One Brown Egg

Our plan to cross the White Leghorn chickens with the Rhode Island Red rooster with a view to producing brown eggs is starting to pay off. One of our chickens is now laying brown eggs! Yay!

There is absolutely no difference in the quality or flavour of a brown egg compared with a white egg. It is purely a matter of preference.

The chicks from our second successful brood are a mixture of first and second cross. One of the survivors of the second brood is obviously a second cross White Leghorn/Rhode Island Red. She is kind of sandy in colouring, but essentially looks the same as the parent hens. The 1^st cross chickens tend to be white with the occasional black spot or “smut” whereas the 2^nd cross chickens are more uniform in colour, it is just a sandy colouration.

The ears and legs of the 1^st cross chickens are white and yellow respectively, whereas the ears and legs of the 2^nd cross seem to be more of a buff colour.

My lovely wife did some comparisons with the eggs from the supermarket the other day, and the XX-Large eggs that the supermarket was selling weighed in at 48 grams each, whereas our chickens lay eggs that average 65 grams (with the occasional monster egg, one of which was 90 grams). The largest egg that our Isa Brown chickens laid was 95 grams.

Our other observations regarding the quality of the eggs that we produce are that: the yolks of our eggs are much darker in colour, tending toward orange rather than yellow; the albumen tends to have distinctive layers with the albumen layer closest to the yolk more viscous than store bought eggs; the egg-shell tends to be harder; and, our eggs are eaten much closer to their laying date.

I would expect that the albumen consistency could be a consequence of the consumption time, given that albumen is mostly water; that may normalise in the egg over time. However, the colour of the yolk indicates that the chickens are getting a good level of protein in their diet. The hardness of the egg shell would indicate that the chickens are getting enough calcium in their diet, and in a form that the chickens can readily use, to lay down enough calcium on the egg shell without having to strip their bones of calcium.