Winter egg colors: do you see any differences in your flock?
I keep many different chicken breeds, and get many different egg colors. I have chocolate brown, terracotta brown, medium brown, pale beige, pink, parchment, and several different colors of blue and green. It’ s a nice mix, really. Throughout most of the year, my 12-egg cartons tend to get filled with four medium or light brown eggs, six blue or green eggs, and two chocolate eggs each. There are variations, of course, but given the composition of my flock and their frequency of lay, this ratio is what I usually see.
In the winter, my egg color mix is a little different. The blues and greens mostly drop out—blue and green egg layers are often poor winter layers. So, my winter egg colors consist chiefly of the colors laid by breeds that are good winter layers, as well as by my hens that were hatched in the previous spring, since they don’t go through their first molt of adult feathers (and a drop in laying during the molt) until the following year. This year, my new hens are almost all Black Copper Marans.
Now my egg cartons are sporting their winter egg colors:
Winter egg colors in my flock this year are rich, chocolate brown
Check it–there is one lonely green egg toward the back, and a total of only five medium brown eggs. The rest are wearing the winter egg colors of 2012-2013: chocolate. My new Black Copper Marans hens are laying like gangbusters.
It won’t be too long now—usually February in my area—before things will change again and my egg cartons will be sporting spring colors rather than winter egg colors.
Spring color from this past year was just as lovely–more?–than my winter egg colors are.
We know the shade of your hens’ eggs will lighten as the season progresses, but do the egg colors you get change with the seasons, like mine do? What are your winter egg colors?
