Cream Legbar Egg Colour

[DuncanZA]

Would any of you lovely people have any idea why my Cream Legbars, laying beautiful blue eggs up to now, have started laying pale cream eggs recently?


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[valeriebutterley]

My Legbar's eggs vary in colour from palest blue/green to distinct blue but always some sort of blue, no idea of their problem, so sorry. Hope it is temporary.

 

[dinosaw]

There was a good article from Katie Thear about this Duncan, have dug it out for you. In brief though, high levels of sun and warm drinking water, age, stress, red mite and worms can all be culprits.


http://www.chickens.allotment-garden.org/eggs/pale-eggs-egg-shell-colour/

 

[Marigold]

Brilliant article, Dinosaw, definitely one for my Bookmarks, thank you. One factor not mentioned was that eggs often tend to have less pigment towards the end of a long season in regular lay. I've noticed this especially in blue egg hens, and that they recover after a winter's rest, presumably re-stocking their reserves of pigment? Although I suppose that, over a long summer of regular lay, heat and the other factors would also affect colour. I think I've read somewhere that long lay also makes the colour of yellow legs go paler, is this right?
Agree about the importance of cool conditions and shade, though, and for Duncan, in S.Africa, this may be a problem. Not so here in southern Enngland, ATM. - very chilly drought conditions here in Hampshire!

Another question - do Leghorns add the brilliant white pigment to their eggs or do they just come out white as a default colour?

 

[rick]

I suppose calcium (white) could be considered a pigment as well as the structural material of the shell but, as I understand it, a white egg is without pigment either in the shell production (blue) or in the cuticle (brown) - just the protein/calcium shell with a clear cuticle.
Apparently, and I find this fascinating, all eggs are white through most of their formation but the blue pigment that gets added later permeates through the calcium so that the shell is blue throughout whereas the brown pigment deposited in the cuticle lastly doesn't 'bleed' into the shell.
I hadn't seen a pure white egg till recently. They are incredibly white aren't they?

 

[valeriebutterley]

My Leghorns who are purebred white utilities always lay a brilliant white egg - no messing. They are getting on a bit now and I may have problems
finding replacements as and when. Ah me, chicken lovers problems!!

 

[Marigold]

My brown leghorn, presumably a hybrid, does lay a lovely egg, which I thought was really white until I got a purebred white leghorn as well. I've recently had my cataract done in one eye. The difference in the colour of the two eggs is just like the contrast between looking at a white object with my 'waiting-to-be-done eye', then with the other 'Persil eye' - or should that be 'Leghorn eye?" I hope that, after next Monday, both eyes will be purebred-leghornised!