Whose egg? Marans?

[My Three Chicks]

I have four 20-week old and got my 1st egg today! (My 3rd flock but still eggciting!)

It's this cute darkish brown egg. It's either my Black Copper Marans or my Zombie (Ayam Camani x White Leghorn).

They both just started squatting this week and both have been hopping in and out of the nest box a bit.

Who do you think laid it? How do I know for sure without catching them 'in the act'?

 

[User690263]

That would be from the Maran, as the Zombie will lay white eggs. Very exciting!

 

[My Three Chicks]

That would be from the Maran, as the Zombie will lay white eggs. Very exciting!

I was thinking Marans too!

But my Zombie is from Hoover's (they call them Pearl Onyx) and description says they lay brown eggs. Do their eggs color vary?
https://hoovershatchery.com/pearl-onyx

 

[User690263]

I was thinking Marans too!

But my Zombie is from Hoover's (they call them Pearl Onyx) and description says they lay brown eggs. Do their eggs color vary?
https://hoovershatchery.com/pearl-onyx

That's possible, I was just looking at pictures, and it looks like they lay white-VERY light brown eggs. Maybe let us know whenever you start getting eggs from the other chicken? That might help determine who's laying which egg based on the color of the eggs.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help!

 

[My Three Chicks]

That's possible, I was just looking at pictures, and it looks like they lay white-VERY light brown eggs. Maybe let us know whenever you start getting eggs from the other chicken? That might help determine who's laying which egg based on the color of the eggs.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help!

You've been very helpful! You confirmed what I was thinking too. I think if my Zombie lays a brown egg it would be very light. Will be fun to see.

 

[Chickenpoonumber2]

I'm voting on the maran. That zombie chicken is so cool!!

 

[My Three Chicks]

Ok got my 2nd new egg today! THIS one is definitely my Marans! It's darker than yesterday's egg.

Left egg - today
Right egg - yesterday

Do you think these 2 are from the same chicken? Didn't expect such different colored eggs from 1 girl.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Ok got my 2nd new egg today! THIS one is definitely my Marans! It's darker than yesterday's egg.

Left egg - today
Right egg - yesterday

Do you think these 2 are from the same chicken? Didn't expect such different colored eggs from 1 girl.

It might be that the Maran’s spray paint booth is getting up to speed?

 

[SnackMeat]

So, zombies can be a little hard from what I understand because there's multiple ways to make. The most common obviously being the Ayam Cemani/white Leghorn, but I believe any fibro with a Dominant White chicken should make a zombie (sometimes only in one sex, like supposedly the svart horna, with the other sex having white skin.)

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/zombie-chickens-white-leghorn-x-swedish-black.1612852/


I bring this up to say, especially with hatcheries, they might play with different breeds for best genetic diversity just so long as the Fibromelanistic and Dominant White boxes are checked. I don't know how true a Fibro Easter Egger would be with Dominant White, but that could cause an egg layer to have pretty much any color egg.

What I've seen someone do (but can't find the link) is make a hole in the bottom of the egg to get the egg out for eating and then dry the shell out and put in an egg carton. Then they had the comparison for their chicken's first few eggs to compare as things need time to work themselves with the egg printer settings in your chicken


What also helps is weighing the eggs to see what the average weight is. That can help more with the Marans than with the Zombie but it would be an interesting thread to ask Zombie owners to weigh their Zombie's eggs to figure out averages. I did a cursory look and had a hard time finding it, but also, because different breeds can make up a Zombie, I wonder how much the weight difference would be.