Hello Friends!
I thought I'd pop in today and tell you a little bit more about our "rainbow flock", as we call it. I regularly get inquiries about which breeds give us such a beautiful array of egg colors. This is not the first time we've owned chickens, so we had some idea of which breeds we wanted to get again, and which new breeds we wanted to try. My favorite additions are our Olive Eggers (olive green eggs), Salmon Faverolles (cream eggs) and Noir Marans (dark reddish brown eggs).
This is our Salmon Faverolle rooster, Eugene. He is quite a handsome fellow! It was really important to us to not only have a beautiful flock, but to get a variety of egg colors and we spent a lot of time narrowing down exactly what breeds we wanted to include. Another thing that we took into account is breed disposition. Some breeds are definitely more docile and friendly than other chicken breeds. Out of all of our chickens, our Salmon Faverolles and Sapphire Gems are probably the sweetest and most docile with us, though they can be persnickety with the other hens for sure (but that's just chicken behavior).
So here is a run down of the egg colors we get, and which breeds lay eggs in that color range:
Darkest Chocolate Brown / Noir Maran (speckled on ends usually)
Dark Brown / Welsummer (often with speckles all over)
Medium Brown / Sapphire Gem, Black Sex Linked, Calico Princess (often with speckles)
Pale Pinkish Brown / Silver Laced Wyandotte, Buff Orpington (often with pretty white speckled bloom)
Cream / Salmon Faverolle, Speckled Sussex
Olive Green / Olive Egger (often with speckles)
Mint Green or Blue / Americauna
Here is a labeled picture so you can visualize the different egg colors with the names of the breeds who lay them.
I hope this helps any of you who may be planning on starting your own rainbow flock! I think it's so amazing that everyday, ordinary things like chicken eggs can bring such beauty and interest to life and in my opinion the truest beauty can be found in the most useful things if we take the time to cultivate it there.
This is Cordelia, one of our Salmon Faverolle hens. She hopes you will say hi, and drop your questions and thoughts in the comments section below! Do you keep chickens, or plan to in the future? What are your favorite breeds? How do you cultivate beauty in the everyday things? Leave a comment and let's talk about it.
xx, Loran