Sandra Benjamin went as usual to her fowl coop, just outside her home in The Farrington, to feed the brood – then jumped back in awe. It was the biggest egg she had ever seen – not only among her imported and local chickens – but anywhere in Anguilla.
But her surprise was not over. When she cracked it, out of curiosity, she screamed. It was an egg within an egg – complete with another hard shell. She hastened to share the mystery at the school where she serves as a custodian, and at The Anguillian newspaper several days ago.
“I have seen an oversized egg with two yolks but never an egg with another hard-shell egg inside,” she said, wondering if any of the other egg farmers in Anguilla ever had that experience.
“It is just a little farm I decided to have to keep myself busy,” she explained. “If I have twenty layers, I would get twenty eggs a day – and if I have forty local fowls, I would get like ten eggs a day, depending on how I feed them.
“I used to feed the local fowls coming in my yard. One day, as a Spanish woman was doing my hair, she said:
‘You have a lot of fowls’.
“You can’t eat my fowls,” I told her.
“I want my fowls because, back in the days, my grandmother used to douche them out and eat them afterwards. So I decided since the people were eating the fowls, I may as well build a pen for them, raise them and get some eggs. I used to give the eggs to people but a friend told me: ‘Stop giving away the eggs and sell them’. So that’s how I started to sell them under the name ‘Benjamin’s Farm’.”
She also obtained a number of imported layers which, apart from increasing the size of her farm, gave her additional eggs.
Her story continued: “I went to the pen yesterday morning (Tuesday March 7, 2019), as I do every morning, to give them food and water before I go to school. When I saw the large egg, I screamed. I just couldn’t believe my eyes.
“I really got one before with two yolks – but this one surprised me. The shell was like shocking me when I tapped it. I took it to the school, showed it to the teachers and they couldn’t believe it. When one of them asked me if I was afraid of the egg, I said no.
“When I cracked it, I shouted and started laughing. It was not simply an egg with two yolks, but a large egg with a smaller one, with a shell, inside. It was laid by one of the imported layers and I have brought it for The Anguillian to see.
“It is amazing.”
