Quote:
Originally Posted by monster
Isn't shell color due to genetics/breed rather than diet/environment?
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Shell color, yes. What's inside the shell, no.
I have birds that lay brown eggs (Black Australorp), white eggs (Buttercup), blue eggs and green eggs (Araucana). My big dumb Leghorn roo recently fathered four chicks whose mothers are Araucanas. Leghorns normally lay white eggs, but because the Araucana blue/green egg shell gene is dominant, odds are good that these cross-breeds will lay blue/green eggs, instead of white ones. The birds
look like Leghorns, so far... won't know for sure about egg-shell color for another four months or so.
My chickens are free-range and eat a diet of high-quality layer feed mixed with cracked corn and oyster shell calcium. They also get regular treats of canned corn, lettuce, cabbage, and whatever else my garden happens to be producing at the time. Kitchen scraps are fair game, too, but no meat, fish, garlic or onions.
ALL the eggs produced by my birds have nice firm whites and big orange yolks. From the nine laying hens I currently have, I get about six eggs per day (this is amazing; egg production usually
really drops off in winter). They're carrying the load for the other four hens that aren't laying, but that old "Meat or eggs" thing still applies. Come summer, if they don't start producing again....
