I was recording egg color along with egg weight in a notebook as we collect eggs, but they were relative colors: light brown, medium, brown, dark brown. It bothered me that without a reference, I couldn’t tell what I called “dark” the day before. And “dark” certainly isn’t a universal application because there are chicken breeds that lay much darker brown eggs. So I pulled out an old Pantone color book and am now comparing color to the Pantone standard. It means I write down things like 16-1331, but I am hoping to see a correlation between the color of egg laid and which chicken laid it. (I’m still working on how to figure out that last part.)

I tried hanging out in the coop for awhile. Cloud got upset and was yelling at me and decided to perch on my shoulder, then when I got her down and I left the coop, she went into the nest box! So I waited, and waited, and finally got sick of waiting and puttered around the yard (I don’t sit still well for long). I went back to check on her, and it looked like she was sleeping in the nest box. Alrighty then.

I am not waiting around for chicken naps. I did collect an egg from that box an hour or so later when the other chickens alarmed at something (or maybe it was the egg song, not sure on the subtleties of that yet). I am assuming it was Cloud’s egg. It was a different color than all the previous eggs. Maybe an individual chicken can lay different shades? Oh well, it is still fun to color match.