Last month we posed a question to our readers: what would the eggshell color be from our enigmatic chicken, Butter?
Butter in her best creamy white, with 3 sisters and a stewster standing by.
In case you missed it, you can read our previous musings on Butter here and here.
One of the many challenges of low-tech pastured poultry is figuring out who is laying what. For our original flock, we know by breed what to expect in a broad sense; we know which ones are white layers, which are brown layers, and which are blue/green layers. But which one lays the slightly elongated light brown? Which one lays the rounder dark brown, sometimes with speckles, sometimes without? Some of this can be referenced by breed using egg charts, but these are not computer-controlled 3D egg printers. Any given chicken’s eggs might vary considerably from one to the next.
Most of our knowledge on these matters comes from a perpetual game of guess and check. We run outside every once in a while, see which hens are on a nest, then go back 15 minutes later to see which eggs are waiting for discovery. It’s like a daily Easter egg hunt, y’all! Except for the chickens, who have to endure the creepy element of being stalked by tall pink monkeys all day long.
And then there are the mutts — Butter, Amelia, Smoothie, and Crusty. All born last September and reaching maturity at about 5 months, we’ve been waiting through the winter to see what their egg colors would be. They started laying around the beginning of February, and we could tell which eggs they were laying because first-timers typically lay small eggs. After separating out the big eggs, we were coming up with 4 niche color options for the new girls — blue, olive, tinted, and soft white. But which niche is which?
New egg colors.
After a grueling campaign, through rain, snow, rain, and rain, Operation Easter Monkey has been concluded successfully! While we did not go so far as to impose upon them to let us actually see the egg’s arrival, our peep on the peeps tactics have allowed us to match hue to hen — and the moment you’ve all been waiting for — Butter’s egg!
This was a lot of fun for us, so we’ve decided to do it again this spring. We have 25 more eggs in the incubator with a due date of March 9th, so stay tuned for more cuteness coming soon to Star & Sparrow!
P.S. Special thanks to those of you that braved a guess on the previous post. We’ll be in touch with you soon about a treat we’re whipping up for you!