Unusual discovery as hen lays "enormous" double egg at Sheffield home
“We have never seen anything like it”
Helen Longmuir, aged 56, of Owlthorpe, found one of her hens, “Jade”, laid a large egg that held another egg inside.
Helen’s 14-year-old granddaughter, Lilly Holden, noticed Jade making an “unusual clucking sound”, before she laid the “massive” egg.
Helen said: “We were just waiting and waiting thinking she’ll hatch any time, and then she hatched an egg the size of Lilly’s hand.”
Jade is one of Helen’s “Warren” hens, which is a hybrid brown laying chicken bred to produce a high volume of eggs.
She homes four chickens in her garden and has had them from being nine weeks old.
Both Helen and Lilly thought the egg might be a double yolk, but were shocked when they cracked it and found a smaller egg inside the larger one.
She said: “We cracked it and oh my gosh we were screaming. We didn’t expect it at all, it was really strange.”
Helen works at a vets, and was told by her colleagues that this was “rare”, especially because this was Jade’s first hatch.
She added: “I was just thinking wow I can’t believe it, it was amazing, totally exciting.”
The cause of this is known as “Counter-Peristalsis Contraction”, and can occur when a second immature egg cell is released by the ovary before the first egg has travelled through the oviduct.
This causes a contraction where the first egg reverses its course and pushed back up to the top.
Helen shared how one of her friends, who also homes hens, brought some of his eggs to compare and said “it was huge”.
“We’ve never seen anything like it, especially not a first egg.”