Having fun with egg color genetics!

[Zombre23]

Hello everyone!

I never knew how deep into genetics you can dive when you start breeding and cross breeding to get fun variances! We have a mix of egg colors coming up in our flock and I’m looking for some help in better understanding the possible outcomes, and corrections on any wrong assumptions I might have! Sorry in advance for drawn out rambles - I’m not the best at summarizing!

We have 3 silver laced Wyandottes, 2 black austrolorps, 2 Easter Eggers all currently laying. We have a group of 15 week old pullets and cockerels as well. Our current EE hens might go as they’re proving to not be good chickens, they get down and dirty if you try to catch them (my hub and I both have scars from them) they keep hopping fences and dodging us, last step is wing clipping sometime this week and if that doesn’t work we will sell them or they become soup birds. They have never squatted either unlike their 5 sisters which worries me for a future roo introduction. We don’t like those personalities to be bred either.

List of upcoming hens and roosters:

3 Bountiful Blue (blue egger) pullets 1 Bountiful Blue cockerel. I think they’re arucauna crosses, they’re white with those cute little cheeks and beards. The hens each have different leg colors, one has pinkish/pale, one has black, one has yellow. The cockerel has the pinkish whitish pale legs.

2 F1 Olive Egger pullets (one looks to be a legbar cross she has the slick head feathers) and once I think is a splash Maran cross and 1 F1 Olive egger cockerel that looks identical to the slick back pullet.

2 Blue Copper Maran pullets, 1 surprise Black Copper Maran pullet (bought her as a blue but she’s stark black now with green on her feathers) and 1 blue copper Maran cockerel. These guys lay the dark chocolate brown eggs.

3 Golden Buff (isa brown, cinnamon queen, etc) pullets and decided to keep 1 cockerel from the bunch we grabbed just as cheap broilers. They’re primarily here to keep our egg numbers up bc we like pretty eggs The one cockerel was kept because he is very sweet and cuddly and a gentleman, so we felt he might be a good flock guardian. Lucky man got the golden ticket. His name is Freckles now because he has cute brown flecks on his back.

We’re going to be getting a Rhode Island Red rooster some point in the future to make our own sexlink reds on our SLW hens. Keeping/selling the pullets and the cockerels will supplement our freezer.

Here’s where I kind of understand but equally lose my understanding of color crossings for eggs. I know if we cross our BCM with a bountiful blue we will get olive. But what happens if we cross the olives

If we cross OE roo x bountiful blue hen do we get Easter eggers? Also if we cross the OE hens with the blue roo does she also create Easter eggers?

If we cross OE roo on our Marans hens - will they produce F2 olive eggers still or will it be a mystery on if green or brown eggs are laid? What about our Marans roo on our OE hen?

What happens if we cross our F1 OE roo onto our F1 OE hen? Is it just kind of a toss up what we get?

What happens if we cross a light brown laying gene rooster (or hen) onto a blue laying hen (or blue gene rooster)?

We’re trying to create our own rainbow of an Easter basket if you can’t tell we felt it’s cheaper and much more exciting to breed our own flock (and we intend on supplementing our freezer with the ones we don’t keep.)

Can someone please explain this to me if I’m incorrect or not informed enough? I have tried to google it but I’m not finding direct answers other than how to MAKE an olive egger which I know we can do with our Marans mixed with our bountiful blues.

Thanks everyone in advance and sorry if I ramble and don’t make sense

 

[NatJ]

Can someone please explain this to me if I’m incorrect or not informed enough? I have tried to google it but I’m not finding direct answers other than how to MAKE an olive egger which I know we can do with our Marans mixed with our bountiful blues.

Egg color genes:

The blue egg gene is needed for any blue or green or olive (dark green) eggs. It is a dominant gene. If a hen has either one or two copies of that gene, she can lay blue/green eggs. If a hen has two copies of the blue egg gene, she will give one to each of her chicks, and all her daughters will lay blue/green eggs, no matter what genes they get from their father. But if a hen has only one copy of the blue egg gene, she will give it to half her chicks, and the other half will get the not-blue egg gene. Those chicks will not lay blue/green eggs unless they inherit the blue egg gene from their father.

Completely separate from that, an egg can have a brown coating on the outside of the shell. A white egg has no brown coating, a cream egg has a small amount, normal brown eggs have more, and Marans have a very large amount of brown on the outside. For hens with the blue egg gene, the amount of brown makes the difference between blue (no brown coating) and green (brown coating), with olive having the most brown on the outside.

For the brown coating, there are many genes that affect it, with each gene making a small change in how much brown is there. In practice, you can usually figure that crossing two breeds will give chickens that lay eggs with an amount of brown in between what the parent breeds had. (That probably means a bunch of incompletely dominant genes, where two copies of a gene have a bigger effect than one copy of the gene.)

I know if we cross our BCM with a bountiful blue we will get olive. But what happens if we cross the olives

Assuming that the bountiful blues are pure for the blue egg gene:
From that cross, each chick should get one blue egg gene (from the bountiful blue) and one not-blue egg gene from the B.C. Marans.
Each chick should get some genes for dark brown eggs (from BCM) and some genes for not-brown eggs (Bountiful Blue). That means the eggs should have a medium amount of brown (which is enough to make them look olive colored.)
Those are the F1 Olive Egger chicks.

