'We hatched our own chicks from a box of £4 supermarket eggs'

Zara Sutcliffe had been begging her parents for more pets to add to the family's collection.

The 13-year-old had been asking her mum, Claire, for months whether she could buy a box of Clarence Court 'Free to Fly' quail eggs, that she had read could be hatched.

On August 14th she spotted the brand during the family's weekly shop and her mum let her buy them. The animal-loving family already had a dog three cats, two red-footed tortoises and a mantis - and Zara's dad, Simon, had said 'no more pets.'

Zara, from Altrincham, told The Mirror: “I did a lot of research straight away when I got the eggs.” She had to carefully turn them four times a day, to stop the yolk settling and preventing them hatching. At first, Claire warned her daughter that it might not turn out as she hoped, and they may not hatch.

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But Zara remained confident, using an incubator, weighing the eggs regularly, and checking them with a torch. Soon, the eggs began gaining weight, and the chicks could be seen growing within.

Claire realised, now the eggs looked like they were hatching, she would have to break the fact to her husband Simon that it looked like they would be welcoming two more additions to their household. This was after he had previously said they weren’t to have any more pets.

Claire said: “I had to go up to my husband, because he’d said no more pets in the house. I said, it looks like these chicks are actually developing, and he went ‘can’t keep them’, and I said I think we can. Because they can live outside, in a rabbit sized-hutch. And he just looked at me and rolled his eyes.”

Then, on Friday September 1st less than three weeks after