I bit into a boiled egg ... and this diamond came out!

EVERYONE knows the tale of the goose that lays golden eggs.

But Sally Thomson has gone one better – and found a hen that delivers shiny gems.

The 39-year-old waitress had just sat down to a hard-boiled egg when she felt something in her mouth that she thought was gristle.

She said: ‘It fell on to the plate and I couldn’t understand where it had come from – I thought it had come from me.

‘There was this little bit of jewellery. I couldn’t understand where it had come from. The only place could have been from the egg.’

At first Miss Thomson was worried someone had actually lost a diamond.

But experts have since told her the stone is probably cubic zirconia, a synthetic gem often found in jewellery.

Chicken farmers say it is possible the chicken ate the gem and it passed into the egg, while another expert suggested it could have formed like a pearl.

The tiny gem – which came in a pack of Asda free range eggs – has appeared at a special time for Miss Thomson, from Carlisle. She is preparing to get married in May to her fiance Steven Warwick and is due to celebrate her hen party this weekend. She said: ‘I believe in superstitions and I think there must be something about the timing of this. I don’t know what it will be a sign of but it is very surreal. It’s a really small stone – it’s half the size of the butterfly on the back of an earring I think.’

Collette Francis, who used to work on a chicken farm, said it is possible the gem passed through the chicken.

She wrote: ‘The shell coating goes on last and doesn’t harden until it hits the air. Sometimes the yolk goes back up the wrong way and meets a second yolk – double yolker (sometimes two yolks develop at the same time too). Sometimes the egg after it’s had the calcium coat added travels backwards meets another egg and get “recoated” – egg within an egg, it’s rare but it happens.

‘ In this case it could be, chicken swallows diamond, diamond gets stuck at intestine exit, egg picks up diamond on way out.’ But Edward Boothman, chairman of The Poultry Club of Great Britain, said it may have been the result of the chicken’s natural reaction to an irritation. He said: ‘I’ve seen something like this before. Like an oyster and a pearl there is an irritation that starts to grow.

‘It’s something in the egg tract and it puts calcium round it. Eventually it forms and comes out in the egg white. It doesn’t hurt the bird and could be one in ten million eggs.

‘I’ve only seen two or three in my lifetime, so it’s something that wants keeping. It’s amazing what you do find in eggs.’

Farmer Daniel Brown, of Brown Eggs in Scarborough, said: ‘In all my years, I’ve never heard of anything quite like that. It is possible that it could’ve passed through the chicken, but it’s very unlikely.

‘What I will say is that chickens use stones to grind up their feed … but I’ve never known of a lump of any kind of stone to go into an egg.’

It is difficult for the naked eye to tell the difference between a cubic zirconia and a diamond. It is almost as hard as diamond and can be cut in the same shapes as designs to replicate the precious stone almost exactly.