Brown Eggs Are Local Eggs,...Liar

Eggs, eggs, eggs...

I still get the little commercial jingle in my head "brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh!". I believed it, I mean why would "they" whoever they are,  say it, if it wasn't the God's honest truth. 

Well it isn't the truth, in fact it is an outright lie. Brown, white, green, terra cotta, blue eggs and all the other hues have nothing to do with the current geography. Brown eggs are brown because of the breed of chicken that produces them. White eggs are white for the very same reason.

Before I raised chickens I wasn't even aware of the fact that chickens laid anything but brown and white eggs. When I shopped at the grocer I would always look for brown eggs, why?... well because they
were local, silly.

Well now all my eggs are local. They are laid right in my own back yard, doesn't get any more local than that. Better still from my own wonderful little flock of backyard chickens. My girls eggs are white, brown, blue, green, pink and chocolaty terra cotta.

When I brought home my very first 9 chicks, I had absolutely no clue whatsoever that chickens laid a wide array of colored eggs. All I knew for certain when I began was that I wanted free range, all natural, organic eggs and by George I was for going to have them.

I called around to local feed stores and located one stocked with day old chicks, which are actually a few days old by the time they make their way to you. I called my poor husband who just so happened to be driving by the feed store and asked him to pick up a box for me. That's right a box of chickens. We quickly built a brooder and started our journey of becoming little farmers.

While I waited for my new hens to be old enough to lay,  impatiently, I obtained 4 adult Rhode Island reds and immediately was satisfied with their lovely brown eggs, farm fresh, daily.

It wasn't until 4-5 months later I realized that my 8 hens, yes that is 8 because one of my " I garontee it" hens was a roo, sadly named Gladys. 

One day I went down to collect eggs and found some white eggs mixed in with the Rhode Island reds brown eggs, ...nice! I mean there are white eggs, so no surprise there, then those brown ones, those ones are local, ha!
Within days I came down to the coop and I was just in Gobsmacked, because in my nesting boxes were those white eggs, and yup, those brown eggs, the local ones and OMG, pinch me blue ones!  I looked at the blue ones in all sorts of differing light, because I just simply could not believe they were really blue. I came to learn of course, that when I chose my chickens I had by one of those rare lucky accidents chosen 3 araucana hens, which were responsible for my lovely blue eggs. My 3 barred rock hens produced the pinkish brown eggs in the nesting boxes that soon after followed, and our 3 leghorns were the ones producing the beautiful bright white eggs. 

So I researched why do the eggs produce different colors and what I discovered was that all eggs start out white. Egg shells are made up almost completely of a white mineral called calcium carbonate. At various stages of the egg development, in hens that produce different colors eggs, natural pigments are introduced into the shell at certain points in the formation of the shell. 

For instance, in the blue egg layers, the Araucana , a blue gene called oocyan produces a bile pigment called biliverdin which is introduced early on in the stage of egg formation, so the inside and the outside of the egg is blue. 

Brown eggs, contrarily, have the pigment protoporphyrin, a byproduct of hemoglobin deposited during the final stages of shell formation. So when you crack open brown eggs, the inside remains white because the pigment was introduced later on in the development of the egg. 

I have since become quite a little egg color collector. I have added a black French copper Marans which produces a nice chocolate egg. An olive egger which was produced right here from the pairing of my Araucana rooster, which has the blue egg gene and my black copper Marans who produces the chocolate eggs. The combination of the blue pigment and the addition of the chocolate pigments proved to produce an olive tinted egg. I have three new additions on order now for welsummers which produce a nice dark brown egg and I am currently hunting for black langshams which produce violet tinted eggs. My little silkie mix hens produce pink eggs. I certainly don't have any need to color eggs at our house at Easter, my girls do all the coloring long before they hit the nesting box. Thanks Ladies!

So the next time someone tells you that brown eggs are local eggs, you can educate them that there is nothing further from the truth!