For those of you who weren't following along last week, the question of being able to ID who lays what egg came up over in this thread. I can't remember why, but it did. I'm very interested in the idea of knowing WHO has laid what egg, since as I mentioned in this thread I have a duck on meds, whose eggs cannot be eaten for 6 weeks after her last dose. This is somewhat problematic, since this means that even if she's healed, she can't be returned to the flock.
In the first thread, I was informed that marking (chicken) hens with food coloring was a thing that people apparently do. (NEWS TO ME!) Though I was somewhat skeptical since none of the sources I found included photos of the end result, just descriptions of what the marked egg looked like and a few others chiming in to say they'd done it and it didn't work.
I'm here to tell you that it CAN work, but you have to do it correctly.
This is what happens when you do it incorrectly:
I must have messed up when applying the food coloring, because the next morning I had a duck with blue-green butt and bill. Over the weekend, there was only one egg laid, but it only had the faintest of coloring, little more than a pin prick (probably because all the food coloring ended up on her butt,) and the color was such that it was impossible to tell if the egg had just come in contact with some green-ish duck poop. The good news is that while she did get covered in food coloring, it all washed off pretty quickly, and I had to use leg bands to ID her the next afternoon.
Sunday night, while the rest of America was watching football, I headed out once again to my coop with my food coloring bottles. This time I decided to add a little bit of red to the blue, since the blue alone looks quite green when washed out. I think I managed to successfully mark an egg.
The question now is how long will the marking last. I'll update as I find out more.
In the first thread, I was informed that marking (chicken) hens with food coloring was a thing that people apparently do. (NEWS TO ME!) Though I was somewhat skeptical since none of the sources I found included photos of the end result, just descriptions of what the marked egg looked like and a few others chiming in to say they'd done it and it didn't work.
I'm here to tell you that it CAN work, but you have to do it correctly.
This is what happens when you do it incorrectly:
I must have messed up when applying the food coloring, because the next morning I had a duck with blue-green butt and bill. Over the weekend, there was only one egg laid, but it only had the faintest of coloring, little more than a pin prick (probably because all the food coloring ended up on her butt,) and the color was such that it was impossible to tell if the egg had just come in contact with some green-ish duck poop. The good news is that while she did get covered in food coloring, it all washed off pretty quickly, and I had to use leg bands to ID her the next afternoon.
Sunday night, while the rest of America was watching football, I headed out once again to my coop with my food coloring bottles. This time I decided to add a little bit of red to the blue, since the blue alone looks quite green when washed out. I think I managed to successfully mark an egg.
The question now is how long will the marking last. I'll update as I find out more.
