When I was in the egg wholesale business here in Peru, there was a big difference between white and brown eggs and that was shell strength. Brown eggs were much tougher that whites. As to taste, I agree on the breed-and-diet-rather-than-shell-color idea.
No noticable difference at all. The thing is, eggs from entirely different species taste pretty similar to chicken eggs. Quail and ostrich eggs taste pretty similar to chicken eggs.
American commerical eggs have a pretty big disadvantage, though: they’re washed and demand refrigeration. Farm eggs (or just typical market eggs in, say, Mexico), aren’t washed, and don’t demand refrigeration as long as you consume them within approximately a week. As they age, their flavor becomes better and better. This is a fact, and it doesn’t matter what color the bloody damned shell is, only that it not be washed.
The color of egg shells is a matter of breed of chicken, and what color appears in the market is a matter of cultural taste. The feed conversion ratio (how many eggs per pound of feed, hence how economical it is to produce eggs) is also a matter of the breed of chicken.
There are two major classes of chicken breeds (I am simplifying here).
White eggs are laid by Mediterranean class breeds – originally developed in Italy and Spain, these are flighty, light-built birds which do well in hot weather and lay a whole lot of big white eggs (the bird’s feathers do not have to be white for white eggs, but their skin does). They don’t have a lot of meat on them. They have a high feed conversion ratio. Leghorns (from Livorno, and always pronounced Legurn in the US) are the type bird. It was this class that was taken up by the commercial egg industry and refined via breeding into the industrial-strength egg-laying machine used today. They lay for a year, are then ‘spent’ and are ground up for animal feed.
Brown eggs are laid by what are known as the American class. These were developed mostly from British breeds, which were bred for both eggs and meat, so called “dual purpose”. These breeds, such as the Rhode Island Red and Plymouth Rock, were the typical farm chicken for most of American history. The cockerels were eaten as soon as they reached full size, and the hens provided eggs until their production fell at age four or five at which point they were stew birds. They have yellow skin, are beefier more phlegmatic birds, are heavily feathered (do better in cold winters).
More recent breeding has produced brown egg layers with the same traits as the commercial white egg layers. Generally called “Production Reds” or a commercial brand name like “Red Star Layers”.
Blueish, greenish, and olive-cast eggs are laid by crosses developed from a blue-egg laying primitive Chilean breed called the Aurucana discovered I believe in the 1960’s. Mostly called “Amerucanas”, they are usually home-flock birds, there is no commercial variety.
“Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh” - New England Egg Council jingle
What comfortably believable p.r. bullshit.
Egg-zactly.
So if leghorns are always pronounced “legurn” in the US, what’s the name of the breed that’s usually pronounced “leghorn” in the US?
We’ve had hens that lay brown, white, and greenish colored eggs. The only difference related to shell color is that the eggs laid by the Aracunas (the greenish shells) have much thicker/viscous albumen.
Our main decision making on which breed to have is mostly centered on how well they handle cold temperatures and how ell they lay without supplemental lighting.
Current favorite breed is the Golden Comet. They lay brown shell eggs, start laying young, and during mild winters sometimes produce year round.
There isn’t one. There are just people who don’t know how to pronounce Leghorn. Do you say Boh Log Nah?
Golden Comet is one of the commercial brown-egg hybrids. I’ve had them, they are aces.
In my new much colder weather digs I went with some old heritage brown egg layers, Speckled Sussex and Dominique. They don’t lay quite as well as the modern hybrids but are super hardy, and amazingly friendly.
Foghorn would like a word with you.
Is that why they chose the name of the cartoon character then? Because Leghorn follows neatly on from Fogurn?
You can hear them when you live by the coast: those giant urns, reverberating their noises to warn ships of the fog. They sound quite a lot like horns, but they can’t be, given the obvious ‘urn’ in the pronunciation…
DAMMIT! I promise this wasn’t here when I posted…
There is also a popular backyard chicken breed originally from Marans, France which lays a very dark brown egg. This breed in the US is pronounced MARE-un. And the town in Maine, Calais? It’s pronounced Callus.
Look, I’m just reporting!
Heck, there are chicken eggs with pinkish shades to their shells. (Cross breed blue layers with brown to get olive green layers. Cross those out again, and again, and … )
Let’s see what happens, imma try to attach a picture from a local chicken breeder who determined that plum purple layers were her special project.)
Actually, all breeds will lay year-round (though still at a slightly decreased rate in winter), if you provide them with supplemental artificial lighting.
Correct, however their lifespan will be negatively affected. We purposefully give our hens a break over winter and in exchange they live a few years longer.
In fact, the one negative wrt Golden Comet hens is that they tend to not live as long as other breeds.
In the 60s/70s most eggs were white, we considered brown special because it was rarer. We used to look in the boxes to see if we could find a brown one.
Because they were considered better, egg producers wanted to produce more - there were even boxes of eggs sold in different boxes because they were brown. Now they are nearly all brown.
Yes, this. A home flock in a natural seasonal cycle will be productive for up to 5 years (but the hens will continue to lay sporadically for quite a bit longer), a hen whose body is fooled into thinking it is perpetual summer will lay itself into an early grave. Commercial hens are designed to be spent in one season. Most cost-effective. All your commercial eggs are from first season layers.
The marvelous EB White wrote about this very subject fifty years ago.
Very much worth reading, as are all of his essays. The formatting is a bit off due to the digitization process but don’t let that stop you.