Which color to use?!

BusyBearMama

Songster
5 Years
Apr 25, 2014
712
29
128
New York State
Ok so I have a blue eng. orp. Rooster who is a sweet and nice looking guy who's getting his breeding pen, he's going over a splash of his breed and I was thinking of hatching out some of their eggs for pullets for us & any cockerels have homes lining up, there aren't lots of these big guys around here so they're easy to get good homes... for my egg laying pen I want more big pullets though and I'm gonna put him over some blue layers so I can easily distinguish between the eggs in the incubator, makes it easier. I'm trying to decide 4 things,
1. What shade of egg would yeild the best ee eggs From what I imagine will be interesting hens. Best color being not a weird color, basically just thoughts, i have all shades of blue and some are really nice! He came out of a tan egg! Thoughts or photos appreciated. I know that's not getting dark green.
2. What color ee, with my blue roo, will yeild the best color... I don't want black birds, I have lots of nice light and light with red modeling ees that I thought would be fun to put with him. But I am hoping for some variety.
3. Minimum amount of birds I should put with him?
4. What would you say is the chance the ee's will have dominant comb type with him? Because I have a darling 'ee' that came from a farm that's huge, lays peach colored eggs and has a straight comb that hangs on her head.. I won't be breeding her because we aren't looking to have tons of huge combs honestly it's cold here and my roo lost points on his comb and it still looks frost bitten :-/ not good... I think he will be the only rooster of his breed we keep but the others didn't fair amazingly this winter either. Too weird weather. Anyway I would love to know if anyone's mixed those breeds or comb types and how that turned out!
 
I only have a small sample to mention. For fun last year I hatched out 7 Faverolles x EE chicks. The 6 cockerels all had pea combs. The lone pullet has a straight comb and lays brown eggs.
 
For egg shade, you'd want to use blue egger hens. Doesn't really matter what shade, as long as they're blue. Blue x brown = green. You'll get various shades of green. If you put a green egger hen in with a brown egger rooster, you'll get about half brown egger pullet offspring.

As to color, I'm going on the assumption he's blue as in black/blue/splash, not self blue. If that's the case, his blue will dilute any black on the hens to blue 50% of the time. So, unless you have a lot of black hens, you won't get black chicks. With multi colored hens, you'll get multi colored chicks. They may have some black markings, but not solid black.

Amount of hens with him....there's no solid answer to that. Best range is probably between 5 and 12. Depends on your space, how attentive he is to the hens, how brittle their feathers are, things like that.

Pea combs are usually dominant. So, if your EE hens have pea combs, you'll likely get a pea or funky mixed comb. I have a pic of a bird where one parent was straight combed a big combed brown Leghorn, and the other parent was pea combed.....

 
Awesome responses so far! thanks! Yes he's B/B/S blue and that's good to know! I might get them together tonight or tomorrow morning maybe. It'll be cool to see what we get!
 

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