Hmmm. Good question! The answer may surprise you.



Chicken Breeds and Egg Color

If you know what breed the chicken is, then you can be pretty sure you will know the color egg she will lay. For example, a Rhode Island Red will lay a brown egg and a White Leghorn will lay a white egg.

It’s trickier when you’re dealing with South American breeds like the Ameraucana, Araucana or “Easter Egg-ers,” hens that aren’t purebred. Ameraucanas and Araucanas are known and prized for their blue eggs, but Easter Egg-ers can lay eggs in a rainbow of colors from blue to pink to green and many shades in between.

Chicken Earlobes and Egg Color

Another way to try to predict egg color is to look at the hen’s earlobe. If it’s white, then the egg will most likely be white. If it’s red, the egg will most likely be brown. This works about 75% of the time.

If it’s important for you to know what color the eggs will be, the best advice we can give is do some research, and know your breed before you get any chicks. That way you can have brown eggs instead of, say, avocado colored eggs, if that’s what you prefer!

We Love an Assortment

Personally we love the assortment of beige, brown, speckled, blue, green and white eggs that we collect every day. But that’s just us, and our birds continue to delight us!

One good resource is BackYardChickens.com. They have a chicken breeds chart that gives you lots of information about egg color, egg size and other useful things to know about your breed of choice.