If you had scrolled through Instagram feeds of some backyard chicken enthusiasts, you are likely to have come across photos of chicken eggs in many different colors, from white to shades of brown, pink, green, blue. Why do eggs come in different colors and what decides the color of an egg? Do different color eggs also have different nutritional properties? This question is also one of the many questions that occupy the minds of us chicken keepers or those who are about to join the chicken keeping community. Let us try to demystify some of the questions and understand what it would take if you wanted to get that perfect shot of a beautiful and colorful egg basket.

The Science Behind Different Egg Colors

All eggs start out as white in color. As the egg passes through the oviduct different pigments are released, giving the eggshell its color. The two main pigments providing a myriad of different shades of brown and blue are oocyanin (blue shades) and protoporphyrin (brown shades).

Now, blue pigment, if it is present, is deposited earlier in the egg's journey through the oviduct. This means that although all eggs start out as white in color, some may actually get blue pigment deposited before and in addition to other pigments later in the eggs journey. This also explains how we end up with green or more precisely olive colored eggs. It's the blue pigment earlier in the journey, on top which which brown pigment is deposited that gives us the appearance of olive color. 

In certain cases, these pigments may permeate the eggshell and some color may be visible on the egg as well. This is more likely to occur with blueish eggs.

What does the egg color depend on?

Anecdotally, many people relied on bird's earlobes to predict the color of the eggs. Hens with white earlobes would usually carry white eggs, while those with red carry brown eggs. And while this may be true in some cases, the only 100% sure way of deducing the color of eggs is by looking at the breed. Egg color is specific to the breed laying them. So if you're after brown eggs, go for Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks or Rhode Island Reds; if you're after white eggs, go for Leghorns or Anconas; similarly, for blue eggs, go for Ameraucanas and Araucanas.

While the color is undoubtedly decided by the breed, the exact shade of the color is as much a matter of nature as it is of nurture. Bird's age, stress, feed, environment are all factors that may in one way or another contribute to the color gradient. 

Nutritional Differences

Many people swear they can taste the difference between different colored eggs. However, nutritionally, they are all the same, as long as the feed they were raised on is the same. Since it is usually the egg yolk that gives eggs its distinguishing flavor, and the quality of egg yolk greatly depends on feed, there is bound to be a difference between commercial and eggs from the backyard. But the difference has nothing to do with the color of the eggshell, rather it is the lower quality of feed which according to some often makes commercial eggs less tasty or rich in flavor.

Conclusion

Enjoy your eggs, whatever color they may end up being. As long as you take care of your birds, you will be getting great, nutritious eggs from them. But if you do want some variety in egg colors, for fun, or for Instagram, or any other reason, feel free to mix up the breeds in your flock and introduce new ones. You won't be able to get a rainbow of colors, but there are still plenty of colors your birds can surprise you with.

You've seen your friend's chicken coop and now you're playing with the idea of joining the backyard chicken keeping community. But you want to be 100% sure you're doing it right because you don't have any experience raising poultry. The closest it gets to raising anything are your dog or cat who are next to you asking with their eyes for their next food serving while you are reading this.  

You are not wrong in doing some research because you do need to make sure, both for your benefit and the birds you'll be getting, that you are ready to go ahead and bring some birds home. After all, most hens live from 3 to 7 years and some even more so you'll be expanding your extended family for quite a period of time. If you are more adventurous, and go ahead with geese, they'll be with you for approximately twice as long as hens.

Assuming that you decided to go ahead with chickens and not ducks or other poultry, we congratulate you on making the first right move. Since chickens are easiest to handle out of all poultry, once you master your game of chicken keeping, moving on to the more difficult levels of keeping ducks, then geese, and then perhaps turkey will be a gradual progress.

But now you are stuck with the next question. Not all chickens are the same. There are different breeds and just by reading some articles you come to the conclusion that these different breeds seem to be so unlike each other that it's almost as if they belong to a different species! But this is not the case. In fact, the best thing to do when trying to select the right chicken breed is to not breed-pick. It may sound counterintuitive at first, or perhaps overly spiritual to say that if you let things develop on its own, you will be naturally inclined to select the right breed.

