Coloring quail eggs?

[Susan Skylark]

I know quail eggs are already pretty, but with Easter around the bend i thought it might be fun to hard boil some eggs to take to an Easter brunch potluck (I won’t be peeling them, it took 2 hours when I did deviled eggs!). Can I color them too or does the dark shell make it moot? Thanks!

 

[NatJ]

I know quail eggs are already pretty, but with Easter around the bend i thought it might be fun to hard boil some eggs to take to an Easter brunch potluck (I won’t be peeling them, it took 2 hours when I did deviled eggs!). Can I color them too or does the dark shell make it moot? Thanks!

My experience is with chicken eggs, not quail ones, but might still be relevant.

It is possible to dye light brown chicken eggs. The colors come out a bit muted compared with using the same dyes one white eggs. As you might expect, the longer the egg stays in the dye, the darker the color gets. Some colors of dye work better than others. Yellow is pretty useless, but I think most other colors worked okay (blue, green, red, purple, maybe orange). I've seen a light pink in Easter Egger dye kits lately, and would expect that one to be as useless as yellow.

If the eggs have darker spots on a lighter brown base color, the dark spots will probably not show much dye. So you would probably have dark brown spots on eggs of various muted colors.

Of course the way to know for sure is to try it. If you do, I'd love to see pictures!

 

[Susan Skylark]

I’m really tempted to die the celadon eggs a robins egg blue.

 

[NatJ]

I’m really tempted to die the celadon eggs a robins egg blue.

That would be lovely!

I expect that would work well, turning light blue eggs into eggs of a darker shade of blue.

 

[Nabiki]

Don't use vinegar based dyes. They wash the spots off and make the shells rubbery. I just put food colouring into water to get these.

 

[tlcmurphy]

Don't use vinegar based dyes. They wash the spots off and make the shells rubbery. I just put food colouring into water to get these.
View attachment 4090282

Beautiful!

 

[NatJ]

Don't use vinegar based dyes. They wash the spots off and make the shells rubbery.

Do you mean not to use the common Easter Egg dyes meant for chicken eggs? Those use a bit of vinegar and a bunch of water.

Or are you talking about dyes that would have a higher amount of vinegar?

I just put food colouring into water to get these.
View attachment 4090282

Those are beautiful!