A Coffs Harbour couple received a tiny yet unsettling surprise when they cracked open an egg for breakfast.
Rachael Ward told 9News.com.au her fiancé Jamie was making breakfast on Saturday and discovered the egg he had chosen had another fully-formed egg hidden inside.
The second egg was so small and perfectly shaped, weighing just 2 grams, it was like a real-life nesting doll.
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“Jamie was really shocked when he cracked it, he was like ‘what is this?’,” Ward said.
“I had a look and thought [it was] another yolk and then I touched it and it was hard.”
Measuring 10mm in size, the chicken egg is among the world’s smallest.
Though rare, a smaller egg being found inside an egg is not an unheard of phenomenon.
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According to Backyard Poultry, it’s called a counter-peristalsis contraction.
This occurs when a second oocyte – or ovary cell – is released by a hen’s ovary before the original egg has been properly formed and laid.
Ward said her fiance was “a bit scared” and didn’t want to eat the bigger egg.
They have decided to keep the tiny egg at home in the fridge wrapped in tissue.
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“[We were] just very surprised,” she added of the double egg.
Ward and Long had bought the eggs from local hobby farmer Gerald Gauci.
They took the little egg back to Gauci and showed him their discovery and he measured it at just over 10mm and weighing exactly 2g.
In 2016, a woman in Britain discovered her chook had hatched a 1.55cm egg, breaking the Guinness World Record for world’s small chicken egg.
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