'Sick' hen lays one of world's largest eggs

The Pascoe family compare their hen's egg to a normal size egg

A sickly hen has stunned its owners by laying one of the world's largest eggs.

Pet chicken Gerties huge egg weighed seven ounces and measured ten inches around its long axis, just two short of the world record.

The freak egg had a second, smaller egg complete with shell inside it and so had two yolks, two whites and two shells.

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Owner Kasha Pascoe, aged 12, could not believe her eyes when she went to Gerties coop and found the egg lying on the straw.

The one-year-old bird normally lays an egg a day but had not done so for almost 48 hours and was looking listless.

Kasha said: "When I saw the size of the egg I thought I must be dreaming. I could not believe it was real when I opened the hatch and looked in. It was twice the size of Gertie's normal eggs and I did not believe it was real until I picked it up.

"Gertie had not been very well the day she laid it and I don't think she will want to lay another egg that size again."

Her mother Raychel, 36, said the egg cracked as it was being filmed by a local television crew.

She said: "It had been out in the sun and the shell got soft. I was putting it back in the straw so they could re-enact Kasha finding it when it cracked.

"I rushed it inside and put it straight into the frying pan and it was only then that I realised it was really one egg inside another. It was extraordinary.

"There was one of Gertie's normal small brown eggs inside the outer shell, which must have grown around it.

"It was a very remarkable thing to see but I feel sorry for Gertie having to lay it. Before she laid it she looked poorly and was strutting around like she normally does.

"It was a shame that it broke but the television crew made the most of it and it turned from a nature programme into a cookery show."

The egg made a delicious late lunch for Kasha and her brother Alexander, aged 11 at their home at Bovey Tracey, South Devon.

Kasha said: "It was a shame to eat it but it tasted very nice, just like a normal egg but better and there was one egg for each of us inside the same shell."

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