Woman hatches ducks from Waitrose eggs

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-52838747

by gscott • 6 years ago

77 71 6 years ago

For those that don't know, you can tell a fertilized egg from a unfertilized egg by looking closely at the yolk after breaking it open. A fertilized egg has a red dot, while an unfertilized egg has a white dot.

Edit: after googling a bit looking for evidence. I discovered this is a popular myth that I've known since childhood.

giorgioz• 6 years ago

Can you back this with a link?

Reason0773• 6 years ago

This is a common myth, but it is false. The “red dot” is just a blood spot that sometimes occurs as part of the egg formation process, not an indicator of fertilisation!

https://qz.com/431136/heres-why-your-brown-eggs-have-more-bl...

It’s pretty much impossible for a commercially-produced hens egg to be fertilised. Duck eggs are a bit different because they tend to be produced on smaller farms, where they can come in to contact with wild ducks.

Edit: It’s also apparently much more difficult to tell male ducks apart from female ones, compared to chickens. One article says the most reliable method is to “listen to the sound of their quacks”!

mnw21cam• 6 years ago

The most common type of duck over here is the mallard, which shows quite strong sexual dimorphism. It's way easier to tell male from female than chickens.

arghwhat2• 6 years ago

It is usually very easy to tell drakes and ducks apart due to the very colorful plumage of males in many species of duck.

The problem being that drakes shed feathers a few times a year, and the drakes wear the same feathers as the ducks for at least some of the year. However, this is usually outside the mating season, and shouldn't really be a problem.

gadders3• 6 years ago

I guess they mean it is difficult to tell apart by just looking at their feathers.

Male ducks have penises though so you could determine the sex by looking at the vent, but this is best left to a vet apparently.

hownottowrite• 6 years ago

Almost. Blood dots happen in both fertilized and unfertilized eggs so the red dot is not an indicator of anything aside from stress in the hen.

The white dot is the germinal disc and in an unfertilized egg it is solid. In a fertilized egg, it has a little halo which will grow wide after incubating for a few hours.

DanBC• 6 years ago

The white dots are sometimes the chalazae, which are strings that keep the yolk centred.

https://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/Chalazae.htm

willvarfar2• 6 years ago

I know someone who went around with their kids, buying half a dozen eggs from various different farm shops and stalls and supermarkets.

They wrote the date and shop on each egg and put them under their own chickens as an experiment.

It surprised me just how many actually hatched!

A really fun project if you have your own chickens.

viraptor2• 6 years ago

I'm really surprised. I'm not a farm person in any way, and from what I learned the male chickens are close to useless and most hens have never been close to a male their entire life. It seems the separation is not that strict though.

willvarfar2• 6 years ago

You don't need a rooster to make hens lay eggs. A normal hen lays an egg most days, even without a rooster.

You do need a rooster if you want fertile eggs, though.

A normal backyard flock needs a rooster to get fertile eggs to raise to perpetuate the flock. This is why backyard and small farm flocks usually have one.

I can't think of anyone keeping chickens and not having a rooster, although I live in the countryside where their cock-a-doodle-do is tolerated or even loved. I'm guessing if you keep hens in suburbia you'd have to buy chicks somewhere rather than have a rooster.

Big battery farms though? I have no idea if they have some barns with roosters to perpetuate the flock or if they buy in chicks from specialized rooster farms or something?...

pvaldes3• 6 years ago

Having (paranoid) roosters taking care of the hens makes a difference with predators. In free range they are definitely a valuable member of the flock. Most hens are happier with roosters.

And they are nice birds to watch

Supermancho• 6 years ago

People hatch quail eggs, duck eggs, and chicken eggs from markets in every state I've lived in, for fun or farm. Asian markets tend to be the best source for fertilized, viable, eggs (eg 99 Ranch Market, H-mart, etc).

VBprogrammer• 6 years ago

I'm no expert in chicken rearing but isn't it quite likely that the more "free range" your eggs are raised the more chance of accidental having a fertalized egg? Seems much less likely in caged hens (at significant harm to the chicken of course).

BillinghamJ• 6 years ago

"Free range" isn't super free ranging, as such - it tends to be achieved still with very restrictive conditions. With ones which really properly can roam about in a large outdoor area, yeah it seems the likelihood would go up, but I think those are fairly unusual at least in the UK

dogma11383• 6 years ago

Most free range eggs are nothing more than branding just like fair trade coffee.

If it’s a large industrial farm free range or not the likelihood of the eggs being fertilized is pretty much zero, smaller farmstead/homestead farms that sell their eggs directly or to resellers can often have fertilized eggs tho.

user59944612• 6 years ago

You should check the stamp on the egg. The first number is how the chicken was raised. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_marking#Producer_code

Free range is not necessarily what a person would expect of free range. The farm can pack 9 hens per square meter with some outdoor space available at times.

fastball• 6 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wa_P-tDNlE

pampa• 6 years ago

There is a video on youtube, where a farm threw away expired eggs and they hatched in the dumpster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFq-qpkvbA

Reason0773• 6 years ago

I'm guessing those must have been unwanted eggs from a chicken hatchery. Not expired eggs that were intended for consumption!

abledon• 6 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFq-qpkvbA

wild predators definitely had a good meal that week!

justinclift• 6 years ago

Well, chickens will eat anything. So, the first few probably died of starvation.

