The Chicken Breed That Lays The Biggest Eggs

Who can forget that classic scene in Rocky when the titular Italian Stallion wakes up at the egg-crack of dawn and gulps down a glass of raw eggs?  Now, some of you might take that as evidence that Rocky sustained severe brain damage long before Ivan Drago. But above all else, it proved just how great a fighter the Philly Southpaw really was. Because if his insides can beat liquid Salmonella, no amount of unblocked haymakers to the face could keep him down for the count. 

If being an intestinal egg-beater made Rocky a world-beater, that obviously raises some pressing questions like, was Clubber Lang — who knocked Rocky out in their first bout — stronger than Salmonella? More importantly, just how big were those eggs? It stands to reason that drinking extra Salmonella makes you a better boxer — or a deader boxer. Whatever. Besides, the most important questions are obviously: what was the biggest chicken egg Rocky could have swallowed and what kind of chicken makes it?

The Guinness Book of World Records says that the largest chicken egg on record was 16-ounce (454-gram) monstrosity laid in 1956. It had two yolks and two shells, and too much egg in general. The probably-traumatized hen that produced that sucker was a White Leghorn from New Jersey. Anyone who grew up watching Looney Toons knows that the Foghorn variety of leghorn chickens is huge. And maybe that one-pound egg was Foghorn. In any event, a raw egg that big might have turned Rocky Balboa into Rocky Bowel-blowup. 

Now, obviously a single one-pound egg doesn't tell you about the entire breed. But the Happy Chicken Coop lists leghorns as some of the top ploppers of big eggs. Also high on the list was the Mediterranean Minorca chicken, which apparently creates some behemoth white eggs. And since they're Mediterranean, they sound perfect for an Italian Stallion to drink.