A huge handful from the hen

The smallest chicken of the flock, one that usually lays ping-pong sized eggs was sitting on top. “I said, there’s no way you laid that.”

LeBlanc then started examining the chickens for blood. “I thought somebody had to be bleeding for sure after laying that,” she said.

The egg measures 7.5-inches around, 9.6-inches in length and weighs a third of a pound.

LeBlanc can’t say what kind of chickens her two-year old flock of five consists of, only that they are white and brown and that they were given to her by Judson Nickerson of Port Maitland at the Yarmouth Exhibition.

She was so excited by the discovery she took it next door to her mother-in-law and sister-in-law and declared that her chickens had discovered a way to feed the hungry.

The family plans on eventually videotaping the opening of the egg, which is stored in their fridge. “We’re all curious to see what’s inside,” said LeBlanc.

She’s also emailed Guinness World Records with hopes of beating the record.

Research technician Crystal Fullerton collects the weird and wonderful eggs that arrive from time to time at the Atlantic Poultry Research Center (ARPC) in Truro.

She says the LeBlanc’s egg is big, but still smaller than the world’s biggest, which came from Jiangshu Province in China and was six centimeters (2.4-inches across, not around) in diameter and 9.4 cm (3.7-inches) in length and weighed 198 grams (6.98 ounces) “The biggest one I have collected here was 7 1/8 inches, compared to yours at 7 ½, in diameter and 8 3/4 inches in diameter in length. I don’t have its weight as I never recorded it but I can tell you it was indeed a double yolker,” she said.

All super jumbo eggs are double yolkers. In the APRC flock of 3250 + White leghorns they regularly get eggs close to this size and it does not seem to affect the birds in any way. “We receive 2-4 eggs a day like this. For us it is normal but for someone with a few birds at home this can be a shock,” said Fullerton. “Eggs come in many shapes and sizes and there is a lot more out there than what people see in an egg carton.”