Green eggs through the season?

C

Cab

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Since Edie my cream legbar has been laying, I'm getting a green egg maybe five days out of every six, she's been a good 'un since her first egg on Christmas Day :)

Now the physiology of green eggs seems quite interesting - according to an article in Your Chickens there's a deposition of brown pigment over the blue egg, leading to the green colour.

Now my brown egg layers have often had a habit of laying progressively paler eggs during a laying season - and a couple have layed much paler eggs after being broody. So I'm wondering, do green eggs become more blue-green or just bluer as the year goes on? Has anyone noticed a change?

Cheers,

Cab.
 
Hi Cab. We have had Cream Legbars. Some laid green-bue eggs and some sky-blue eggs and the colour remained completely unchanged throughout their entire lives. As far as I am aware CL's are different to other hens in that the pigment is in the egg shell structure, not a subsequent coating as seen on other coloured egg layers. We had hybrid green and brown layers and the colour could be washed off. Cream Legbars cannot and if you look at the inside of the shell it is the same colour as the outside.
 
Hmmm... Eggs Florentine for dinner tonight, I'll have a good look at inside of eggs to see. Ta, chris.
 
Had a good look at Edies egg shells, definitely bluer on the inside and green on the out - so rather like I've previously seen with araucana eggs inside, but green outside.

Shall keep a close eye on the outer colour to see what happens :)
 
I have a Cream Legbar hybrid (a Chalkhill Blue). Her eggs, whilst pale blue, have got paler as they've got bigger. Her first was tiny but quite definitely blue. Now that they're a more respectable 50g or more, they're almost white in colour. Whether they'll get darker again when she's stopped laying for a moult remains to be seen; I'd assumed that they'd got paler because she lays so regularly.

Still, I love her regardless... 0:-)
 
Thanks ladies :)

Interesting, they're both blue egg layers and they get paler...

Now as I understand it, the green egg layers express both pigments, the blue in the shell and the brown on top, so if BOTH get paler then I may be looking at a ligher green through the year. Which will be pretty :)

The weight of the egg so far has been quite good - 1st day was 45g, now she's up to 55g or thereabouts, and seems to be slowly building up. So its a small egg compared to most of the others but not ridiculously so. Will see how she progresses.

Tempted to have a play with the chemistry of the colours. Will keep you posted if I do.
 
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