can a chicken lay a hard centered egg with no shell?

[corochic]

I really need some help here. I have just closed up the chicken for the night and discovered one egg in the nesting box. This must have been laid really late in the afternoon as the eggs were cleared around midafternoon. I could not believe my eyes when I saw it. It first looked like an off white peeled potato, then I realised it had what looked like a chicken wing tucked into the side, There was no shell but the outer edge was pastry like. I took it up to the house and carefully cut it in half only to find the yolk looked like it had been hard boiled. I am going to freeze this as I have never seen anything like it before. Help help help, please someone tell me this could really happen.

 

[Mrs. Light Sussex]

It looks like it might be a lash egg.
Here you can find a comprehensive article on the topic.
For your sake I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Pork Pie]

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/common-egg-quality-problems

 

[aart]

Wow that is bizarre!
Never seen that before.
The outer layer does look like lash material(solid pus from infection),
But never seen one with a yolk, let alone a 'cooked' yolk.....
....tho I see there is one on the web link Mrs. Light Sussex provided.

 

[corochic]

It looks like it might be a lash egg.
Here you can find a comprehensive article on the topic.
For your sake I hope I'm wrong.

Thank you for this very helpful answer and yes the prognosis os right as the pictures from the link are exactly as what I have here. I think I know the chicken so will isolate her from the other to see what happens next. There are 19 in this section. We have a large separate roosting house for them which is cleaned out daily, the vinyl being wash everyday, and the rest hosed down. However we did take in several chicken on top of our original 12 that were from a farmer who had not really looked after them, and looked in a bad way. They all now have their feathers and bottoms looking great, but I would thin it would be one of them. Sadly now I realise I should have kept them separate. Thank you so much again for this very helpful advice. Angela.