A woman who recently began keeping chickens was left in shock when she saw one of her hens had laid an egg almost twice the usual size.
When she cracked it open, she was astounded to find a second, normal-sized egg inside the shell.
Neali Tate lives in Illinois and in 2024 got a flock of chicks, who she has since raised into laying hens.
“The reason for me loving chickens is because of my Grandma Lewis,” Tate told Newsweek. “She had and still has chickens [from] when I was a little girl, and everything I know about chickens is because of her.”
Tate recently went to check on her hens and, despite her familiarity with chickens, found something she had never seen before.
One of her hens had laid an absolutely enormous egg, and Tate took to Facebook group BYC (BackYardChickens) to share photos of it and other normal-sized eggs her hens had laid that day.
In one of the photos, an egg larger than her right palm can be seen, while another fits snugly inside her left palm.
But it didn’t end there.
“So I finally decided to crack open this huge egg that one of my Isa Browns laid,” she said. “I have never ever seen anything like this! What an awesome experience!”
The photos showed her cracking open the egg into a bowl—where inside was another, smaller egg. And upon opening the second egg, inside was the egg white and yolk, a normal, perfectly formed egg.
She asked on her post “Has anyone else had this happen?” and group members responded in a huge way, awarding the post over 5,600 likes and hundreds of comments and shares.
“Is your poor hen okay?? That’s huge,” one wrote, with another saying “give that girl a spa day and some extra treats!”
“Just when you think you have seen everything…,” one user said, while another compared the situation to a woman “having a 15 pound baby.”
Some people shared their own stories, confirming the same thing had happened to them and that they were just as shocked as Tate.
Newsweek spoke to Tracy Shane, a state livestock extension specialist for the University of Nevada, Reno’s College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources, who explained this phenomenon could occur “when an egg does not get released from the cloaca at the usual time.”
“Another egg drops from the oviduct into the uterus and a shell forms around both eggs, then the egg gets released,” she said.
Shane said it’s “not too dissimilar from a double-yolked egg, except for a 24-hour delay between the shell formation around the first yolk and the shell formation around the second yolk.”
Shane added: “The eggs should be safe to eat as long as they look normal.”
Tate told Newsweek: “When I saw the giant egg at first I freaked out and had to show it to everyone. I couldn’t believe my chicken had laid an egg that size or could even lay an egg that size!”
She waited before opening the egg and was sure to have a camera on hand when she finally did so.
“I couldn’t believe there was another egg in the egg. I have never seen such a thing before,” Tate said. “I had to take pictures so people believed me, and send them to everyone.”
And as for whether she braved eating the egg-inside-an-egg, she said: “We did not eat the egg—it’s actually still in my fridge!”
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