The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
So which came first... the egg or the little egg?
A GRANDMOTHER made a cracking discovery while tucking into her dinner – a tiny egg within an egg!
Shell-shocked Janet Whincup (61) was happily munching away at her toast soldiers and boiled egg last week when she noticed that something hard was preventing her from dunking her toast any further.
The mystery object turned out to be a miniature brown speckled egg, measuring about one inch in diameter, inside the large egg.
Mrs Whincup, of Little Northfields, Barnack, was shocked by her discovery but got in touch with the ET to find out how rare a phenomenon it is.
Mrs Whincup, a mother-of-three and grandmother-of-six, said: “I had just got through to the first yoke with my soldiers when I hit something hard.
“I thought ‘oh that’s strange’ because the first yoke was soft and this second one was rock hard and try as I might I couldn’t break through it.
“At first I thought it could be a stone but my to my astonishment it turned out to be another egg.”
Mrs Whincup and her husband Perry (68) regularly buy eggs from the Plant Eggs shop in the nearby Bainton. After making the shock discovery Mrs
Whincup decided not to eat the remaining bigger egg and threw it out.
But she has decided to keep the small egg, which she describes as being like a “pigeon’s egg”, as a memento.
Mrs Whincup added: “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I found it.
“To be honest the whole episode has put me off eating boiled eggs but it’s left me very intrigued.
“I have never come across anything like this before and my friends and family are equally puzzled by it.
“I’m keeping the mini egg as a memento for the time being. It’s brown and speckled, like a perfect pigeon’s egg.
“For the past few days I’ve been trying to find out how rare this is. I’ve been on Google and put messages on Facebook.
“All my friends and family are equally puzzled. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
A spokeswoman for the British Egg Information Service said that the phenomenon is very rare but explained by a young hen laying an egg but whose reproductive system is not fully developed.
She said: “Finding an egg within another egg is very rare.
“The process is similar to double yolkers and is often caused by young hens whose reproductive systems are not fully developed.
“Sometimes eggs can get stuck in their ovaries and develop abnormalities before being laid.”
A spokeswoman for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), added: “This is does sound like a very unusual discovery.
“We certainly have not been contacted about someone finding an egg within an egg before.”