By Joel Kelly, Hills Gazette. Video and photos by Matthew Poon
A GIANT egg laid by a Darlington hen - weighing in at more than 160 grams - looks to have cracked a new Australian record.
About three times the size of a regular egg, it easily tops WA’s previous best - a 146g egg laid by a Donnybrook hen last year.
In fact, it comes well within striking distance of the unofficial world record for the biggest egg laid in the modern era - a 180g monster produced by a hen in Campo Florido, Cuba, in 2008.
Perth Hills chicken breeder Kylie Williams said she was stunned when her one-year-old welsummer hen Bronzey laid the monster egg.
She thought the egg was probably an Australian record but it started to crack before it could be officially weighed.
Still, the Hills Gazette captured video footage of the egg on kitchen scales and the moment it was cracked open, revealing another fully formed regular-sized egg inside.
“I think it must have been the small egg inside the big one knocking about when we handled it that caused it to crack,” Mrs Williams said.
Both the huge egg and the one inside it each carried their own separate yolks and whites.
According to bird experts, double-shelled eggs are indeed rare.
To prove it was no fluke, Bronzey produced another huge 150g egg just three days after her first Herculean effort.
*******
An egg within an egg, or a double-shelled egg, is extremely rare.
- It occurs when an egg that is almost ready to be laid reverses direction and gets a new layer of albumen covered by a second shell.
Sometimes the reversed egg joins up with the next egg and the two are encased together within a new shell.
*******
The biggest hen’s egg in history dates back to 1896, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
The 12oz (340g) whopper was 23cm in circumference.
- According to the World’s Record Academy, a hen in China laid an egg weighing 198g.
- Last February, a hen from Hampshire, England, laid an egg weighing 161g and measuring 20cm around.
- But the record for the biggest egg ever laid looks safe with the extinct great elephant bird. Laid almost 400 years ago, it measures more than 91cm around and could make more than 100 omelettes.
Click here to see the video that has Perth talking