The last ones though, could have become pretty fat. ;)

JdeBP3• 6 years ago

It's a little misleading to call them "Waitrose eggs". This brand is for sale in Tesco and Morrison's as well, for starters. Someone else did the same stunt of incubating and hatching this brand of duck egg bought from Sainsbury in July of this year.

* http://diazhub.com/australia/animal-lover-takes-home-2-60-bo...

And there was a teenage boy from Sutton Coldfield who did the same stunt back in February 2019.

* https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/19/teenage-boy-hatches-duck-egg-...

gadders3• 6 years ago

People have done similar with quail eggs as well.

tantalor• 6 years ago

Not really a "stunt"... it's easy.

gweinberg• 6 years ago

Yeah, I clicked largely because I was wondering what Waitrose eggs were. I thought maybe she'd end up with cockatrices or something.

mauvehaus• 6 years ago

If you find that headline misleading, know that if this had happened in the USA, it could have read “Woman hatches ducks from Giant Eagle eggs”

JdeBP3• 6 years ago

If you are in the USA you are possibly missing some of the subtle context here. Waitrose has been a hot topic in the news this summer in the U.K., as it has just finished a divorce from its erstwhile on-line delivery company Ocado. This has resulted in a lot of "Waitrose" news. It has also resulted in things such as quite close to attack advertisements running on Classic FM, reported to me by a relative, both a shock to hear on the rather tame Classic FM and quite close to the boundaries of the Advertising Standards Authority broadcast code of practice.

* https://bbc.co.uk/news/business-53971834

* https://marketingweek.com/waitrose-marketing-campaign-ocado/

* https://asa.org.uk/type/broadcast/code_section/03.html

This was another not really "Waitrose" story. The brand here, common to all of the stories, is Clarence Court, and it is sold in multiple supermarkets. Notice that the story about Francesca Anker from Kenilworth didn't bother quoting the supermarket at all, unlike the BBC, and quoted M. Anker (who had something to say on the subject of keeping drakes around in a free-range farm, that would have informed commentary in this very discussion) and "a Clarence Court spokesman". The Daily Mail did a better job of reporting this than the BBC.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

Yes, that Daily Mail.

ashildr• 6 years ago

How can you demonstrate better that a product is in a healty and natural condition?

bserge3• 6 years ago

It's more like they were raised in farms with one common space for the birds, still extremely cramped with probably no grass or natural light but maybe slightly better than battery cages.

barrkel• 6 years ago

They'd like you to believe that the 130 farms they collect eggs from resemble the one they videoed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9MZdfAUlXs - but it's hard to evidence objectively.

globular-toast2• 6 years ago

"There may also be instances when a wild duck encounters farmed drakes, but again, this is rare," he said.

Wait... drakes are the males. Surely he means a wild drake encountering farmed ducks? Odd that a spokesman would get this wrong.

dejv• 6 years ago

It works both ways, you can sometimes see weird colored ducks in flock of wild ducks. These are most probably crossbreeds with domestic animals.

globular-toast2• 6 years ago

Yeah but those eggs aren't going to end up in a supermarket carton, are they?

I actually saw what I believe was a cross-bred duck the other week. It had the green head of a mallard drake, but the body was black and white which I've never seen before.

sradman• 6 years ago

Our farmers work hard to ensure ducks and drakes are separated correctly. As a result of this difficulty in sexing, a male white-feathered duck may very occasionally be left with a group of females, although, these instances are extremely rare.

I assumed that the issue was with the scale of duck farming; small independent farmers do not have the scale to separate the male(s). If true, a rogue drake is a more interesting scenario that can be considered an unintentional experiment in (un)natural selection.

theginger• 6 years ago

I don't know much about eggs or birds, but I've always been told birds are meant to keep their eggs warm. Seems like trying to hatch eggs that have been in on a shelf for an unknown amount of time could carry a real risk of some tragically deformed pets.

ucosty• 6 years ago

Ducks have a system for this -- they lay an egg a day but won't start incubating them until they have laid their full clutch. The eggs won't start developing until the bird starts incubating them, and they can remain in this state for quite a while especially if kept cold.

carc1n0gen• 6 years ago

Yup. Worked on a turkey egg (for hatching) farm. The eggs were kept cold until they reach the hatchery for the same reason.

bserge3• 6 years ago

Eggs are similar to plant seeds in a way, keeping them cold can delay the development of the embryo by weeks, and they'll still hatch healthy most of the time.

yarrel• 6 years ago

Eggs. How do they work?

anaon42• 6 years ago

How is this news? The title made me think maybe the egg should have been of something other than a duck hence the upset but no. DUCK EGG HATCHES DUCK ain't nature wild?....

ChuckMcM• 6 years ago

I am reminded of what an uncle of mine who raised chickens said, "It only takes time and patience to feed a family of four on one egg."

Raising ducks though can be pretty challenging, especially if they imprint on you and follow you around everywhere.

ImprobableTruth• 6 years ago

It only takes time and patience to feed a family of four on one egg.

... and enough feed for a family of four

greedo• 6 years ago

Nature finds a way...

Woman hatches ducks from Waitrose eggs

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