Hard-working hen lays colossal Easter egg

Updated: 2005-03-28 10:28

Maybe this hen was getting ready for Easter.

She produced a gargantuan egg that looked more like something an ostrich mum would produce. It weighed in at 206 grams - perhaps a new world record.

The 8-month-old chicken in Jiaozuo, Henan Province, laid the 8.5-centimetre long egg on March 18, Xinhua reported. It had a diameter of 6.1 centimetres, and its owner swears the chicken is not on steroids. Chen Xiaobai, the woman farmer in Yizhuang Village of Jiaozuo, is a chicken-breeding specialist. She says her grand hen began laying eggs in February of this year. The size of the hen's shelled zygotes are amazing.

But this particular massive egg stunned Chen, it amazed her fellow villagers as well. None had ever witnessed such a feat from a mother hen.

Nor has the rest of the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The previous "heaviest" chicken egg weighed a mere 148 grams, dropping from a hen in the Ukraine last February.

If Chen's information isn't scrambled, she may get her chicken in the record book.