A mum was left stunned when a hen she saved from the slaughterhouse laid a giant egg – twice the size of a normal one.<br /><br />Steph Carr, 30, said her two-year-old chicken Linda had produced the ‘massive egg’, which weighed a whopping 109g.<br /><br />Eggs bought in supermarkets generally weigh around 50g.<br /><br />The warren hen had previously failed to lay for over a week and appeared ‘slow on her feet’, leaving Steph worried.<br /><br />But when the mum-of-three inspected the coop on June 2 at her allotment in Settle, North Yorks., she found the chicken had recovered after laying the huge egg.<br /><br />Steph later turned the egg - a double-yoker - into a massive omelette that was then devoured by her kids and partner, Johnny Greenbank, 32.<br /><br />She said: “I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ I think probably the whole allotment heard me.<br /><br />"I was like, ‘What is that?’ It was huge. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. I was quite worried about the chicken, and I wondered if she was ok. <br /><br />"But she seemed a lot happier, to be honest. You would be if you needed to lay an egg that big.<br /><br />“We kept it until all the family were in. We had a massive omelette with it – the yokes were really big.”<br /><br />Steph said she had saved Linda from the slaughterhouse when she became surplus to requirements at a battery farm near Blackpool, Lancs, a year ago.<br /><br />She had signed up to take the chicken under her wing, which would have otherwise been killed and turned into animal food despite being a successful layer.<br /><br />The fowl - given the name Linda - then joined Steph’s other chickens happily living out their days on her allotment.<br /><br />But Steph became concerned when the previously plucky bird began to move slowly and was lethargic.<br /><br />She said: “She seems quite frail compared to the other chickens. She’s always been the weakest one really, quite slow on her feet.<br /><br />“And she hadn’t laid for quite a while - probably a week and a half.<br /><br />“She’s normally quite peppy and alert, and she was quite quiet and slow, she was the last one to come out of the hutch. <br /><br />"She wasn’t herself, I could tell. She wasn’t clucking as much.”<br /><br />Steph had gone to check on her chickens as usual when she found the huge egg in their nesting box.<br /><br />And she knew it belonged to Linda due to the colouration and texture of the shell.<br /><br />She added: “We thought, ‘It’s definitely her's because our other hens are quite a lot younger – and we can tell their eggs because the shells are different."<br /><br />Steph said she had taken pictures of the egg before safely whisking it back to her home where she later showed it to her kids and partner.<br /><br />And she then weighed it and placed it in an egg box to demonstrate the size difference.<br /><br />Steph added: “When I put it into the egg box with the others, it wouldn’t even close because it was so big. And then I just thought ‘I need to weigh it’. <br /><br />“It was 109 grams. It was a lot bigger – even just by sight, it was massive.”
