colorful chicken eggs

Chicken Eggs

- a colorful story


Walk down the dairy aisle of your local grocery store looking for eggs and you have a choice of brown or white eggs. But did you know there are so many more colors of eggs to choose from? That's right! Eggs can come in a range of colors including bright white, pale pink, baby blue, olive green, and chocolate brown. Some even come speckled.

There are over 65 chicken breeds and many more unrecognized breeds. These breeds may lay different colored eggs, but they all are the same on the inside. Taste of an egg is dictated by the hen's diet. Diets high in grasses, seeds, vegetables, and herbs yield the richest tasting yolk.

Brown eggs and blue eggs generally obtain their color in the beginning stages of egg production(en utero). Green coloration usually occurs towards the end of the egg cycle when a pigment applies to the blue egg. This results in a green outer shell with a blue inner shell. As the egg-laying season progreses, the richness of the egg color may fade. This is also true as the hen ages.


image of chickens in grass