Eggstraordinary Eggs!

Ha! I totally know that is probably the most unoriginal title ever, but I couldn't resist. It was just too easy, or should I say "over easy"? Okay. No more, I promise. 

Eggs. It's why most of us get chickens in the first place. When we think of chickens, the egg really does come before the chicken! I don't know many first timers that think "I want a bird to buy an expensive house for, something I can clean up a ton of poop, pay to feed and worry about things eating them round the clock." So today I figured I'd wax poetic and maybe a bit scientific about eggs. 

First let's talk briefly about Red Jungle Fowl. They are the predecessors to our modern domesticated chickens and they don't lay eggs every day! Our selective breeding has resulted in birds that lay between 100 and 300+ eggs per year, something that is most decidedly not natural. It's why we feed our ladies commercial feed, they would struggle to take in the necessary protein and calcium they need to produce so many eggs, it's also why our modern chickens can sometimes end up with reproductive issues. 

Let's talk about the process for a bit. Chickens lay eggs roughly every 25 hours. Their amazing single chicken ovary (only one matures!) releases an ovum (an immature yolk) about every 25 hours and it heads down the chute and ploops itself into the funnel and then moves into the isthmus where the membrane that you peel of your hard boiled eggs is formed. The shell gland then adds the shell and at the end the bloom is deposited. In the shell gland is where the colors are added, if the chicken has a blue gene it is added early in the process and if the chicken has a brown gene it is added later. Green eggs are blue eggs with a layer of brown on top. If you crack open a green egg the inside of the shell will be blue! The depth of the blue and brown will determine whether the egg is light green or a deep olive green. Neato, right?

There are of course variations in timing and in coloration, but a chicken that lays brown eggs will always lay some shade of brown. A chicken that lays green will always lay some shade of green and so on and so forth. It doesn't mean there won't be weird blips that happen with eggs from time to time, but usually not total color changes. 

The specked brown beauty is our Delaware, the light greenish blue is our Snowy Easter Egger, the light olive green is our traditional Easter Egger (vs. our Blue EE, Snowy EE or our Super Blue), and the white is our Mottled Houdan. I've gotten very good at identifying the 5 different white eggs from general size and shape of the eggs. Certain breeds usually lay certain colors of eggs. All Delawares will lay brown eggs, all Polish will lay white and Easter Eggers lay blue, green or light brown, it's sort of a toss up there. Cream Crested Legbars will lay a blue to blue-green egg. Once you mix breeds you get combos, Olive Eggers are often a Crested leg bar and a Marans that lays a dark brown egg. 

I'll take this opportunity in talking colors to segue in a slightly weird direction towards earlobes. Yeah. Chicken earlobes. Chickens have earlobes and they have colors!  Broadly speaking one can tell the color of eggs by a chicken's earlobes. It's not an exact science by any means, there are exceptions, but it's cool anyway. Chickens with white earlobes usually lay white eggs. Chickens with red earlobes often lay brown eggs. There are blue ear lobes and some of the red ear lobed chickens lay the green and blue eggs. I feel pretty certain that there was a time that this was pretty accurate, but with a lot of our fancier breeds these days the lines are much more blurry. 

Probably you will never ask yourself the question "Do the girls ever poop out weird eggs?". I can answer this even if you wouldn't ask it, and the answer is a resounding yes. There are a large variety of weird reproductive hiccups that chickens can experience, from the temporary to the life threatening. With the increased laying comes increased chances of issues. Some have names, like "lash egg" or "fairy egg" and some don't. Sometimes there isn't a shell, or the membranes of two yolks touch because they are released too close together. Occasionally there are tiny beads of calcium on them. Sometimes they lay into their body cavities, which as you might imagine is bad. We have one on chicken birth control for that, which is a story for another day. She would die a horrible death without the chicken Norplant so we keep her on it so we can enjoy her attitude every day. 

So those are some egg facts! I'll leave everyone with a gratuitous egg picture and hope that I've imparted just a little more info about eggs than you ever wanted to know.