Our First Maran Egg!

Came home from work last night to find this in the nest box!

One of our French Marans has laid her very first egg! Now the question is, which one laid the egg?

Chocolat or Fromage?

Our French Marans, Fromage (left) and Chocolat

 Which one do you think laid the egg?

Actually, our Marans look so alike we have trouble picking them apart. They do have different personalities, with one being much friendlier. We have only recently noticed that one of them has two tufts sticking out from their tail and we are using that as an identifier. Tail tuft is now Chocolat!

Back to the egg.

Marans are known to lay eggs with dark pigmented shells, but this trait is slowly being lost as breeders tend to focus more on the bird "standard" rather than the egg colour. We got our Marans from a breeder that was more focused on egg colour rather than bird shape, size and feathering. 

Slightly spotty

The first egg is darker than any other egg that have been laid by our other chickens, but not spectacularly dark. Apparently these chickens can lay eggs that are a dark chocolate colour!

Maran egg next to Leghorn egg

Maybe the dark speckles on the egg mean that the next time an egg is laid, it may be darker, we will have to wait and see, but the eggs generally get lighter the later it gets into the laying season.

To explain, eggshells are white when they are formed and they get "painted" with pigment as it gets laid. The amount of pigment placed onto the egg is genetically predetermined and the hen has a certain amount of pigment stored up for a laying season. As she continues to lay, the pigments get used up and the eggs become paler and paler. If you crack open a brown egg, you will find that the inside of the shell is white.

The blue eggshells are a completely different story, with the pigment added during the shell formation. So the inside of an Araucana egg will also be blue (My Araucanas are not laying at the moment, so I can't show a comparison pic. They told me that they are on strike for winter >.<)

I don't know if anyone else is excited, but I was!

Cuddle a chicken

Now to try and work out which one laid!

Cuddle a chicken!! :)