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The Giant Egg That Changed Everything on My Farm

When Iowa farmer Henry McAllister found an unusually large egg beneath his hen, he thought it might just be a double-yolker — a curiosity, nothing more. But the sheer size of it had both him and his wife, Laura, wondering if something stranger was going on. As they stood in their kitchen, staring at the oversized egg resting on a dish towel, they faced a choice: crack it open or let it hatch. Curiosity won. Henry placed it gently in his old quail incubator, set the temperature, and waited, unaware that in just a few days…

Henry McAllister’s mornings start the same way they have for the past 42 years: black coffee, a quiet porch, and a slow walk out to the chicken coop before the sun burns off the dew.

But one Wednesday in early June, that routine took a turn Henry never saw coming.

“It was about 6:15 a.m. I was doing the rounds, checking for eggs,” the 61-year-old Iowa farmer recalled, squinting into the rising light. “That’s when I noticed Darlene — she’s one of my Buff Orpington hens — sittin’ real funny on the nest. Kind of wide-legged, like she’d just laid a cannonball.”

Henry bent down and sure enough, there it was: an egg that looked like it belonged in the Guinness Book of World Records. Roughly the size of a soda can and almost twice the weight of a regular chicken egg, it was nestled in the straw like a golden prize.