Green Eggs vs Blue Eggs for A Premium Egg Business

[DarJones]

Saw your tomato list. Suggest adding a few. Druzba, Lynnwood, Yellow Submarine, and Box Car Willie are very good tomatoes. Burgundy Traveler is an improvement on Arkansas Traveler.

 

[nicalandia]

I post information for people interested on the subject and for those willing to follow and learn. I will be doing the tests myself I really don't care if anyone does it or not before me.

 

[konachicks]

I voted GREEN

After not having chickens for over a decade I’m jumping all in and am planning on trying to accomplish something similar to that gorgeous basket picture. I feel blue is more common but greens from the lightest mint to the darkest olive just really get me excited and I cannot wait to see what I can to in that spectrum

 

[konachicks]

Pea comb is linked on chromosome 1 with the oocyanin gene and they are inherited together. With a single comb blue egg layer crossed to other single comb birds, he would not have a simple way to identify roosters that are homozygous for the oocyanin gene. By starting with a pea comb rooster, he can cross to single comb leghorns and in the F2, pea comb roosters and hens will mostly be homzygous for blue eggs.

My response was that he can do DNA tests for @$25 each to identify homozygous roosters. I did tests on 12 roosters earlier this year at a total cost of about $400. I culled all of the roosters with no oocyanin gene and with only 1 copy of the oocyanin gene. Now I have a flock with 3 mature roosters that 100% produce blue egg laying offspring. Oocyanin is a dominant gene where 1 copy makes the egg shell blue.

I was just filling out the form to do the blue gene test. Did you use feathers or blood? I used the company years ago on my parrot and loved them so I was excited to see they do the blue egg gene test

 

[DarJones]

I used the lab in Germany for tests last year. This was before IQG announced they would do a test. Either blood or feathers should work so use what you think is best.

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

Voted green because blue seems more easy to find around here, and hatcheries seem to be selling out of their “olive eggers” and “true green” layers faster than the blue-layers. So I think that indicates more demand and/or shorter supply of green layers.

But both are probably desirable, especially if your stock lay decently and it’s a pretty blue or green. I could see people paying more for deeper or more vibrant colors.

 

[I Like Turkeys]

I post information for people interested on the subject and for those willing to follow and learn. I will be doing the tests myself I really don't care if anyone does it or not before me.

Whenever you do this hemin test it’d be wonderful to see the results.

I saw this on facebook, not as blue obviously, but it’s a fairly vibrant color. Things like this make blue eggs all the more desirable I suppose.

 

[nicalandia]

Very nice article that I find pertinent to this thread

Egg quality and shell colour characteristics of crosses between Araucana and Schijndelaar with highly productive White Leghorn and Rhode Island Red strains

http://agriscitech.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/016.pdf

From the PDF:

Higher egg weights were found in breeds selected for this trait (Rhode
Island Red and White Leghorn) compared to breeds in which the selection in this direction was not purposeful. Among the studied groups, The investigation of eggshell colour showed reduction of L* values from 95.49 in white-shelled eggs to 59.71 in
brown-shelled eggs . The shell colour index (SCI) was the highest in white eggs (White Leghorn) and in blue-green eggs of Schijndelaar which had
comparable colour characteristics. The lowest SCI was established in brown eggs (Rhode Island Red).

Schijndelaar

 

[nicalandia]

This is a very nice color Chart from the Research(PDF posted).. I will go into detail about it.

In Measuring Color using special cameras the values are as follows:


L* = 100 is Pure White(Eggshell white is not that white), While 0 is Pitch Black
a* = Higher Value are for red color, Negative value is for Green
b* = Negative value is for Blue and Positive value for Yellow

The CIELAB color space diagram

Values for Leghorns(White eggs)
L* = 95.5
a* = -0.65
b* = 1.20

Rhode Island Red(production type RIR lay darker brown color than your average hatchery or SQ Type since brown color is of a great economic value that is actively been bred for by high production companies)

L* = 59.71
a* = 16.20
b* = 26.23

Schijndelaar

L* = 83.31
a* = -3.13
b* = 5.11

Araucana

L* = 76.45
a* = -5.64
b* = 12.18

 

[nene4ever9]

Also a Blue egg from a Arkansas Blue Pullet(on the right), Arkansas Hen(on left) and Olive egger on bottom

View attachment 3374293

Do you have hatching eggs available?