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After our chicken's last broody episode we thought that she had quit laying eggs. When my husband was moving things around in their coop, he made a funny discovery.
She had been laying her eggs in a hidden place behind their hen house. :)
After losing all of our chickens last year, we hand raised 5 new girls last spring. They finally started laying eggs and by the time we realized it there was quite a collection hidden around the coop. After washing them up I had to take a moment to appreciate the wide range of colors and speckles on them. I saved many of these and plan to blow them out and save them.
The summer heat seems to affect everything, even our eggs! A while back it got over 103 degrees F and I had one chicken go into heat stroke because she had decided to start going broody that day.
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Why do my chickens lay green eggs and are they safe to eat?
By curtis from Wallace, NE
What kind of chickens are they? Some chickens do lay green eggs, I can't remember what kind of chicken it is, but when I was a kid one our neighbors had some of them, while the rest of us had normal chickens. If I remember right the eggs are a little bit smaller than the white or brown eggs are.
Americana's lay green and blue eggs. They are safe to eat, we eat them daily.
Your breed of chickens are probably Easter Egg Americaunas and they'll even lay blue eggs, but it's usually the Standard (pure breed) Americaunas that lay blue eggs and they don't lay green ones at all.
The eggs are definitely safe to eat :-)
My chickens are production reds?
Different breeds lay different colors. Yes, they are safe to eat and much better tasting than store bought. My son's friends always loved having bright yellow scrambled eggs at our house when they stayed over.
The correct spelling is Araucana. They are not actually a chicken, so to speak, but a pheasant from South America. They will breed with chickens, and they do lay, blue, green, and sometimes yellow eggs. True araucana roosters are tail less they have rounded rumps with long feathers that flow down over them. I once raised chickens for show and breeding and I had a flock of aracaunas for my children.
The Aracana, also known in the USA as a South American Rumpless, is a breed of CHICKEN originating in Chile. The Araucana is often confused with other fowl, especially the Ameraucana and Easter Egger chickens, but has several unusual characteristics which distinguish it. They lay blue or greenish blue eggs, have feather tufts near their ears, and a tail.
The Ameraucana should also lay blue or greenish eggs, but unlike the Araucana it has a tail and possesses muffs and a beard, which are quite different from the tufts of the Araucana, and no feather crest. Muffs and beards provide insulation against the cold. They are downy filoplumes that grow on the face below the eyes, extending to beyond the ears as well as the throat.
Hope this helps clear this up!
The picture of the white chicken is an Araucana.
The Aracana, also known in the USA as a South American Rumpless, is a breed of CHICKEN originating in Chile. The Araucana is often confused with other fowl, especially the Ameraucana and Easter Egger chickens, but has several unusual characteristics which distinguish it. They lay blue or greenish blue eggs, have feather tufts near their ears, and a tail.
The Ameraucana should also lay blue or greenish eggs, but unlike the Araucana it has a tail and possesses muffs and a beard, which are quite different from the tufts of the Araucana, and no feather crest. Muffs and beards provide insulation against the cold. They are downy filoplumes that grow on the face below the eyes, extending to beyond the ears as well as the throat.
Hope this helps clear this up!
The picture of the buff colored chicken is an Ameraucana.
Pure bred Araucana lay blue eggs, and are believed to originally be a chicken/pheasant cross. They are classed as chickens and crossbreed with them. They are rumpless, have ear tufts, and lay blue eggs. They are relatively rare, as they carry a lethal gene that kills 25% of the chicks before hatching.
Ameraucana are a slightly different breed that also lays blue eggs and has a regular rump/tail and a muff & beard.
"Easter eggers" are crosses, and the eggs are generally more green in tint. They are more likely to look like a regular chicken. This is the most common, and likely what you have.
All lay edible eggs --all birds do, as far as is known.
This article is interesting: skepweaver.wordpress.com/
Why do your chickens lay green eggs? For green eggs and ham of course! :) Sorry couldn't help it that is the first thing that popped into my head when I read this. But I found it interesting to read that some chickens do lay green and blue and yellow eggs!
