Texas Hen Lays Egg Within An Egg

Some poor Texas hen managed to surprise her owners this week by laying a giant "mutant super egg" that was the size of a baseball and actually had an intact, normal-sized egg inside it.

Cookie Smith of Abilene, Texas, found the egg last week in the chicken coop where she keeps her three hens, which she describes as "just scrawny little things," according to The Huffington Post. But one of those scrawny little things laid an egg the size of a baseball.

"I just died laughing when I saw it," Smith said to the Abilene Reporter News. "I brought it in to show Leonard, and he just said, 'Bless her heart.'"

The hens all seemed to be acting pretty normal, and Smith said she can't be sure which one was responsible for the giant egg.

The egg weighed about three times the size of a normal egg, and when Smith cracked it open for a reporter, she founded that it contained a normal yolk and egg white, and another fully formed egg.

"Oh my word," she said as the second egg appeared. "Would you look at that?"

Eggs within eggs are relatively rare. They're formed when unusual contractions force an egg that was supposed to be moving down an oviduct back up into the ovary, where it's surrounded by another egg.

Smith has decided to pass on eating the egg.

"No way. It may be fine, but it's a mutant egg," she said. "Its DNA might be messed up or something."

But experts say both eggs are safe to eat, so on the off chance that anyone else runs into a mutant super egg, check out some of our egg recipes for special ways to prepare it.