdoors every day,” the company explains. “In this open-air environment, while it is infrequent, our ducks may attract the attention of wild drakes.”