Ameraucana Eggs - Difference in Color

[FunClucks]

Prairie Bluebell Egger lays baby blue eggs. Much lighter than any other breed. I thought my Ameraucana's eggs were a nice blue till I got the Prairie Blue Bell Eggers.

I have 6 PBEs. All but one lay medium to large blue eggs. One of the 5 blue eggs is almost indistinguishable from white. The sixth egg has a greenish tinge that varies in green-ness randomly- sometimes just barely off of blue, sometimes obviously green. PBEs have a zinc white gene which inhibits the brown coloring pathways inside the chicken, and causes the blue coloration to be lighter than it otherwise would be. However, I've not been happy with the egg shape, size, and color repeatability. Most of my PBE chickens lay a nicely formed egg with no calcium deposits and uniform blue color 7-8 days a week, but one or two have significant random calcium deposits, color variations, and lay maybe 3-4 times a week. Because pea comb is linked to the PBE blue egg gene, I expect araucana was in the mix somewhere when the hatchery developed these.

In an effort to get a larger, bluer egg with good production, I'm raising up some Whiting True Blues this year. They are an actual breed, so can reproduce themselves, unlike the PBEs, although they are unrecognized by the APA. We'll see how they do. They also have the zinc white gene, unfortunately, so are still not a good choice for breeding olive eggers, but egg size and egg color uniformity are supposed to be better than the PBEs. Pretty sure Tom Whiting used araucanas when he was developing these, as they all have pea comb, and most have muffs and beards. Not sure what breeds if any Murray McMurray has introduced to them since Whiting sold Murray McMurray the breeding stock, hopefully they kept the line pure to maintain the true blue color and ability to reproduce and all lay blue eggs.

 

[FunClucks]

They do change throughout the season. I have both Ameraucana's and black copper Marans. The Ameraucana's start the season laying greenish blue but as the season goes on they turn more lighter blue. The Marans start dark brown and lighten up later in the season.

This is a really old thread - the folks your responding to may not be on BYC anymore. FYI

 

[Adam2073]

All eggs originate white and get different color tints applied throughout the cycle. Brown eggs get their color applied late in the cycle and it's applied only to the outside of the egg, so the inside is still white. The blue shades are applied early in the cycle so both the inside and outside take on a blue color. Just as some Marans lay darker shades of brown then others some blue layers lay darker or lighter blues, some almost a green. When you read a breed is a true blue layer that doesn't mean the eggs will be a specific color blue but that the inside of the shell will be blue and can have a range of shades of blue