Building The Perfect Back Yard Flock - Different Colored Eggs

Nifty-Chicken

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Dec 26, 2006
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(Note: I was about to post this in "General" but the new board reorganization showed me a better place... woohoo!!)

Yesterday eggchel (one of our wonderful mods) came by the house to hang out and trade some stuff. She asked me if one of my hens was still laying. I told her I had no idea since all the eggs look pretty similar to one another and I'm not that attentive to them (to see who's on the nest when).

This got me to thinking... if each hen laid a different color egg then I could tell who was laying when!

In the past I've had to balance out what I wanted and what my wife wanted in our chickens. It came down to the following when we were first planning:
• egg quantity
• friendliness
• prettiness
• confinement / foraging / economical eater / etc.

Well, that's all fine and good, but then you're limited to availability of chicks and so here with are with our hodge podge of 7 adult hens (seen in my signature) and two new baby Silver Laced Wyandotes

So, let's say I was going to start over and want 5 - 8 hens (I'm in the city, remember) and could pick any breeds in the world. Well, using my favorite breed chart (http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html) I picked the following breeds:

Ameraucana - blue
Delaware - medium brown
Faverolles - creamy
Marans - dark brown
Rhode Island - medium brown
Sussex - creamy


Remember, this list is based on the requirements above AND my new requirement of different colored eggs from each hen. I have two medium brown and two creamy layers. I couldn't find a white layer that had a lot of eggs and was friendly / not flighty.

What do you think? What should be added / taken away based on what we'd like for our perfect flock of diverse egg layers?
 
Lets see how this fly's.
From what I’ve read on this board, it seems like most people get Cuckoo marans, but the Coppered Black ones tend to lay darker eggs more frequently.
That might be a consideration for you.
 
You could even add another Ameraucana, as I have *heard* (sorry, my 2 ones died as chicks, so no first hand experience
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) that they will lay different shades of blue (ie- one might lay more greeny-blue eggs, while another lays more pinky-blue).

Just a thought!
 
My 10 year old daughter finds it a blast to go out and know immediatly who laid that morning. I often hear her chastise the one(s) that didn't. When we had three with three different colors, it was very easy indeed. Since then, our Big Black Chicken (a brown layer) has died, and we have replaced her with two baby red stars. When they start laying, we probably won't be able to tell which egg belongs to which, but that's OK. They are so sweet, they even make up for the cranky Lakenvelder!
 
I ordered mine based on egg color.
Unfortunaltly they won't have Maran's when I need my order shipped, so I'm not sure what I will do - I'm going to try for Welsummer's.
I have Americana's, RIR, California whites, and orpingtons.
 
We will also have quite the colorfull egg collection. Marans(dark brown)< Ameracuanas 5 hens( hopefully some blue and green) RIRx...tan, brown, and some EE..lay pink. All I need now is white! I have 2 cornishx that just dont seem to be getting very big. ( they have a large yard to "run") Maybe I will get some white from them? Who knows. Oh, and we have Banty Cockin Frizzles..so we get the tiny brown eggs too! LOL Yup...we should have quite the colorfull cartons.
 
Okay kids, I appreciate all the suggestions now how about implementation.

Would I be a fool to think that I could order all the different breeds I need at once from one hatchury and get sexed chicks, or will I need to do 3 chicks here and 3 chicks there?
 
I find we can never have enough green eggs for people. So having 2 Aurucanas could help you if you're planning to sell them ever. However, I hate araucanas for some reason. They just don't appeal to me. So, I'm raising 50 marans to supply the dark brown eggs. Three farms here compile our eggs, wash them, rinse them, grade them, stamp them, then they go into our local grocery store for sale. It's great advertisement even though we make a buck less per dozen that way.
 

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