How can I "make" an olive egger?

[talkinboutchickens]

Hi I was just curious about how I could get olive eggs, I heard that you can cross a brown layer with a blue layer and you get an olive egger, but last year my sapphire gem roo bred with my easter egger hen and their daughter just lays easter egger light blue eggs, not olive eggs. Does anyone know why this happened? Was it because my rooster wasn't a pure breed?
And how I could get darker olive eggs instead of light ones? Does anyone have any favorite breeds to combine in order to get an olive egger?
I'll list my breeds here and the gender and if you could let me know what ones I could cross to get olive eggs that would be great!

Thank you in advance!

 

[BGMatt]

I mean, that is how you do it. Perhaps whatever a sapphire gem is it isn’t homozygous for blue egg gene, so it didn’t pass it on to all offspring?

Blue egg layer to a brown egg layer. That simple. You want darker olive, use darker brown egg layer like Marans.

 

[Rose Quartz]

Thank you! Is there a difference if I cross a male maran over a female easter egger vs. a female maran and a male easter egger?

Yes, there is limited research into it, but roosters genes are slightly stronger over hens.

 

[Frizzle and Friends]

Thank you! Is there a difference if I cross a male maran over a female easter egger vs. a female maran and a male easter egger?

As @Rose Quartz mentioned, and from what I've read as well, some of the genes that add the brown shell pigment are sex-linked. That means that if you have a rooster with the dark dark brown egg genes, then he will pass them to both his sons and daughters, resulting in pullets that lay darker eggs. If the hen is the dark brown layer, then she will only pass the sex-linked genes to her sons, so the pullets will not lay as dark of eggs. Because of this, the best results typically come from a male Marans over a female Easter Egger.

Now how many of the genes are sex-linked or if there is a noticeable difference, I couldn't tell you. If all you were able to get was female Marans and male Easter Eggers, then I would say still go for it. I've read somewhere that there are an estimated 13 genes that effect brown shell pigment and only a few are sex-linked, so you're still going to get olive eggers that way. The resulting hens are only going to be lacking a few brown egg genes.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

Any pics of the Easter egger eggs? Or of the offspring?

Yes, but not of the egg. The egg that the chick hatched out of was this color (ps not my pic) and now the baby herself lays that color.

Here is their baby, Little Debbie. She absolutely sucks as she is skittish and gives me the evil eye all the time.

This isn't the most recent pic, she has grown quite a bit since the pic was taken in October. I find it weird how she doesn't have fluffy cheeks.

 

[Frizzle and Friends]

Oh I see! But instead of doing easter eggers could I cross him with another blue layer such as a cream legbar? I just want to know what two breeds that they are made up of just in case I want to sell some and want to be able to tell people what mixes they are of.

Yup, any blue egg layer will do. The only thing to keep in mind is the blue egg laying gene is dominant, so you stand a chance of a hen that lays blue eggs producing offspring that lay eggs that are white based.

Legbars should be pure for the blue egg gene, same with true Ameraucanas. The thing with Easter Eggers is that they may not be pure for the blue egg gene, and a blue egg laying hen could produce offspring that lay brown or white eggs.

 

[Poultrybonkers]

For true olive its a true blue egg gene over a dark brown layer...a light brown layer is an easter egger

 

[NatJ]

I mean, that is how you do it. Perhaps whatever a sapphire gem is it isn’t homozygous for blue egg gene, so it didn’t pass it on to all offspring?

Sapphire Gems lay brown eggs. They are homozygous for the not-blue egg gene. The "Sapphire" in their name is because they have blue feathers, not anything to do with egg color.
https://hoovershatchery.com/sapphiregem.html

Since the pullet does lay blue or light green eggs, she did inherit the blue egg gene from her Easter Egger mother. She just didn't get enough brown egg genes to lay dark green eggs ("olive").

Blue egg layer to a brown egg layer. That simple. You want darker olive, use darker brown egg layer like Marans.

That would be my advice too: use a rooster with the genes for darker brown eggs.

 

[NatJ]

Oh so I should probably use a pure breed then? That makes sense about the brown gene not inherited. I'm really bad about all the genes stuff lol.

A purebred is more likely to produce daughters with consistent genes for the amount of brown on the eggs. A hybrid is more likely to produce variable offspring. So if you hatch more daughters from the current rooster and hen, you might find that some daughters lay darker green eggs than others. I would not expect any to be very dark green, but some will probably be darker than what the first pullet lays.

What you really need is a rooster with the genes for dark brown eggs, regardless of whether he is purebred or not. For example, "Midnight Majesty Marans" are a hybrid that produces dark brown eggs. A rooster of that hybrid would probably work for breeding Olive Eggers, because it is a mix of two different colors of Marans (so there are genes for dark brown eggs on both sides of the cross.)

Is there any way to know if the hen has 2 blue shell genes?

You can breed her to a rooster with no blue egg genes, raise a bunch of daughters, and see if they all lay eggs with blue in them (blue, green, or olive). If any daughter lays eggs with no blue, then the mother has a not-blue egg gene. If every pullet lays eggs with blue, and you have more than about 8 of them, you can be pretty sure the hen does have two blue egg shell genes.

Or you can get a DNA test:
https://iqbirdtesting.com/blueegg
The DNA test is probably cheaper than raising a bunch of daughters to laying age just so you can tell how many blue egg genes their mother has. But if you wanted to raise the pullets anyway, there would be no point in also paying for a DNA test, because the pullets would eventually give you the answer.

 

[NatJ]

BCM x Ameracaua or cream leg are or any (purebred or homozygous for blue egg laying gene) blue egg laying breed.

If you want all the daughters to lay olive or green, yes that works well.

Chickens that are heterozygous for the blue egg gene can also be used, if you are willing to accept that half of their daughters will lay brown eggs and only half lay olive or green. (Handy to know if you don't have access to homozygotes, or don't have an easy way to identify them.)