A round egg described as a “one in a billion” discovery at a farm in Devon has been sold at auction.
Alison Greene believes she has handled more than 42 million eggs in her time working as an egg handler at Fenton Farm, near Somerset.
Yet the 57-year-old said she had never spotted an egg like the one she discovered in late December.
Ms Greene told The Independent: “I’ve worked at Fenton Farm for three years, and I’d never really thought about an egg being round – when you see so many egg shapes you become ‘egg blind’, in a sense.”
But after hearing about conical eggs during a discussion on BBC Radio 6, Ms Greene said she “noticed this one in December going along the conveyor belt and it just moved differently – it didn’t move the same as the others – so I whipped it off and it was perfectly round, and a little bit bigger than a golf ball.”
Having heard about a previous round egg selling at auction in Berkshire for £200, Ms Greene decided to ask her boss if she could put the egg up for auction in order to raise funds for charity, joking that: “It saves running a marathon, really.”
The rarity has now sold at Bearnes Hampton Littlewood Auctioneers in Exeter for £420, with the proceeds going to the “phenomenal” Devon Rape Crisis charity.
The charity’s chief executive Dr Davina Cull said: “We are delighted with Ali’s efforts to fundraise for us from her ‘egg-celent’ find.
“The funds generated through the auction are at least enough to support one survivor of rape and sexual violence in Devon who come to our service in need of vital help.”
Describing her decision to auction the egg, Ms Greene said: “Fair play to the auctioneer, because I think a lot of people might have said: ‘no, that’s just a bit mad – we’re not selling an egg, whereas he said ‘great, we’ll give it a go’.”
However, with a gap of close to three months between the egg being discovered and being sold at auction, Ms Greene became worried that her discovery – which she described to the BBC as “one in a billion” – would begin to rot.
After doing some research, she found that prior to the arrival of refrigerators and techniques enabling hens to lay all year round, eggs in Ireland were historically preserved using lard and salt.
“So I went and bought a big old lump of lard and smothered the egg in it very gently, and then encased it salt,” said Ms Greene, adding: “That’s where it still is, I believe, in the safe down in Exeter.
“I spoke to [the auctioneers] yesterday, and they got [the egg] out at the beginning of the week and there’s no bad smell – so we’re hoping that it’s worked.”
A similarly round egg found in a supermarket in Ayr is reported to have previously sold at auction for £200 in Berkshire, with the funds from that discovery going a mental health charity.
Prior to that, a spherical egg sold on eBay in 2015 for £480, with the funds going to the Cystic Fybrosis Trust, after being laid by a hen in Essex, which was subsequently renamed ping pong.
For her part, Ms Greene said she hoped her discovery had brought some lighthearted news in turbulent times.
“I think Trump had just been given the presidency and I think there were a lot of people going ‘oh thank god, someone’s found a round egg, this is normality’,” she said, adding: “It’s a little bit of a good news story – it was the complete opposite of what was going on in the news.”
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