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Woman hatches ducks from Waitrose eggs
- withinboredom 6y agoFor 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 6y agoCan you back this with a link?
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoop is correct. Stop asking questions.
- tommica 6y agoIs that how you conduct yourself IRL, or are you just being rude online?
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoI think it's safe to believe op. It doesnt matter if op is right or not. The egg is cracked. It's never going to grow. It's dead. Stop wasting time asking whether or not the dead chicken egg is fertilized.
- Reason077 6y agoThis 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-blood-spots-than-white-ones/ 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 6y agoThe 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.
- arghwhat 6y agoMallard drakes molt twice a year, taking on the brown plumage of the female sometime after the 5 month mating season.
- arghwhat 6y agoIt 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.
- pvaldes 6y agoThe ducks in the photo belong to a entirely white breed. Those are much difficult to sex with only a solid difference in morphology: the curly feathers over the tail are exclusive of the male.
- gadders 6y agoI 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 6y agoAlmost. 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 6y agoThe white dots are sometimes the chalazae, which are strings that keep the yolk centred. https://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/Chalazae.htm https://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/Chalazae.htm
- willvarfar 6y agoI 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.
- viraptor 6y agoI'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.
- willvarfar 6y agoYou 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?...
- viraptor 6y agoMost people that I know who keep chickens don't have a rooster, but share one with others from time to time... or just don't bother. (these are people keeping ~5 hens). And yes, I realise how eggs work :)
- gadders 6y agoMost people I know who have just a few chickens don't usually have a rooster. However, if you have a flock roosters can be useful. Normally if you introduce hens to an existing flock they will fight for a while, but a rooster will act to "keep the peace".
- Supermancho 6y agoPeople 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 6y agoI'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 6y 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
- kelnage 6y agoI happen to live near one of the larger “proper” free range farms - Sherston Free Range eggs [1]. The photos on their website really don’t lie - in fact, there’s a local pub that often has “visits” from the chickens, wandering over from their fields. They lay some of the nicest eggs around too! 1. https://www.sherstonfreerangeeggs.co.uk/ https://www.sherstonfreerangeeggs.co.uk/
- dogma1138 6y agoMost 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.
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- fastball 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wa_P-tDNlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wa_P-tDNlE
- pampa 6y agoThere 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFq-qpkvbA
- Reason077 6y agoI'm guessing those must have been unwanted eggs from a chicken hatchery. Not expired eggs that were intended for consumption!
- abledon 6y ago> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFq-qpkvbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFq-qpkvbA wild predators definitely had a good meal that week!
- justinclift 6y agoWell, chickens will eat anything. So, the first few probably died of starvation. The last ones though, could have become pretty fat. ;)
- JdeBP 6y agoIt'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-box-of-eggs-from-sainsburys-and-hatches-two-ducks-in-the-kitchen/ 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-bought-waitrose-8669641/amp/ https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/19/teenage-boy-hatches-duck-egg-...
- gadders 6y agoPeople have done similar with quail eggs as well.
- tantalor 6y agoNot really a "stunt"... it's easy.
- gweinberg 6y agoYeah, I clicked largely because I was wondering what Waitrose eggs were. I thought maybe she'd end up with cockatrices or something.
- mauvehaus 6y agoIf 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”
- JdeBP 6y agoIf 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://bbc.co.uk/news/business-53971834 * https://marketingweek.com/waitrose-marketing-campaign-ocado/ https://marketingweek.com/waitrose-marketing-campaign-ocado/ * https://asa.org.uk/type/broadcast/code_section/03.html 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/Perennial_sources#Daily_Mail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... Yes, that Daily Mail.
- ashildr 6y agoHow can you demonstrate better that a product is in a healty and natural condition?
- bserge 6y agoIt'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 6y agoThey'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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9MZdfAUlXs - but it's hard to evidence objectively.
- signal11 6y agoClarence Court's eggs are pretty expensive compared to other brands -- obviously that's nothing to do with conditions but I can say all the ones I've bought so far have been really, consistently good quality. I'll be very disappointed if I find they're battery-farming too.
- bserge 6y agoIt would be fantastic if all farms were like that! Industrial animal farming is the most profitable and scalable from a business perspective, but horrifying from a moral point of view.
- globular-toast 6y 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 6y agoIt works both ways, you can sometimes see weird colored ducks in flock of wild ducks. These are most probably crossbreeds with domestic animals.
- globular-toast 6y agoYeah 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 6y 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 6y agoI 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 6y agoDucks 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 6y agoYup. Worked on a turkey egg (for hatching) farm. The eggs were kept cold until they reach the hatchery for the same reason.
- bserge 6y agoEggs 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.
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- yarrel 6y agoEggs. How do they work?
- anaon42 6y agoHow 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 6y agoI 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 6y 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 6y agoNature finds a way...