Homestead mailing list

[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Karen L. Black wrote:
> Sage writes:
>
> > I recently read where they are now feeding chickens brown 
> tinted chalk and that makes a white egg chicken lay brown 
> eggs. 
>
> I think this is pretty unlikely. Could you find the source of that claim?

I had to think on that one, too. Chalk, ok, there's the calcium, but I 
wonder what they tinted the chalk with(blood??) that would survive 
digestion and then provide hemoglobin to work biophysically in the shell 
making process.

> > This was due to the fact people believe the brown 
> ones are more wholesome and better for you. The quality of 
> the egg should have nothing to do with the egg's color, 
> but how the hen is raised and what she feeds on. Because 
> the standard factory bred hen lays white eggs, people just 
> assume the other colors are not from factories.
>
> This is an interesting inversion of the old paradigm, that brown eggs were
> not as good as white. Let me explain:
>
> Back in the early 20th century, brown-egg-laying hens were the most common
> farm bird. When there was a surplus of eggs, the farmwife would make a
> little money at the general store by bringing in the eggs she had collected.
> The store owner would then sell them to an egg jobber, who would candle,
> grade and pack them and ship them to the city. The eggs were rarely
> refrigerated at any point in this chain, so you can imagine that even the
> "grade A" eggs weren't all that fresh. It was a given that nobody would eat
> eggs from the South in the summer, since temperatures there would rapidly
> spoil eggs. (Milo Hastings in "The Dollar Hen" tells of a car of eggs,
> delayed in shipping, that had live chicks at its destination.)
>
> Farmers near large cities, seeing a huge difference in price between
> "strictly fresh" and run of the mill eggs, started specializing in egg
> farming. They kept Leghorns (and Leghorn crosses) for three reasons: the
> birds laid very well (the first hen to lay 300 eggs in a year was a Leghorn
> cross), they ate less per dozen eggs than heavy-bodied birds, and the white
> shells looked cleaner and were much easier to candle for meat or blood
> spots.
>
> The association of "strictly fresh" eggs with Leghorns took hold through
> most of the country. New England was the exception. Boston got most of its
> eggs locally already, and so the Rhode Island Red's brown eggs were the most
> popular there.


That is interesting, Karen.
I spent a lot of time with my aunt who raised me when I was very 
young-folks divorcing and all-and she would not eat white eggs.  My 
earliest memory of an egg was a big brown one Jo-Jo cracked in the 
skillet for my breakfast.  Growing up, mother always bought the white 
eggs because they were cheaper, and being poor, I continued the 
tradition. All things changed when we moved to SC after TJ was born and 
lived near my aunt again.  She would have none of this white egg 
business and chastised me for feeding them to the kids.  So, it was at 
that time, I converted to brown, and haven't looked back.  (Yeah Jo-Jo, 
I hear ya)  I never actually saw a leghorn until we moved to Calhoun. 
The lady that I bought my initial rabbits from had a mix of chickens, 
some white egg layers and some brown egg layers.  To me, the lighter 
weight white egg breeds just weren't as appealing to me as a big, 
fluffy, chunky heavy breed like a Buff or Australorp.  I was a big girl 
picking other big girls...lol..

Bev

--
“Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to 
hate. Hate leads to suffering.”        Yoda