My EE's egg color changed?

[angelika]

Your black hen looks more like an Australorp than a black sex link....bsl hens classically have red at the throat/chest and she appears solid black which is an Australorp trait.

Your big gold hen is a buff Orpington...the solid gold color plus the white/pink legs are the signs.

Thank you! The black hen is very green actually. She shines kind of teal like all over her back. No red on the chest though.

 

[redkarr]

Ok I don't know if I believe this egg never changing color thing because I have an Easter Egger who laid true green eggs for about a year then about once a month I'd get a blue egg. Then blue eggs started happening more often and now I get all blues and a green only once in a while. And I mean these blue eggs are true blue! I'm not getting mixed up with any other eggs either, I only have 3 hens, the others are laying the same brown color they always have. I'm certainly not complaining but It's had me baffled ever since it started! Has anyone ever had this happen?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Egg shell color can get complicated. There are two basic parts but man it can get messed up.

First, there is one gene pair that determines if he egg shell color is base white or base blue. Blue is dominant, so if just one of those two genes at that gene pair is blue, the base color will be blue. The blue color is made from recycled dead red blood cells so there is always a constant supply of raw material for that blue color. Red blood cells are always getting old and worn out and dying. A common misconception on this forum is that the blue color comes from the bile, but it doesn’t. The hen’s body uses the same chemical process to make the blue color for the egg shell that she uses to color bile so people get confused on where it comes from. I only learned this in the past year.

Brown or green is only brown in addition to the base white or blue color.

Where a lot of confusion comes in, there are a lot of different genes that affect the brown or green shade. Some are recessive, some are dominant. Some only have an effect if another gene is present. Some add brown color, some can restrict brown color. The reason you can get so many different shades of brown or green is that there are a lot of different genes involved. The shade you get just depends on which ones happen to come together.

When the egg is going through the hen’s internal egg making factory, it spends most of its time in the shell gland. First the shell is laid on. This takes most of the time. In the case of a base blue egg the shell is blue throughout. With most base white eggs, the shell is white throughout, but there is one of those brown genes that can cause the shell to be tinted as it is deposited on the egg. If you crack an egg open and remove that membrane you can see the base color of the egg, blue or white, but some base white eggs may be tinted.

During about the last half-hour in the shell gland a brown or green egg laying hen deposits a layer of brown on the outside of the egg. Obviously blue or white eggs don’t get this treatment. You can remove this outside layer with sandpaper or some other methods if you really wish to see the base color underneath. It should look the same as looking under the membrane inside once you get that topcoat removed.

Most of the brown color is also made from recycled dead red blood cells. But there are some other stuff involved too. I don’t know what these other components are or where they come from, but brown or green eggs normally lose color the longer through the hen’s cycle she goes. Right after a molt or when a pullet first starts to lay, the eggs will be as dark brown or green as they will ever be. The longer you go through the laying cycle, normally the lighter the eggs will become. Each hen is different and what she eats probably has an effect too, but I’ve had some brown egg layers that are almost laying a white egg just before their molt. That’s probably what you are seeing with your green/blue eggs.

Since adding the brown is normally the last thing done in the shell gland, if the hen lays the egg early, it can be pretty white or blue, even if it is normally a darker brown or green. That normally means something startled the hen and caused her to lay the egg early. It’s really rare in my flock, but once or twice a year I might get one of those, really out of place. But the next day she’s back to her regular color.

The base egg shell color genetics are set for the life of the hen. Those don’t change. But the execution of laying that brown on the egg can and often does change for different reasons.

 

[farnorth]

The black chicken with the green sheen defineatly sounds like an Australorp to me. The buff chicken looks like a Buff Orpington. The red chicken was your easter egger. The other 2 would lay brown/tan eggs.