Dragon Eggs

Dragon Eggs ready for incubation.

Six eggs, six colors, one set of grandkids who are deep in their Rescue Riders era.

Tonight Morgan walked up holding these stunnin' eggs. Pale green, two creams, one deep chocolate-brown, one milk-chocolate, and a speckled rust-red one in the middle that looks like it was hand-painted by someone. "Dragon eggs," she says, and grins, because the kids are losing their minds over Rescue Riders lately and every green/red/blue egg in the coop has been promoted to dragon status this month.

She cups all six in one hand for the photo. They're warm.

These six are going into the incubator tonight. Twenty-one days from now — if the math and the humidity and the eggs themselves cooperate — we'll have new (magical) chicks. Im guessing the kids will name them names from the show. There could be a Cutter and a Burple and probably two Winger Maroons because Rosie does not negotiate.

The funny part is the eggs themselves are doing the dragon work without anyone's help. Every one of those colors is real — laid that way, straight out of the hen. No dye, no filter, no nothing. The blue-green one came from one bird. The dark rust-speckled one came from another. The cream ones, another. A mixed flock laying a mixed basket is the most low-effort magic on this farm.

If they hatch, they hatch. If a couple don't, we'll talk about why. The kids are old enough now to learn that part too.

— While we're here —

The color of an eggshell is genetics, not diet. Brown layers (think Marans, Welsummers, Rhode Islands) deposit a pigment called protoporphyrin on the outside of a white shell — that's why the inside of a brown egg is still white if you crack one open. The dark rust-speckled "dragon egg" in the middle is almost certainly a Marans cross. The blue-green came from a hen carrying the oocyanin gene (Easter Eggers, Ameraucanas, Cream Legbars) — that color goes all the way through the shell, inside and out. Cream and tan are the in-betweens.

Mix your flock, mix your basket. Chicks pop in three weeks!

— Nana