We have been waiting and waiting (and waiting) for our Black Copper Maran chicken; Charlie to lay an egg. She was born in early January and that makes her 10 months old. That’s certainly old enough to be laying eggs. Marans lay dark brown eggs that look like they are made of chocolate. But even though we’ve looked and looked, we’ve found nothing.
Maybe she’s hiding them I thought, and I inspected all corners and rafters in our henhouse.
Still nothing.
But then I took a look at our egg collection and something caught my attention.
Do you see what I see?
Some of our eggs are darker. When you look at them alone, they just look like rich brown eggs, but when you compare them to our other brown eggs then you’ll see that something is clearly different.
Hmmm, methinks that something is going on here.
And when I took an even closer look, I saw that these darker brown eggs actually have a variation in color. They are darker at one end and then get lighter at the other. This would be consistent with how a Maran creates the eggs because it’s not that the actual shell is dark brown, it’s that as the egg comes down the canal, pigment (like a coat of paint) is applied to the outer shell before it is laid.
Do you see how the ends facing each other are a bit lighter?
Hmm, I think our little Charlie is a very clever bird, much more clever than I am. I’m pretty sure that these are her eggs and she’s been laying them all along.
I just wasn’t able to see the forest for all those trees in our hen house.
