It's the guess-which-breed egg!

[LTygress]

I love going out to the pen and finding out a new girl has started laying! I'm expecting so many though!

Two days ago, I had my chickens free-ranging in the yard. I found an egg sitting right inside the door of a storage shed, right in the middle of the floor. It was slightly smaller than most of the eggs I gathered, and it was an off-white - not bright white like my leghorns. Furthermore, I had already gathered the two white eggs from the nestboxes, for the leghorns. But I thought maybe one in the pen was laid the night before, and let it go.

On a whim, I put it in the incubator anyway.

Today I went out to gather eggs, and found THREE white eggs inside the nest box. Now I know I've got a new layer, and I have no idea who! I brought the egg back inside and checked it out, and noticed it's just slightly off-white. I actually had to look REALLY closely to see that it did have a bit of shading to it. It's still a bit small, but knowing my roosters, it's almost definitely fertile.

So it also went into the incubator - simply so I can find out who is laying! Now I have two eggs, two days apart in incubation, that are from a mystery hen. And I get to hatch it to find out who is laying!

The options are: White Silkie (only one hen), black sumatra (four hens), bantam/ameraucana mix (probably not - they would still have some blueish), frizzle cochin hen (maybe still a bit too young, or maybe it is her). My money is really going on the sumatras, but I'm HOPING it's the silkie! Both of those breeds are around 8 months old right now. The egg is small enough to be a bantam egg, but then if it's the sumatra's first egg (they are large fowl), that would be typical size.

Although if it's the silkie, then my luck is she'll go broody before this egg hatches anyway, and ruin the surprise!

 

[Kelsie2290]

My first guess would be a Sumatra also with an almost white first egg, Silkie if it was a light tan, then Cochin... Silkies being Silkies, I am not sure that her going broody would even prove she personally had ever laid an egg, somebody else's egg, or a golf ball will do them fine to go broody on

 

[HorseMadWhovian]

I'm not sure about the other breeds but my silkie's eggs are small and white,

 

[LTygress]

I got another egg from the mystery layer today and took a picture of the egg, along with other eggs I had gathered. The flash on my camera almost bleached all of the lighter colors to white, so I had to darken the photos in photoshop a bit before I could post them.



The far left is, obviously, a brown egg. Plymouth Rock to be exact. The two on top are leghorn eggs. Bottom left to right is an easter egger (green, although the photo is probably still too light to tell), then the new one (this would be the third one I've gathered) and then my mixed-breed bantam hen.



Here they are in a diirect top view, and darkened a little more.



So you see it's not STARK white like the leghorns. But it's not really tan like the mixed breed bantam. It's also slightly larger than the bantam, but smaller than the leghorns.

Unfortunately, my silkies are bantams, so I guess I can rule them out because this egg looks to big to be a bantam egg - especially when you consider that it's just a pullet egg.

 

[LTygress]

The eggs has pipped.. on the wrong end! But it seems to be okay anyway and every now and then I hear a really loud scream-like peep coming from it, like the poor chick woke up from a nightmare!

But it is definitely still alive! Hopefully it will hatch in the next day or so, and help me figure out who mommy and daddy both are!

 

[Kelsie2290]

Good luck with the mystery chick, hope it hatches fine, will be interesting to see what it looks like,

 

[LTygress]

And the results are in!





Mommy is definitely a Sumatra! There's no other chicken I have with that much black either on it, or in it's lineage! So unfortunately, it's not a silkie. But a Sumatra is nice too!

As for daddy, I'll have to wait until it dries and gets a bit older. I need to see how the beak develops, whether there is any sign of brown coloring, and whether or not those white bits will go away like a typical Sumatra chick. But so far, I know mommy is a Sumatra, and that sets me up for being able to offer them as a breed this spring! After I separate them so I know Sumatra is the only possible daddy, first!

 

[LTygress]

A total of three "new" eggs were collected before I began separating the chickens by breed for spring hatches. The first two appear to be pure sumatra. But the third... is going to be a Sumatra/Easter Egger mix! He will probably still be solid black, but with the muffs of feathers on each cheek. His baby down is already pretty fuzzy right there!

If he's a roo, I HOPE he turns out to have the full, long, beautiful tail. And if its a hen, I hope I get colored eggs!

Either way, I get the feeling its going to be one really beautiful bird!

 

[HorseMadWhovian]

Awww, so cute, can't wait for pictures

 

[luckylee]

Okay tell me from looking at these eggs all so many different shades of brown do you know the type of breed? It boggles my mind that there are folks out there that can tell.. how do you learn that..? Have a great night.. I am egg sited to have such great eggs every day...