Teacher claims she hatched chicks from eggs she bought at Trader Joes

In a viral TikTok video that has received more than 1.5 million views, a Bay Area, California, kindergarten teacher claims to have hatched chicks from eggs she bought from a Trader Joe’s grocery store.

“Did you know you could hatch eggs from Trader Joes?” Alice Bowie asks her viewers under the handle, @aliceintkland. “I bought these fertile eggs to test it out.”

In her video, Bowie noted that she was incubating eggs for her classroom students and decided to include nine eggs she bought at Trader Joe’s with the other farm-fresh eggs. 

She marked the Trader Joe’s eggs “TJ,” so she could tell the difference.

“We waited 21 days to be exact,” she said in a voiceover on TikTok. “We checked in on them along the way until finally they hatched. Three of our fluffy yellow chickies came from Trader Joe’s.”

She reported that only one-third of them hatched, but considered it a positive outcome since she did not know where they came from, how long they had been refrigerated or how they were handled during transport.

Fox News Digital reached out to Bowie and to Trader Joe’s for comment.

Bowie provides video coverage of the process — from labeling and placing the eggs into an incubator, to the yellow chicks hatching from what the video purports to be the same eggs.

“Can you believe these guys came from a carton?” she asked her audience.

The responses ranged from disgust to disbelief.

“This HAS to be a joke,” one person commented. 

“Now I’ll never eat eggs again,” said another. 

“I used to hide grocery store eggs under my grandma’s bed, hoping they’d hatch,” another viewer said. 

“From the majority of these comments, this video may have just solved the egg shortage crisis,” still another viewer said.

In a follow-up video, Bowie responds to commenters from the point of view of one of her hatchlings.

“Appears that some of you think my life is a joke,” the voiceover states. “So now you’re forcing me to come on here and defend myself. Yes, I really did come from a Trader Joe’s egg.”

It’s possible but “generally not possible” to hatch an egg purchased in a grocery store, according an article published by the Michigan State University (MSU) agricultural extension office.

“During their exploration of chicken embryology, youth learn that for a chicken to develop from an egg it must be fertilized,” the article states. “Most eggs sold commercially in the grocery store are from poultry farms and have not been fertilized. In fact, laying hens at most commercial farms have never even seen a rooster.”

In a YouTube video posted on Feb. 20, 2022, the owner of the account The Homestead Trail posted a video saying that after trial and error in regard to egg purchasing, she hatched a chick from an egg bought at Trader Joe’s.

“Well, we’re here to show you it’s possible!” the video description reads. “We hatched a chick out of a Trader Joe’s egg, despite all the odds stacked against us! Join us on this fun experiment incubating a grocery store egg!”

In an emailed statement, Brittanie, owner of The Homestead Trail in Indiana, addressed the YouTube video which has been viewed more than 159,000 times.

“Yes we really did hatch a chick from a Trader Joe’s egg!” she wrote to FOX Business. “As the egg industry moves away from battery cages to more humane practices like pasture-raised and free-ranging on small family farms, it’s becoming increasingly possible for a rooster to be in the flock which could result in fertilized eggs ending up in the carton.”

Brittanie added that there’s an active Facebook group called “Hatching Store Bought Eggs,” which is dedicated to incubating various egg brands.”

“Happy Egg Co. is another brand that a lot of people have had success hatching from,” she said. “The odds are small, but it’s still a fun experiment to try.”