Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

[chiques chicks]

I am expecting very little snow because I got a cord of wood and my husband's meds.

First frozen egg. Had a crack in it when I brought it in. Crack seems to have resealed. Any reason I can't eat it or should I feed it back to them?

it may not keep long, but I wouldn't be afraid to eat it if cooked thoroughly. it may have been exposed to bacteria through the crack. boiled and fed back would be fine as well.

 

[TillyPeeps]

I am expecting very little snow because I got a cord of wood and my husband's meds.

First frozen egg. Had a crack in it when I brought it in. Crack seems to have resealed. Any reason I can't eat it or should I feed it back to them?

I'm expecting spring myself. It should get warmer, not more snow!

Personally, I would feed that egg back to the chickens. You never know what germs went through that crack.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

I am expecting very little snow because I got a cord of wood and my husband's meds.

First frozen egg. Had a crack in it when I brought it in. Crack seems to have resealed. Any reason I can't eat it or should I feed it back to them?

I typically feed any eggs that have frozen and cracked to the dog. Since she's raw feed, it just adds to get meal. Though, I must say, when I feed her a turkey egg, she gets some serious gas! Lol

 

[dheltzel]

If you breed a Rhodebar roo to a RIR hen, will the female chicks still be Rhodebars? If so, these chickens will add new blood to your flock. Of course, the chicks will not be autosexing, so you have to wait a while to tell who is a girl.

How does this year's new generation of black sexlinks look? Are they easy to sex? Are they flighty? Or it's too early to tell?

Rhodebars are genetically not quite a RIR with barring, some other genes had to be bred out. There are people (on the Rhodebar thread) that are trying to improve the show quality of the Rhodebars sold by GFF by crossing them to heritage type RIR, but the autosexing is lost in the first generation and takes substantial effort to get back. Welsummers don't have those genes (wheaten chick down and columbian black restriction, I think), so a Welbar roo over pure Welsummer hens produces pure Welbar hens. The resulting roos are single barred and quite pretty, but will not produce autosexing chicks when crossed to their siblings. Of the F1 pullets are crossed back to their father, they produce autosexing chicks.

I have 1 black sexlink egg in the hatcher now, the fertility on the first eggs was very poor. That may have been the roos fault, and the roos have been changed up some. I've got another group in that I intend to candle tonight or tomorrow and see if the fertility has improved. So, no chicks yet, their first eggs were at the end of December, it's going to take a while to answer those questions. I'm very confident the F1's will not be flighty, the Ameraucana genes seem to be very strong overall. If they are hard to sex at hatch like last year, they will still be easy to sex at a few days of age by the barring in the first feathers.

 

[emorems0]

I've had a few Welsummer/Welbar eggs that might be viewed as pink, if your definition of "pink" is pretty liberal. They seem to have an excess of bloom that gives them a different look that is kind of pinkish, but it's only occasional, not a particular hen that lays them consistently. I'm pretty sure no chicken lays a consistent, repeatable pink. The Croat Langshans have that reputation, but if they do, it's certainly not all the strains, my late uncle, and now my cousin has had top show stock for decades and I've never seen a pink egg. I'm pretty sure they would have told me if that had pink eggs - it would help chicken sales for sure.

The other colors are easy, of course. If a friend asked me to get a flock like this, I would give them:
- Black sexlink that lays blue eggs
- Cream Legbar
- Welbar or Welsummer
- Bielefelder or Olive Egger

The Welsummers and Olive Eggers are a bit "iffy" about sexing as chicks. If they were close by (so I could take back the extras, meaning we could do straight-run), I'd add some blue Copper Marans or blue Ameraucanas to get a blue colored hen, taking back any cockerels and extra pullets.

Gosh, only 4? This would be so much better with 8 or 10 . . .

Coming back to this... yes, only 4 - she lives in Allentown (technically South Whitehall Twp) and that's the limit. A couple of blocks east and she couldn't have any!

