Chicken de beaking

[Exfarmer]

Article in Times today is calling for consumers to boycott brown eggs and buy white as White chickens do not need de beaking.
is there a grain of truth in this? Is it someone with a white egg flock trying to flog his eggs?
Also the report said the egg colour is the same as the feather colour, which I understood had no bearing on each other. Have seen plenty black chickens, never black eggs.

 

[Yosemite Sam]

Egg colour is determined by the colour of their ear lobs. That is the feather colouring covering the ear passage. As regards the debeaking. It is to stop bullying and feather pecking, you only seem to get it in overcrowded/housed flocks. This also can be a problem with calcium deficency. If feather pecking starts, it’s very hard to stop as chickens are drawn to the colour red. Once they draw blood, they will keep on until very serious injury or death occurs.

 

[Pieces_of_Eight]

Also the report said the egg colour is the same as the feather colour,

Absolute horse-sh!t.

Leghorn based hybrids will lay white eggs (like in the US)
Rhode Island based hybrids will lay brown eggs (like in the UK)
Araucana based hybrids will lay blue eggs
Maran based hybrids will lay chocolate (coloured) eggs.

People will keep hens according to what colour eggs the customer wants.

AFAIK the UK doesn't have white egg laying flocks (on a commercial scale).

 

[Bogweevil]

Absolute horse-sh!t.

Leghorn based hybrids will lay white eggs (like in the US)
Rhode Island based hybrids will lay brown eggs (like in the UK)
Araucana based hybrids will lay blue eggs
Maran based hybrids will lay chocolate (coloured) eggs.

People will keep hens according to what colour eggs the customer wants.

AFAIK the UK doesn't have white egg laying flocks (on a commercial scale).

Waitrose offers white eggs, I seem to recall Mother cleaning white eggs (we had 1000s of chucks) when I were a lad for the Thames Valley Egg company to collect:

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[Gander]

Sounds like a good story...if you’re trying to push eggs over here from the States!

 

[Exfarmer]

The story is I believe cut and pasted from an article in the Mail on Sunday.
it quite a farmer called Tim Bradley who has a flock of white chickens and cant flog his eggs.
so it seems that he is slandering hundreds of free range and other producerrs to flog his eggs.
is Tim on this forum would anyone know , so he can give his side of the story?

 

[Bald Rick]

Have seen plenty black chickens, never black eggs.

Not watching the right videos .....

 

[Netherfield]

Predominantly white eggs in the UK until some time in the sixties, ate less food and laid more eggs , the market leader was Shaver Starcross 288, Canadian in origin.

In the laying sheds we had red light bulbs which stopped the pecking at the sight of blood problem.

For whatever reasons the European public decided they preferred brown shelled eggs. We supplied a market stall in Leeds market at one time, he struggled to find enough white eggs for his Jewish customers.