When you breed two F1 Olive Eggers together, you can consider the blue egg gene and the brown ones separately.
For the blue egg gene:
--Some chicks inherit the blue egg gene from each parent. They will lay blue/green eggs, and will in turn pass the blue egg gene to each of their chicks. (They are like the Bountiful Blues as regards blue egg breeding)
--Some chicks inherit the blue egg gene from one parent and the not-blue egg gene from the other parent. They will lay blue/green eggs, and can pass either blue egg or not-blue egg to their own chicks. (They are like the F1 Olive Eggers as regards blue egg breeding.)
--Some chicks inherit the not-blue egg gene from each parent. They will lay brown eggs, and will pass the not-blue egg gene to their chicks. (They are like the Marans as regards blue egg breeding.)

So for just the blue egg gene, you get about 1/4 pure blue eggers, 1/2 blue eggers that carry the not-blue egg gene, and 1/4 brown eggers.

But then you have the brown to consider. The brown isn't going to sort neatly into groups like the blue/not-blue gene, so you will probably see a wide range of browns. If you hatch large numbers of chicks, you will probably get a few that lay eggs as dark as pure Marans, a few that lay white or almost-white eggs, and a large number that lay various shades in between, ranging from light to medium to dark in many slight variations.

When you combine the blue egg gene and the brown genes, the 1/4 with no blue egg gene will lay eggs ranging from white to dark brown and everything in between. The 3/4 of chicks with the blue egg gene (one copy or two) will lay eggs that range from blue (no brown) through many shades of green to olive, probably including a few that are darker than the F1 Olive Eggers.

If we cross OE roo x bountiful blue hen do we get Easter eggers? Also if we cross the OE hens with the blue roo does she also create Easter eggers?

Most of your possible chicks, from most of these crosses, could be considered Easter Eggers. Even Olive Eggers could be considered a type of Easter Egger. That's because Easter Egger is a catch-all term for chickens that lay blue or green eggs without belonging to any specific pure breed. (It's like calling chickens "brown eggers"-- all it means is that they lay some shade of brown egg.)

For the Olive Egger rooster, if he is like the F1 Olive eggers above, he will have one blue egg gene and one not-blue gene, and he will have a mix of genes for the amount of brown coating on the shell.

Crossing him to a bountiful blue hen should give only chicks that lay blue/green eggs (they get one copy of the blue egg gene from their mother, and they can get blue or not-blue from the Olive Egger father.) They could have any amount of brown coating on the outside of the egg, so shades will range from blue through green to some olive, but even the darkest will probably not be as dark as the F1 Olive Eggers, because of mixing with the not-brown genes from the bountiful blue.
Yes, I would call these chicks Easter Eggers.

Crossing F1 Olive Egger hens with the Bountiful Blue rooster should give almost the same results as doing the cross the other direction. There is one gene that is in some white-egg layers that is sex-linked (passes from a hen from her father but not from her mother.) If the Bountiful Blue rooster has this gene, his daughters will have less brown on their eggshells, as compared with daughters from the previous cross (same breeds other direction.) If that sex-linked gene is not present in the Bountiful Blues, then you will get the same results no matter which direction you do the cross.

If we cross OE roo on our Marans hens - will they produce F2 olive eggers still or will it be a mystery on if green or brown eggs are laid? What about our Marans roo on our OE hen?

Both directions should give the same results.

Crossing F1 Olive Egger with the Blue Copper Marans will give some blue/green layers and some brown layers (they all inherit the not-blue egg gene from the BCM, and the F1 OE can give them either the blue egg gene or the not-blue egg gene.) Among the brown layers, the color will probably range from medium brown to quite dark (lots of brown genes from the Maran, mixed with variable amounts from the OE). That amount of brown, on blue/green eggs, will probably cause colors ranging from a medium green through to very dark olive.
For the green-to-olive layers, I would call them Easter Eggers, with the darker ones also being considered Olive Eggers.
For the brown layers, I would call them "barnyard mix" or some such term, or just "brown eggers."

What happens if we cross our F1 OE roo onto our F1 OE hen? Is it just kind of a toss up what we get?

Crossing the F1 Olive Eggers you bought will probably give about the same results as crossing the F1 Olive Eggers you can breed yourself (which I answered a few paragraphs ago. Just scroll up if you want to read it again.)

What happens if we cross a light brown laying gene rooster (or hen) onto a blue laying hen (or blue gene rooster)?

Crossing a chicken that has the genes for light brown eggs with one that has the genes for blue eggs will not give any very dark eggs (dark brown or olive), but will otherwise follow the same basic patterns as some of the other crosses.

For blue egg genes:
--either the blue egger had two blue egg genes, so all chicks inherit one, which means all daughters lay blue/green eggs.
--or the blue egger had one blue egg gene, so all chicks have a chance of inheriting blue egg or not-blue egg. This gives about a 50/50 split of daughters that lay brown eggs and daughters that lay blue/green eggs.

For the brown egg genes, all chicks will have some but not a lot (no Marans-dark eggs). Eggs should mostly be light brown or light/medium green, with some eggs possibly being a very light brown/cream or clear blue shade.

We’re trying to create our own rainbow of an Easter basket if you can’t tell we felt it’s cheaper and much more exciting to breed our own flock (and we intend on supplementing our freezer with the ones we don’t keep.)

That sounds like a fun project!

Since you only asked about egg color, I didn't try to get into feather color, crest, comb type, and other such traits. They are also going to be inherited in various ways, so you will probably have quite a variety of appearances in your flock as time goes on (even more than you already have!)

 

[Australorpfamily]

Not sure if this will help but I tend to be a visual person lol although I going to try to read it though
https://silverhomestead.com/genetics/