Chat room for non religious poultry keepers! :D

[BigBlueHen53]

Enjoying this thread as a lurker, posting so I can get alerts. Keeping my religion in my pocket like a good guest.

 

[ChickyCh00k]

Enjoying this thread as a lurker, posting so I can get alerts. Keeping my religion in my pocket like a good guest.

Welcome! I love your profile pic. All the egg colors!!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Welcome! I love your profile pic. All the egg colors!!

Thank you! I thought I would really love the dark brown, "chocolate" eggs, but they are a bit of a pain. We use shredded bank paper in our nests, and the paper sticks to these eggs much more than to any others.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

They just need a duck/ silkie cross Lol!

You mean like... A silky duck?

Enjoying this thread as a lurker, posting so I can get alerts. Keeping my religion in my pocket like a good guest.

Welcome!

Thank you! I thought I would really love the dark brown, "chocolate" eggs, but they are a bit of a pain. We use shredded bank paper in our nests, and the paper sticks to these eggs much more than to any others.

That's interesting... Now that you mention it, whenever I get an egg with a pine shaving stuck to it so bad I almost can't get it to come off, I feel like usually it is a dark brown Marans egg... I wonder why that is!

 

[fluffycrow]

OK working theory. Remember when you print a paper with a bunch of ink, how it's very soggy after coming out of the printer? So it makes sense that such a heavy bloom might be equally "sticky". I'm only half joking btw

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I mean, similar track to my thought process. The brown coating the shell is a pigment derived from the hemin of the blood. Blood can be very sticky, especially as it's drying. So my thought was similar to yours... but instead about blood.

 

[Canadian Wind]

Yeah, I think Pipd is closer so far as terminology, but not quite there. Coating seems closer (as opposed to blood or bloom). I know when I had Cayuga ducks, their dark eggs would often get 'scratches' on them, removing the lovely near-black colour. It was almost as if this was a thin decal stuck onto the shell.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Well, I mean, the brown on chicken eggshells is an outer coating of pigment as opposed to blue that's actually sort of infused into the shell itself. That's why the inside of a brown chicken egg is generally white or only slightly pinkish as compared to the outside. I don't know how similar that is to duck eggs, but would assume it works about the same. The Marans eggs with their heavy coating of pigment can have the same thing happen, the pigment wipes or scratches off easily immediately after being laid and until dry. Mine get scratched sometimes if the girls have a busy day on the nests with a lot of hens shuffling in and out.

 

[Canadian Wind]

Ah, is that why my blue and green/olive eggs are tinted inside and out, and the brown ones aren't? COOL! Ya learn something new every day! Or you should, anyhow.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

That's interesting... Now that you mention it, whenever I get an egg with a pine shaving stuck to it so bad I almost can't get it to come off, I feel like usually it is a dark brown Marans egg... I wonder why that is!

I agree, the darker the egg, the more pigment has been laid down over what is essentially a white egg. There are basically only two color eggs, white and blue. As someone above mentioned, you can tell the actual color of the egg by breaking it open and looking at the inside. Green and olive eggs are actually blue eggs with different amounts of brown pigment laid down over them. Brown, pink, tan and cream eggs, etc., are white ones with brown pigment over them. The pigment is a bit sticky, so the darker the egg the wetter it is, like a coat of paint. Hence the bedding in the nest is more likely to stick to the darker eggs.