The red hen’s daughter

Henriette Lamprecht – A plan was hatched. She would get a few chickens to lay eggs to use for the rusks she would bake once in a while for a few friends. Five chickens were ordered and the chicken coop was built.

All this, only for a wild cat to kill two hens on their first night in their new home.

“Two of their heads were bitten off. I was shattered,” says Carla Jacobs about the start of her journey that would culminate in her blooming business selling coloured eggs.

She started googling different breeds and found “hundreds” of different breeds of different colours and feathers, different behaviour, the number of eggs they laid per year and ... a blue egg.

“I lost all sense and decided I want a chicken that lays a blue egg! Even if I have to swim across ocean and the Bermuda Triangle swallows me, I didn’t care. Chickens aren’t just beautiful and clever, they can even lay eggs in different colours!”

Carla’s extensive research in the evenings after work meant she didn’t even have time to watch television any more. “There literally wasn’t time to just sit in a chair for a bit, without something that had to be done.”

She began her search in South Africa and joined every possible group on Facebook to gain contacts and of course, eggs. “I bought incubators and everything I would possibly need. I was busy night and day, and studied everything I could about a chicken and an egg.”

On YouTube, she learnt how to candle eggs [to check which eggs are fertilized or not] and became quite good at hatching breeds which normally tend to be challenging.

“Initially, I contacted Sitta Voigts on one of the Facebook groups who answered my message after a month. I bought a few eggs from her and eventually, we started to breed together to get better products, which means better egg colours. She already had a lot of knowledge and became my mentor. I’m grateful to her.”

Colours, colours everywhere!

Different chickens lay different coloured eggs, Carla explains.

For a Maran it’s chocolate brown; for Araucanas it’s blue; Isbars lay green or sometimes blue eggs; Welsummers will deliver a speckled egg; Pendasenca a chocolate brown egg, and Wyandottes, Salmon Favarolles and Gersey Giants lay pinkish eggs. The “normal” white eggs are usually laid by Leghorns, but also by Brakels and Spanish White Faces.

She fondly remembers her first “very special” chicken, “my Miepmeep”. Miep was one of two chicks who shared a coop with a “bunch of teenage chicks who picked on them,” Carla says. “They were wounded and Miep’s was so deep and sore, I couldn’t even pick her up. I treated their wounds and decided to let them sleep in a basket next to my bed at night.”

One of the chicks’ wounds quickly healed and easily returned to the brood, but for Miep, it was not the case. “Miep’s wounds took much longer to heal. When I wanted to return her, she flatly refused.”

Miep continued sleeping in Carla’s room in her basket with “her stick and a bed liner”, and later began sleeping on the window sill. She didn’t want to mix with the other chickens at all, and while she would spend the day outside, she jumped through the window to return to her ‘home’ at night.

The first as well as all the other eggs she laid, were in a suitcase in the back of Carla’s room.

“When she gets broody, she spends a lot of time in her suitcase. I give her fertilized eggs and the moment the chickens hatch, they are all taken to a little cage outside where she raises them. She already raised four groups of chicks.”

In her search for the perfect coloured egg, Carla’s journey took her to Turkey, accompanied by family and “chicken people”. On her schedule was a chicken competition in the Sandikli district close to Afyonkarahisar.

“It must have been quite the sight. Me with three Turkish men and a bunch of chickens in a ‘Jan Japan’ type SUV! We travelled 500 km from Istanbul to get there, stayed for three days for the competition, and travelled the 500 km back again. Myself, the Turks and the chickens in the crates.”

The competition and the quality of the chickens were brilliant, says Carla. The competitors were mainly men, with only one woman participating. “They love the big black and white Brahma chickens.”

Creative colours

Carla returned with a few blue Ameraucana eggs in her suitcase of which only four hatched. You get a polystyrene container which is specially designed for the eggs, however, the risk is still huge as most of the air cells break, which leaves no chance for the eggs to hatch.

Exactly what causes the colour of the shell, Carla explains by the example of a blue egg.

“A blue pigment called oocyanin originates in the bile duct and is added very early in the laying process. Because it is a different type of pigment and added so early in the laying process of 26 hours, the blue pigment goes all the way through the shell, which is different from the brown pigment. This means blue eggs are blue inside and out.”

Blue eggs are laid by Araucanas, Ameraucanas as well as Cream Legbars. The darkest chocolate brown eggs originate from France from a town called Maran, with the chickens aptly called Marans.

“A brown egg is always white on the inside. The brown doesn’t penetrate the shell. With the Maran, it is like a layer of paint that you can scrub off. Simply put, the colours are about how much pigment the hen allows the shell to get.”

To get green or olive-coloured eggs, blue and brown are mixed, Carla explains, with some of the chickens’ eggs that have a thicker bloom than others. “The bloom is the protective layer which every egg has. When this layer is thicker, it affects the egg’s colour. An example is a green egg which will appear blue or grey with a thicker bloom than normal. A very dark Maran egg can appear light purple or pink when this layer is very thick. There are however many other factors that can influence this.”

Pretty enough to be part of a display, Carla’s ‘bloomin’ beautiful eggs are ready to be part of any menu and recipe.

“You will eat amazingly beautiful and delicious eggs from hens who are pampered and on a healthy diet and who get their supplements every week to flourish.”

Carla says she has no plans to expand her business and only tries to better the colour of her eggshells while keeping her chickens healthy. “That in itself is a huge job. But I also love to teach people what it’s all about, especially children who are interested.”

She admits that her journey with her eggs and chickens led to her discovering a passion she would never have thought she had. Her creativity blossomed and it provided the chance for personal growth and development.

As a pre-schooler, Carla would always sit in her family’s chicken coop. “My mom would say I’m the red hen’s daughter, due to my red hair. Now I wonder if I went to sit there because she said so, or did she say it because I sat there?” – Facebook: Bloom’n Eggs; [email protected]