Mum hatched a £25 egg she bought on eBay and now baby Kevin ‘thinks she’s his mum’ after she learned ‘emu squeak’ from YouTube
The unique pet lives in the family home with Charlotte Harrison and her three kids
A WOMAN who was given a £25 egg as a present and nurtured her feathered friend until he hatched as a baby emu has told how her pet now thinks she's his mum.
Charlotte Harrison was given the gift in November and used online advice to incubate nurture it for 47 days.
Using a home incubating kit, the mum-of-three weighed and turned the egg daily and learnt how to ‘squeak and whistle like an emu’ from YouTube videos.
Last week, the 24-year-old spent four hours ‘coaxing’ the chick as he hatched.
And now ‘Kevin’ the emu now follows her around her three-bedroom home in Bordon, Hampshire, because he ‘thinks she’s his mum’.
Charlotte, who’s in a relationship with delivery driver Darren Farmer, 44, said: “We had no idea if Kevin would hatch, but I’ve done my reading and was meticulous about giving him the best chance.
“Having coaxed him through the birth, I feel so protective of Kevin. I think it’s because I nurtured him through incubation to hatching and the process has similarities to pregnancy.
“The feeling’s mutual, he dotes on me and follows me around the house as though I’m his mother.”
Now Charlotte, Darren - and their kids Ellie, four, 19-month-old Rhys and four-month-old Molly - hope to keep Kevin, who’s 1ft tall, as a pet.
But the mum admits he will have to be transferred to a nearby paddock as he nears his full height of 6ft and 10st.
Charlotte added: “He’s only been with us for a week but he already feels like part of the family.”
In the past, Charlotte has hatched chickens in her £20 home incubator, which was also bought from eBay.
In October, she realised emu eggs are also available on the site for £25 - plus £5 postage.
She said: “I did some reading and realised you don’t need a licence to own an emu in this country.
“I suggested hatching our own to Darren and he laughed it off, but then my dad actually bought me one.”
The mum tells how the ‘hand-sized’ egg - which weighed 715g - was sent from an emu farm in Dorset and arrived in a polystyrene box on November 17.
She recalled: “I did some reading online and learned that November is early in the breeding season, meaning the chance of the egg successfully hatching was low, but I was determined to give it a try.
“When the egg arrived I knew I had to weigh it and put it in the incubator straight away.
“I kept the incubator in my son Rhys’s room because he was too young to reach it – I knew my four-year-old Ellie would not have been able to leave it alone.
“She was so excited about the egg. When I showed her a picture of an emu, Ellie named the egg ‘Kevin’, after the character in the Disney Pixar film Up.”
Charlotte found online articles advising the egg must lose 15 per cent of its water weight over the incubation period, and she learned how to adjust the humidity of the incubator accordingly.
Over the next 35 days the mum nurtured the egg - weighing it, adjusting the humidity and turning it daily.
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“Everyone who came to the house was fascinated,” she recalled. “We had no idea if what I was doing was working, all I could do was hope.”
In mid-December, on day 36 of the process, Charlotte removed the egg from the incubator and rested it on a towel.
Then, she made squeaking noises to imitate an emu, as per what she’d seen in YouTube videos.
She said: “At first I felt silly making high pitched noises and thought there was no way it would work.
“But then I heard movement from within the shell. I was over the moon – it was the first sign that the incubation had worked and there was an emu in the egg.”
Over the next 12 days Charlotte used YouTube videos of emus to perfect the sound and ‘coax’ the emu from its shell. She tells how, on January 5, the shell cracked.
“I realised Kevin had begun to hatch,” she said. “I was so nervous about getting it wrong but I’d joined an emu breeding Facebook group and advice there told me I should encourage it by making noises.
“So I sat there for four hours making squeaks and whistles to coax him out.
“Every so often Ellie came in to try and make emu sounds as well. She couldn’t wait to meet him.”
Finally, Kevin hatched. Charlotte said: “I felt a huge surge of protection and care when Kevin hatched. I couldn’t believe we’d done it – all from an eBay purchase.
“He had a dodgy leg so I gently bound it with white medical tape for the next two days – then he was able to stand and walk unaided.
“From the moment he was born he was completely attached to me, he definitely thought I was his mother.
“Whether it was because I was the first person he saw or because he recognised the noises I’d made while he was in the egg, I don’t know.
“Emus are such placid, lovely animals. When I sit down on the sofa, Kevin likes to curl up in the arch of my foot.
“And when someone else holds him I can see him looking around for me for reassurance.
“I set him up a bed on a towel in Ellie’s room, she loved it. He quickly became toilet trained, too.”
Now, Charlotte feeds him carrots and chicken feed and tells how he recognises her voice from his time in the egg.
He also ‘plays’ with the children’s toys, which include teddy bears and plastic horses.
Her children ‘love’ Kevin – and she says she even overhears partner Darren chatting away to him.
She added: “Darren keeps saying we’ll have to get rid of Kevin, but with every passing day we’re all growing more attached to him.
“I want to keep him in the house, he loves it here with us. He’s 1ft tall at the moment but emus can grow up to 6ft, so at some point he will have to move to a nearby paddock.”
The mum has also uploaded videos to a YouTube channel called ‘the journey of Kevin the emu’.
She said: “I’m sharing the adventures of Kevin with the world. I feel so maternal towards him and want to show him off, he’s adorable.”