Egg coloration question

I have 6 hens from MacMurray - Marans, Delawares and Australorps. I'm getting 1-2 eggs every day, and every so often an egg is blotchy. Kinda looks like a bad dye job at Easter, but this is the basic pinky beige egg shell, NOT a fancy dancy dye job! Basic egg shell color, but paler in spots as if it got wet before it dried, but the nesting boxes aren't wet, not even damp, and not every egg is like this. The shells doesn't seem thinner, just very unevenly colored.

Is this a young hen thing? They're also not very big, about medium, nearly banty size. I'm assuming this is because these are the very first eggs from my girls, and after some time (how long?) their eggs will be adult size. I remember when I had geese, the mother gooses eggs filled the palm of my hand (she was about 4 years old, I think), and her 1 year old daughter's eggs were considerably smaller.

Huh! Just went to take a picture to show you guys what I meant, and it MUST be a moisture thing, or a newly laid thing, or something like that, because now that they've been in the fridge, in the paper egg carton for several hours, they're not showing any blotchy at all. Whadda ya know - live and learn!

Melinda

 

aart, that makes sense. I've just started getting Marans eggs too, and they are SO much darker than the other two. As to which birds lay the pinker eggs and which lay the beigier-pink ones, vs. the Marans, I have no idea. But I can now consistently see the difference in shell color.



Top left is the first Marans egg. Other 2 on that row are the beige-pink, and the egg just below the Marans egg is a pinker shell. Also, the Marans egg is shinier then the others. Is that just a development stage, a factor of more brown on the shell, or 'other'?

Melinda