Which one is laying white eggs?

[jvls1942]

Hello fellow Wisconsin resident.
Great info, but not relevant to this thread.

I deleted it

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Hi! have some citations! Earlobe color isn't ACTUALLY linked to egg color.

"In table 9 is shown the distribution of egg color for the 62 females, TABLE 9 Showing independent assortment of factors for earlobe color and egg shell color. EGG COLOR GRADES grouped according to earlobe color. Grade 1 is white and the succeeding grades become progressively darker. It is seen that individuals falling into the four grades of earlobe color lay eggs of practically the same average color and hence there is no evidence for any conditions which tend to associate white earlobe with white egg color"
http://www.genetics.org/content/genetics/13/6/470.full.pdf

The reason I brought up earlobes is that commonly white egg laying chickens are BRED to have white earlobes and therefore a white earlobed chicken is more likely to lay white eggs by basis of our social conditioning and breeding standards, not by genetics.

Rather, since most chicken breeds lay brown eggs, a chicken with white earlobes is more likely to have some ancestry from a white egg laying bird or possibly be a purebred white egg layer. But if you're making a bunch of barnyard mixes, Cyprus is right, it holds little relation except to say "this bird has some amount of parentage that's likely to have been a white egg layer, maybe".

*insert "the more you know" rainbow*
/end PSA

Great article. I bookmarked it. Interesting that some of the earlobe color is sex-linked while other parts aren't.

In my cross-breeding between my pure Cream Legbar hen to my pure Barnevelder, my 2 chicks kept, one girl and one boy, have developed the white earlobe of the CL, which of course has Leghorn blood in it.

However, this hen will have zero chance of laying a white egg. She will hopefully lay a lovely olive. Her mother lays a beautiful sea blue, while my Barnevelder rooster has over the last 3 years bred true genetics for a clay pot terra cotta.

So, yeah, earlobe color and egg color have no relationship.

LofMc

 

[Lady of McCamley]

I have 5 good girls who lay 3 to 5 eggs a day. One of them is laying a large white egg and I can't figure out who. I've looked them up and all are supposed to be brown egg layers. I have a Buff Orpington, an Asian Black, a Rhode Island Red, an Americana/Auracana and a Gold Laced Wyandotte. So, what gives here? The white eggs are the largest except for a light brown egg that is nearly as big. I hope someone can answer my curiosity.

I agree with the others...my vote is on the EE crossbreed for your white egg.

BO will be tinted light to middle brown
RIR will be middle brown
GLW will be tinted light to middle brown
Asian Black lay brown (per hatchery standard, that's the only breed of your chickens I've not personally owned)

And your EE? Who knows what genetics are under that hood. They are typically now simply an EE hybrid bred to an EE hybrid with little true Ameraucana/Araucana blood left. If the hatchery is focusing on truer blues, then they will breed out the genetics for brown (a hemoglobin wash applied over the base shell further down the egg tract).

It's hard to keep track of EE genetics since they are hybrids, so it would be easy to breed out the blue shell gene too, especially with their roosters (since you can't set their eggs). Remove that blue gene for bile, and you simply have base white shell as the blue gene adds bile to the calcite in the shell gland producing blue. No blue? You got white.

Therefore my money is on the EE too. Getting pure white from a brown line is trickier as it takes a long time to breed out all the brown genetics (as there are 13 genes covering that).

Glad you are getting eggs from your girls. Mine are still enjoying their molt hiatus. Ah well, February is coming up and I'll have lots of eggs then.

LofMc