VERY STRANGE QUESTION I THINK

[Kaneke]

re: Kool Aid -- unless you get the sugar-free kind, the Kool Aid doesn't have sugar in it, you have to add that yourself

 

[ZooZoo]

Quote:
Actually, insnt their a way to inject a dye with a needle into the eggs before hatching them to get them this color? (Not saying i have or would do so). I remember reading this somewhere.

 

[hooligan]

Injecting Embryos
http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/resources/egg_to_chick/coloring.html

 

[ZooZoo]

Quote:
Has anyone tried this? How did it turn out?

 

[Frozen Feathers]

Hi lightbread48,
Like Silkiechicken said, feeding your chickens food coloring isn't going to change the color of the shell. I'm pretty sure food coloring isn't going to hurt your birds, but other then colorful poo, wouldn't be beneficial to changing egg color, like you'd like to do .

Here
and here are some sites that have some interesting ways to dye eggs.

As far as dyeing chicks (which I don't know why every thread seems to turn into an anti-easter chick rally, lately

), as far as I know, all hatcheries use food coloring. Can you imagine having to inject 90,000 eggs? Not only that the chicks are usually sexed (the males being used for dyeing and the females sent to egg farms or wherever) and last I knew you can't sex chicks in the egg. The egg injecting may be used as a 4-H or science project to see feather growth, but it doesn't seem efficient for a hatchery to use such a system. You have to think that when you poke a hole in the egg you are giving way to bacteria, which would mean major losses for a hatchery. I don't know how many times I have to write that...but I guess some people are hard of learning or something.

 

[silkiechicken]

I've only injected embryos for purposes of research, but we do not take birds to term.. or past6 days. It is good teaching tool and research tool, but I personally do not support it being done on a purely "looks cool" or marketing basis.

 

[beekybuzzard]

Why not just buy some Easter Eggers and let them lay you some colored eggs naturally?

 

[Moonwalker]

Nope. The pic I posted is actual colored chicks available from a hatchery. They inject a non toxic dye into the eggs a couple days before hatching and they actually hatch that color and will remain colored until they get their adult feathers. In some states the colorinf of ducks, chicks and rabbits is illegal, in others only the sale, barter or trade of same is illegal. (you can have them , just not give, sell or trade them to someone else)
I don't like the practice of doing this, not because of the dye itself, but the fact they are sold to people who have NO CLUE how to care for them and most die within days or are tossed out or neglected when they lose the "cute" colors. Basically they are sold as disposable toys for kids at Easter, most of whom are too young to knwo how to care for them and not to squeeze.
BUT all this has been addressed on other threads, so no need to elaborate on it here.
That said, I may turn out to be a hypocrit and order a dozen of them for my own collection. Just becasue I always wanted one when I saw them as a kid and my Mom said "NO!"

 

[Moonwalker]

Quote:
The place I was looking at actually offers either all males or straight run colored chicks and straight run ducks. They do use the injection method and it is done the same way as they give vaccinations for Marek's and other diseases, by a machine that does them by the trayload. The straight run are a variety of breeds that have white or yellow chicks. The all male ones are broiler type breeds, so I think maybe they send the extra colored broiler females to the farms.
But they DO use food coloring!

 

[farmfresh]

First Kool Aid will defiantly change the color of feces and urine.

My daughter had the flu and began passing RED stool. She went to the E room to be checked out. The first question the doctor asked was about Kool Aid. Had she been drinking red Kool-Aid. Since the sore throat and fever had made her very thirsty - she had been drinking LOTS of red Kool-Aid. Boy was she embarrassed!

About the chicks. They inject a food color into the egg shell at a certain date partway through incubation then place wax over the hole in the shell left by the injection site. It takes a tiny amount of color. It is a food color that is approved for the foods you eat. Americans eat GOBS of this same stuff every day. In every fruit loop. In soda. In candy. This color dies the chicks down feathers. Originally the procedure was developed to help breeders identify the parentage of the chicks. You can mark the eggs from a certain pair but when chicks hatched in the incubator they all mix together and got mixed up. If chicken pair A hatches red chicks and chicken pair B hatches blue ones you can keep them straight until they are large enough to leg band or otherwise identify. When the chick molts into its adult feathers they come in as normal.

I think the most harm comes when people who no nothing about chickens, or any animal for that matter, buy them as disposable toys. This is why the Backyard Chicken info booklet is such a great idea. We want to promote chickens and teach people how to care for and enjoy them.

Farmfresh