Monday, May 21, 2007

will coop color affect egg production?

The girls are developing their "big bird feathers" at such a clip that I know they'll be ready to stay outdoors by the end of the month.

That means I'm ready to order our Eglu (longtime readers will know this will be our second order), and now I can't pick a color from the five they offer:



Left Coast Mom says "anything but Pink." Last time, I heeded that advice, putting a blue Eglu in the digital shopping cart, and by the look on her face, I found out her preference was "anything but Pink or Blue."

I asked again tonight, and she retreated to her "anything but Pink" preference (I know better), so I thought I'd see if there's any research indicating coop color's effect on the egg-laying prowess of the foul contained therein.

Google's not much help on that front (what, no one paints the inside of their coops?), but I did find a handy reference from the University of Florida about Factors Affecting Egg Production in Backyard Chicken Flocks that runs the gamut from noninfectious causes (aging hens, malnutrition, flock management issues) to a tasty smörgåsbord of infectious goodies (fowl pox, avian flu, coryza, etc). But nothing about color of coop.

Guess I'll have to pick the color I like best and suffer the groans if I choose unwisely between green, red and orange (I like red at this particular moment in time).

Backyard (instead of back room) chickens, here we come!

4 comments:

Melanie K said...

but wait! I thought I didn't want pink OR orange! :-D
no really, anything but pink.

Unknown said...

orange it is!

Anonymous said...

Any issue with Raccoons? My understanding is that they should be able to reach through the run mesh?

Unknown said...

Personally, we've never had problems with raccoons in our own backyard (yet, fingers crossed). If we did have a problem, I'd be inclined to cover the Eglu run with a tight mesh to keep prying hands out.

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