A PET chicken gave Marie Bingham an eggs-tremely big surprise.

This giant egg weighs in at well over 4oz, is 8cm long and 6cm wide - and Marie puts it all down to broccoli! The 28-year-old, whose four chickens have produced about 500 eggs between them in the last six months, said their eggs have been large before but this is easily the biggest yet. She said: "I just couldn't believe it. I had to look twice. "The chickens weren't interested in the egg, they just wanted their grub. We give them broccoli, pasta and rice scraps and their own pelletfood. I think it must have been the broccoli." Marie, who owns Floral Design, a flower shop in Western Road, Hove, keeps the chickens in a henhouse and the garden of her Woodingdean, Brighton, home. Marie and friends usually scramble or fry the eggs or use them to make cakes. But she is keeping the latest in a wooden box and hasn't decided what to do with it yet. But the chickens have a long way to go before laying claim to a record. The largest recorded hen's egg, laid in Lancashire in 1896, had five yolks and was 31cm around the axis.

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