EASTER may be fast approaching and chocolate treats are already in the shops, but forget the chocolate version because one Ryedale couple has found the real mini egg.

Jarvis and Dorothy Browning were given a cracking surprise when they discovered one of their 26 bantams had laid a miniscule egg, no bigger than a 10 pence piece weighing in at only half-a-gram.

Jarvis said the bird, one of his white docks, has never laid an egg that small.

“We were really quite surprised, we have never had any as small as that,” he said. “It really is tiny, but it is the most perfectly-formed egg.”

The couple, who live in Fadmoor, started keeping bantams five years ago and said that normally the eggs laid by the birds are about half the size of a regular hen’s egg.