Why Are Chicken Eggs Different Colors?
Edited by Jennifer Bryant · Poultry breeder, Animal Science graduate, and Poultry Nerds Podcast co-host.
Egg color comes down to the hen. Her inherited genes mainly determine whether she lays white, brown, blue, or green eggs. The shade can vary, but feed won’t turn a brown-egg hen into a blue-egg layer.
Open a backyard egg carton and it can look like a box of crayons. Here's how each color happens, in plain English.
White Eggs: The Plain Canvas
A white egg is simply a shell with no color added. Leghorns are the famous white-egg layers, and they're the hens behind most white eggs at the grocery store.
Fun trick: hens with white earlobes often lay white eggs, and hens with red earlobes often lay brown ones. It's not a perfect rule, but it's right surprisingly often.
Brown Eggs: A Coat of Paint
A brown egg is a white shell that gets a coat of brown pigment—rather like paint—near the end of the egg-making process. The color mostly sits on the outside.
Want proof? Crack a brown egg and look inside the shell. It's white or nearly white.
Some hens are true artists. Marans lay eggs so dark they look like chocolate, and Welsummers often add cute dark speckles.
Blue Eggs: Blue All the Way Through
Blue eggs are different. The blue color is built right into the shell as it forms, so it goes all the way through. Crack one open, and it's blue on the inside, too.
Ameraucanas, Araucanas, and Cream Legbars are classic blue-egg layers.
Green Eggs: Blue Plus Brown
Green and olive eggs are a happy mix. The hen makes a blue shell, then adds a brown coat on top. Blue plus brown equals green!
That's why green eggs usually come from crosses between blue-egg and brown-egg chickens, like Olive Eggers. Easter Eggers can lay green eggs, too.
Does Color Change the Taste?
Nope. A white egg and a brown egg from hens raised the same way taste the same and are just as good for you. Yolk color comes from what the hen eats, not from her shell color.
Is There a Black Egg?
Not really. The darkest Marans eggs come close, but no hen lays a true black egg.
Want a rainbow in your egg basket? Find breeders of colorful egg layers at Hatching Egg Directory.
