What is the bloom on a chicken egg?
Krystal- Dec 31, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 16
It isn't long after owning chickens that you learn about what the egg bloom is, or maybe you knew before owning chickens. :) This awesome little protective coating that hens lay over their eggs is a barrier against bacteria and moisture loss. It is why unwashed farm (or backyard) fresh eggs don't need to be refrigerated! There are so many great things about it, but I am going to focus on sharing what I have learned about it as far as genetics and how egg color can be affected. That bloom can make for some stunning eggs!
Usually, you cannot see the bloom, and it is a thin coating. Some hens lay thicker blooms on their eggs, and you can see the bloom. When it is wet, it becomes transparent. What does the bloom have to do with egg color? Well, a thicker bloom on a light brown egg can make it look pink, an olive egg with a thick bloom can look gray, and dark brown eggs with a heavy bloom can appear lavender colored! How cool is that?! Take a peek at the pics below. The picture of the gray egg and olive egg in my hand were laid by the same hen on two different days. Both eggs have a heavy bloom on them. The next picture is still them, but with a bit of water you can see through the bloom and see those dark olive eggs!
Now, to breeding for those heavily bloomed eggs. I found this to be an especially tricky project. Some hens will sporadically lay heavier bloomed eggs. When it came to breeding for it, I needed to focus this line on hens that consistently laid heavier bloomed eggs. It takes time and patience to separate and sort out which hens lay what, but that work, patience, and record keeping can start a specific breeding project like this off on the right foot. My Woodland Olive Egger flock had some girls that laid just the eggs I wanted to start this line with. I paired these girls with a young roo that I hatched from a heavy bloomed egg fertilized by a Whiting True Blue roo. I was pleased with my first generation of heavy bloomers...haha that's what we will call them for now, "heavy bloomers." Now to refine this line for the traits I wanted.
After carefully breeding and crossbreeding these heavy bloomers, I started to finally see some consistency! For a hen, if you wait until she starts laying, she can tell you a lot about her specific egg color genetics. This is especially so if you have many hens from the same line to compare their eggs. Now, the rooster's genes are the most important factor I've noticed while trying to bring out this specific genetic trait, heavy blooms. It takes so much patience to confirm a rooster's egg color genetics. For a rooster, he needs to grow up to breeding age, breed, and then we must wait to see what his offspring are consistently laying. Between the time needed to wait for genetics to present themselves, good record keepings, and keeping your chickens in the right groups, it was a lesson in patience for me! In fact, I thought about giving this Share the title "A lesson in Patience!" Added to all of that, I do not have endless room or a feed budget to keep as many flocks as I would like, haha! It all takes time and plenty of patience. I honestly love it! Learning, experimenting, and even the fails taught me so much. It is a bummer when certain breedings don't turn out, but that can also result in pleasant surprises!
The best part for me was after all of that careful breeding and crossbreeding, we have a line of chickens that lay lovely sage green eggs with a heavy bloom over them! We named them Soft Sage Layers in April 2023. I waited until April 2024 to post about them on Instagram, and they were a new breed on our website starting with the March 2025 hatch! I have been able to add these lovely layers to my olive egger breeding projects, and am excited to start sharing them with fellow chicken keepers! I will say, I wonder now if we should have named them Heavy Bloomers! Haha! We will stick with Soft Sage Layers....it better suits the elegant and dignified looking birds they are. ;) I brought out my Soft Sage Layer eggs to take pictures on an especially rainy and humid day. You can see the blooms just melt away in the humidity!
I will continue to check, refine, and just enjoy this fun line of "heavy bloomers!" I have added them to our sex-linked olive eggers, Clucky Greenies, and love that they add a fun spackling over their eggs. I am so happy, and still eggcited, with these fun genetics, and feel like I have many mini breeding projects off of them! Haha! That is part of the fun of the whole process, I suppose!
I hope that any of you that are working on breeding projects, big or small, have fun with it! These more detailed projects can definitely be rewarding! Things don't have to get complicated, though. Part of why I enjoy my Woodland OE flock so much is that I can add some fun layers and roos with great genetics into their group...and then see what happens! I will end this share on that note. Thank you for reading, chicken friends!
Happy Hatching!
Krystal