A woman has become a duck-mum after buying some eggs from her local Morrisons and managing to hatch one into a little duckling.
There's now one extra mouth - or shall we say beak - to feed now in Adele Phillips' household. After seeing a post on social media about 'incubation' and after helping her mum with the weekly shop, the 28-year-old decided to pick up a pack of free-range Clarence Court duck eggs.
The eggs were bought on 28th March and hatched on 29th April. She discovered one was fertile by shining a torch on them to see veins inside.
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You can check out Adele's egg incubating in the video below:
She then successfully maintained it in the incubator for 30 days by turning it three to four times a day to make sure it was at the correct temperature at all times.
Adele made sure to keep them warm on the way home and even stored them in an airing cupboard for a few days before moving them to an incubator which she ordered online. Just one month had passed when one egg hatched into a perfectly healthy duckling, leaving her shocked.
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She planned to give the duckling away but after seeing its little face her "heart melted". The processor and on-call firefighter has decided to keep him and has named him Braddock Morris after his breed - Braddock White.
She said: "During the whole process everyone was looking at me, thinking 'are you insane?' I was just giving it a go as a little experiment, but they all thought I would just end up with a boiled egg.
"Well I definitely proved them wrong and everyone was very shocked.
"I am amazed and it really hit me when I saw come out of its shell. I thought 'what have I done? It is just mad. My pet could easily have been on someone's toast."
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She added: "I saw someone doing a challenge on TikTok and thought I would give it a go.
"When we bought the egg my mum was just like 'are you sure?' I knew I had to keep them warm on the way home although as they had already been on a shelf for a few days I didn't think it was going to work.
"They then went into the airing cupboard but as I had never done anything like this before I was so shocked when I discovered one was fertile."
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She added: "I knew a couple of days before it was going to hatch but you are told to leave it alone.
"I was worried and looked through the hole but didn't touch it. I was worried it would die or come out deformed but he was 100 per cent healthy.
"I did it all from just looking online to see what to do.
"It is now one week old and is in a box with a heat lamp, they need a lot of heat when they are babies. It has swim time in the evening when I put it in water and I give it food like strawberries and spinach.
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"You are also told to feed them scrambled eggs which I found a bit weird.
"I was going to give them to a farm but I decided I wanted to keep him. I feel for him pretty quick.
"I am a bit sceptical now about eating any eggs. I will be thinking of mine every time I make scrambled eggs thinking that could have been my one."
Adele said said would resist the urge to try and hatch more in the future and planned to buy a garden pond with a little enclosure to house him in.
And he won't be alone.
She added: "I have also bought him a buddy from a pet shop called Beryl so he doesn't get depressed being alone.
"I did not really plan this - but now I have two and I wouldn't swap them for the world, certainly not for any fried egg on toast. I now can't walk past the egg aisle in any shop without wanting to get more."
Congratulations Adele!
Featured Image Credit: SWNSTopics: Pets, Life, Morrisons, Animals