brown egg layer now laying white eggs

l'abeille

Songster
10 Years
Oct 16, 2009
186
2
141
Berkeley, CA
My 2 year old RIR has always laid brown eggs, but just this past week she's begun laying white eggs. I know they are her eggs. She also has very red legs, like they're sunburned. My other hens seem normal.

She eats layer pellets and our scraps and gets free range time in our grassy yard. We are in CA where it's very mild. Chickens have light in the coop and have been laying year-round. Could she have a nutrient deficiency?
 
The tint of a brown egg layer's eggs is due to the shell glad in her oviduct using an extract of hemoglobin in her blood to give the brown color. Evidently, she is not using that extract which is no big deal. The color of the egg shell is extremely thin. You can take some fine grain sand paper and take it off so it doesn't take much of a change to go from a brown egg to a white or pale brown one. Brown egg layers usually lay progressively paler eggs as they age, even dark egg layers such as Welsummers and Marans have faded eggs as they get older.
 

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