Hen lays an 8-inch whopper egg

A hen has laid a giant egg almost as big as a tennis ball – and four times larger than normal.

The egg, laid by a free-range chicken, is 4in (10cm) long, 8½in (21cm) in circumference and weighs 7.4oz (210g).

Farmer’s wife Julie Hewitt, 31, said: “We were absolutely astonished. It’s more than twice the weight of a goose egg.”



She and husband David, 35, collect 20,000 eggs every day from the 30,000 chickens they keep on their Rosedown farm near St Wenn in Cornwall.

Mum-of-four Julie added: “David has been working with chickens all his life so I knew the egg was something incredible when he ran out the barn screaming, ‘Look at the size of this’.

“It’s perfect and has a really hard shell.”

There's another photo here.