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  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] History of egg color
  • Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:31:06 -0500



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




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