Chicken Fact or Fiction?????

lesa

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A friend of mine works with a guy who has chickens. He wanted to buy some eggs from him (mine aren't laying much right now...) The chicken owner asks him if he wants green or brown eggs, but also mentions that all grocery store eggs start out green, but are bleached to be white!!!!! Yikes!
I bet he thinks he needs a rooster to get those eggs too!!!
 

freemotion

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Certainly he was teasing! How can someone who owns chickens think that??? :rolleyes:
 

ducks4you

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Nope. Many chicken breeds lay eggs that are not white, but the mass egg farms keep primarily breeds like White Leghorns, that lay only white eggs. I didn't know for the longest time that I could have birds that lay brown eggs, but I own 7 RIR's, and their eggs are brown. In fact, there is a myth that brown eggs are healthier for you, but the color is only there because the birds have red feathers, an indication, like in humans, of a high natural concentraion of melatonin, which colors the eggs kindof a red, too.
(Welsummer owners are purists, however, and will tell you that THEIR birds are the only true brown egg layers. :lol: )

Get registered on BackYardChickens forum (link at the bottom of this page) and ask that question there. The ONLY chicken that lays anything close to a green egg (That I am aware of) is called an "Easter Egger," and sometimes referred to (mistakenly) as an Auracauna (sp?-sorry to those of you that own them. :rolleyes: )
THEY lay bluish-greenish eggs that look a lot like you colored them. I don't know of any grocery store chain that buys eggs from "Easter Egger" egg farms.
 

hoodat

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A city boy bought a small farm and a neighbor gave him some hatching eggs so he could have chickens.
A couple of weeks later the neighbor ran into him in town and asked how the eggs turned out.
"Didn't get a single one".
"Well I know those eggs were good. Wonder what happened?"
"I don't know. Maybe I planted them too deep".
 

PotterWatch

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hoodat said:
A city boy bought a small farm and a neighbor gave him some hatching eggs so he could have chickens.
A couple of weeks later the neighbor ran into him in town and asked how the eggs turned out.
"Didn't get a single one".
"Well I know those eggs were good. Wonder what happened?"
"I don't know. Maybe I planted them too deep".
:lol:
 

PotterWatch

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ducks4you said:
In fact, there is a myth that brown eggs are healthier for you, but the color is only there because the birds have red feathers, an indication, like in humans, of a high natural concentraion of melatonin, which colors the eggs kindof a red, too.
I hadn't heard that about melatonin before. How does that idea translate to white birds that lay brown eggs?
 

hoodat

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Look twice before you buy "brown" eggs. there is no standard for what constitutes a brown egg. Almost all of them are really white eggs that have been dyed brown. They can legally call those brown eggs. Real brown eggs will have variations in the color and usually some will show speckles.
Araucanas can lay darn near any color egg. I've seen them green, blue, pink and a few that were sort of a brick red. A hen will always lay an egg of a certain color. They won't lay one color one day and another the next. If you have a small flock of araucanas you can tell which hen laid which egg by the color.
 

PotterWatch

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They do fade in color as the hen gets older I have noticed. My EEs both started out laying nice mint green eggs. One still lays decent colored eggs but the other now lays eggs that are almost chalk white.

I've never heard that brown store eggs are dyed that color. I'm skeptical of that one.
 

Ridgerunner

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Araucana and Ameraucana are blue egg laying breeds that were developed from blue egg laying chickens from Chile. Easter Eggers are any chicken that has the blue egg gene. EE's are a type, not a breed. There are no standards to describe them other than the blue egg gene. The Auaucana and Ameraucana have rigorous standard descriptions, color and body type.

If you gently sandpaper off the coating on any egg, you will get down to either a blue or a white base color. The Araucana, Ameraucana and EEs are the only ones I know of that have the base blue. These chickens are not normally great layers so it would be surprising if large commercial egg companies used them as an egg laying flock. They would just fill a novelty market. The rest have a white base.

It gets a little more complicated than that though as there are some breeds that coat the egg with a brown covering. How much brown they put on there determines the final color of the egg. As an analogy, think of it as the hen spray painting her egg. She doesn't really spray paint it, but this gives an idea.

Blue base color
No spray paint = blue egg
Light spray paint = blue-green or green egg
Heavy spray paint = Olive colored egg

White base color
No spray paint = white egg
Light spray paint = brown egg. Can be anything from crean colored many shades of brown
Heavy spray paint = dark brown egg, like the Welsummer of Maran chocolate brown

The egg companies do not dye the eggs brown, the hens do. Internally.

My brown egg layers eggs are also getting lighter, almost white. I don't think it is so much that they are getting older. I think they need a molt to take some time off and recharge their system. I'll be able to tell you for sure next spring.
 

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