FRESHLY HATCHED: A chick peeks out from within an egg box after hatching from a batch of eggs bought from Nelson farmers' market.

Although it has brought us no closer to solving the age-old chicken and egg question, a Nelson family's fluffy find has given fresh food a new meaning.

Christchurch labourer Greg Cropper contacted the Nelson Mail yesterday with a miraculous video that has him reconsidering his breakfast choices.

Mr Cropper was visiting his grandma's house in Richmond over the weekend, helping her build a deck, when at lunchtime he heard her scream and call for him to come into the kitchen.

Thinking she had found a rat, Mr Cropper pulled out his phone to record the scene.

"We could hear the chirping, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a bloody rat."

But instead the family was greeted with a small chick, hatched from one of the eggs in the carton.

His nan had bought a carton of eggs from a stall at the Wednesday farmer's market, but since being put in the pantry one had hatched into a live baby chick.

‘Turns out the eggs she had just bought... were a bit more fresh than we had expected."

The eggs were placed on a shelf above the microwave, but he did not think the area was particularly warm, so as to incubate the eggs.

"It must have just been a mix up on the farm or something but as you can imagine we were pretty surprised."

Once they found the chick, they put it in a container with a lamp over the top of it to keep it warm, and fed it oatmeal.

But the chick was not an easy temporary houseguest, he said.

"They are noisy bloody things, it was a hard night."

The chick was now on a friends farm, along with the egg carton, he said.

"She [his grandma] is a bit freaked out that the rest of them might hatch.

"I think I've been put off eggs for life."