There is no point in spending countless hours doing research trying to find out the perfect one. There is no "perfect" chicken breed. Some sources will point you to Plymouth Rock (Barred Rock), others would say Speckled Sussex or Buff Orpington. And although these are all great choices for a beginner, what we suggest is to just go shop for chickens and not go for specific chicken breeds.

When you find a local hatchery or store, ask around for the most common chickens in the area, suited to the climate and your goals, which can be keeping chickens for eggs, meat or as purely an ornament for your garden and family. If you shop for chickens and not chicken breeds, especially in the beginning, you are setting the path to more successful start of your little backyard farm. In the future of course you'll be much more knowledgeable about what you or your backyard needs and you may switch to shopping for specific breeds, but don't stress yourself with that question when you're starting off. There are other more important things to think about, such as the backyard itself, the coop, as well as figuring out all the accessories for feeding, maintaining cleanliness and the daily work needed around keeping chickens.

Conclusion

Chicken keeping isn't easy and you can't just jump into it without doing some research. But there are some things that you should worry about more and others that you don't have to worry as much about. In this article, we addressed the question of choosing the right chicken breed to start off with. We hope to remove one headache in your journey to starting your own backyard chicken farm.

Our advice to all beginners is to shop for chickens and not shop for specific chicken breeds. Doing so will lead to you the easiest chicken breed to handle which is likely specific to your area. The key to anything is starting easy and building up your knowledge over time, and it's fine if after some time you start chicken breed shopping once you gain that necessary experience. 

Why do so many people raise backyard chickens and not ducks, geese, turkey, quails or other poultry? This is the question many people considering backyard farming often ask. So if you are new to backyard farming, you are probably not sure why this is the case. However, if you've ever owned any other poultry besides chicken, you will know the difficulties of raising them. 

Keeping things simple, it's all a question of the return. A return on your money or a return on your time. If you look at this question from another angle, you could say it's about input vs. output. The input being time, money and effort (physical or mental) while the output being the eggs, meat or just pleasure you derive from raising poultry. Following this logic, chickens beat other poultry by far because they are relatively easy to raise and the amount of eggs you can get in return is exponentially higher than what you would get from most other poultry. Ducks and quails come second, while geese, turkey, pheasants, guineas, peafowl, pigeon and others give way less return. Let's look at the pros and cons of each in a bit more details:

1) Chickens

Absolute winner in terms of ease of raising, with phenomenal output - a hen that is properly taken care of can give up to 250 eggs per year. You can also keep chicken for their meat, although most of backyard chicken farming revolves around hens kept for eggs and an occasional rooster for the meat.

2) Ducks

Ducks are like the messier (especially poop wise) and noisier version of chickens. Under optimal conditions however ducks can give even more eggs than hens in a given year with the number of eggs being around 300-350.

3) Geese

Geese are like the messier and noisier version of ducks and are not known to be amazing egg layers with the number of eggs per year being up to 50.

4) Quail

Quails do not need a lot of space but are very hard to tame and might fly away if you are not careful. They do provide eggs on top of the meat however, up to 300 per year however they are very small in size, about a third of chicken's egg. We've seen people keeping quail in their own apartments since the cage they can be kept in is relatively small. However, things can get messy very easily and quails do poop a lot so do this at your own risk. It is much better if you have a garden shed for this purpose.

5) Other fowl - Turkey, pheasants, guineas, peafowl and pigeon. 

These are usually kept for their meat and of course the pleasure of raising a bird. Turkeys are not very intelligent creatures and you really need a lot of patience to take care of them. Peafowl will take some time to grow and will consume quite a bit of feed in the process of doing so. Guineas will get agitated at the slightest unexpected sound. 

Conclusion

Having read this, you may now be more aware of the pros and cons of raising poultry other than chickens. Our intent is not to dissuade you from raising other kinds of poultry, but rather to spread the awareness that other poultry may not be as easy to raise as chickens. We recommend everyone to start off with raising chickens first and then slowly add variety to their coop. The amount of variety you want really depends on you, your family and the time and effort that you want to put in. There's really no right or wrong way to go about doing this so whatever you choose, enjoy it!