Eggs Inside of an Egg
One of our readers recently sent us some photos and told a strange tale. We wanted to share it so that we could find out if this has happened to anyone else.
Wanda and her husband live on a hobby farm with two flocks – one to provide eggs and pets and one to provide meat. They have both bantams and standard sized chickens and both brown and white egg layers. She says that usually her dark brown eggs are larger, but that one day she found a small one.
Wanda has a variety of breeds and isn’t sure which hen laid the small, dark egg. She didn’t think much about it, though, and boiled it along with the rest of her bantam eggs.
She often has boiled eggs for breakfast at work, and took the small brown one with her to eat. As she peeled it, she noticed some odd shadowing at one end. Curious, she kept peeling and found it wasn’t as shadow at all! It was another egg, complete with a shell!
Most people have seen double yolked eggs, but how many people have seen a fully formed egg inside of another egg? A little research reveals that this happens when an egg reverses direction with in the chicken before it is laid. It is such a rare occurrence that scientists aren’t sure why it happens.
There are several videos on YouTube of people cracking open especially large eggs to reveal another egg within, but none that are especially small as Wanda’s was.
Wanda is curious. Has this happened to any of our other readers? If so, was the outer egg larger or smaller than most of your other eggs? We would love to hear any egg inside another egg stories you might have!
Hi Wanda,
We recently experienced an egg inside another. Our Red Star pullet hen lays exceptionally large eggs so I was surprised to find an extremely large egg that morning. While cooking fried eggs that large egg looked perfect until I cracked it open and out plopped another whole egg into the pan. Both eggs were perfectly formed so I was apprehensive as to what caused this. Doris our hen seems to be fine and still laying large eggs!!
Best Regards,
Debra Fletcher
I just found an enormous soft egg, twice as big as my normal large ones. The shell is squishy, flexible, about the consistency of a thick water balloon. When I punctured the soft shell there was a yoke and a complete and normal sized egg!
That does happen sometimes! Sounds like you might need some extra calcium in their diet, could be a new layer, or it may have just been a fluke.
My wife boiled an egg this morning and when she opened it, she found another egg with a yolk inside the white of the outside egg. There was no shell on the inner egg.
I just cracked an exceptionally large egg to fry, I like the jumbo because they are usually double yoke, but when I did today, a complete second egg with full shell intact fell into the pan. The first shell gave me a rather small yoke with lots of clear liquid but I didn’t crack the second shell, I was leary that something might be wrong with it. Farmers Market – Jumbo eggs – bought at Walmart Jul.30,2016
Dan, It is actually a rare phenomenon for that to happen, but it not abnormal. Sometimes the egg will travel back up the chickens oviduct and then gets wrapped inside another egg. They are perfectly fine to eat if you chose to do so! Hope this helps!
We had a large brown egg that was as big as a potato, when we cracked it open it had whites and a yoke plus a large brown egg with whites and a yoke, I guess in this case 6 eggs make a dozen.
Ha ha ha! I guess so, Gary! That sounds interesting! I wish there was a way to preserve them so I could show them to friends. ha ha. Thanks for the comment! ~Shannon
I just had a egg inside of a egg today