I looked at your website and the blue Amerauanas are really nice. Being a frequent conductor of the chicken train, I doubt it would be a problem to return any unwanted boys/extra pullets

What's your favorite super dark brown egg layer? Preferably not an all blue bird if we were to do the blue Ameraucanas.

Green eggs can be all kinds of shades of olive-brown, right? Is there a breed that lays really green ones? Or is that the luck of the draw like the typical easter egger? I know I've seen pictures of truly bright green eggs but I mostly hear talk about blue laying breeds.

 

[emorems0]

I think the 'spearmint' is the bright green that I've seen... anyone make a cross like that? Looks like F1 olive egger and a blue egg layer. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/80079699599945214/

 

[dheltzel]

Coming back to this... yes, only 4 - she lives in Allentown (technically South Whitehall Twp) and that's the limit. A couple of blocks east and she couldn't have any!

I looked at your website and the blue Amerauanas are really nice. Being a frequent conductor of the chicken train, I doubt it would be a problem to return any unwanted boys/extra pullets

What's your favorite super dark brown egg layer? Preferably not an all blue bird if we were to do the blue Ameraucanas.

Green eggs can be all kinds of shades of olive-brown, right? Is there a breed that lays really green ones? Or is that the luck of the draw like the typical easter egger? I know I've seen pictures of truly bright green eggs but I mostly hear talk about blue laying breeds.

I was being funny about the limit of course, but it *is* very hard to pick just 4, am I right?

The Ameraucana hens have been real slackers this winter, no eggs for months. I have a dozen pullets growing out, some of which will be point of lay before too long, so I expect to have blue and black Ams in the spring, but no blue Ams for a while.

My favorite dark egg layers are the Welsummers and Welbars, I think they are superior to Marans in many ways (probably gonna step on some toes with that declaration). Between those 2 it is a tough call, I *think* the Welbars are a bit stronger genetically and seem like better layers, but if there is a difference it is very slight. The Welbars have more genetic diversity for sure, but that could translate into a stronger chance of getting a pullet that lays lighter eggs. Even the light Welsummer/Welbar eggs are pretty, usually closer to the color of hot chocolate or a "dusty terra cotta" color. I get those from time to time. If someone wanted to best chance of a dark brown egg, I'd give the edge to the Welsummer, I just don't have enough experience breeding the Welbars. If you picked the darkest 50% of the eggs from my pens of Welsummer, Welbar and BCM's, I defy anyone to tell them apart. Likewise with the lightest eggs, and the percentage or dark to light seems similar to me, but my sample size is small and erratic (4 BCM hens and 7 Welbars, vs probably 40+ Welsummers over the last 2 years).

The very predictable eggs colors are white and light brown (is that why all commercial layers are those colors?). Once you get out of those colors, including green, the variability can be substantial. I refuse to predict the exact shade any hen will produce. Blue is more consistent than brown, and the variation in blue egg colors, toward turquoise or green, is caused by some amount of brown. Lightening the brown will lighten the green, so an olive-egger crossed to a blue egg layer "should" produce lighter green, but that's far from guaranteed.

I have 2 "crosses" this year for making green eggs:
1) An Olive egger that snuck into my CCL breeding pen x Reese CCL roo -- I think I only have 1 pullet, the most eggs I've gotten in a week is 7 (every one just hatched too!), and last week was 4.
2) Rhodebar pullets x Reese CCL roo -- only 2 pullets in that pen and they have not started laying yet. Rhodebars are my lightest brown egg layer.
I expect both of these to be autosexing. The second cross I did last year, but all were sold and I haven't heard from anyone that got them how they turned out.

Ameraucana and CCL breeders hate the green tint on an egg and it seems to be very hard to breed out the last of the brown and get a really blue egg. OTOH, it's easy to get green anytime you want it, but hard to get an exact shade because of the variability of the brown. If you bred for "mint green" for several generations I think you could get a good shade consistently, Isbars are like that. But if you breed CCL's or Ams for that, your efforts will be snubbed by the breed purists, lots of breeders will declare your birds to be "mutts" if you breed for green eggs. That's why I use hybrids to get green, and also why I have so few pullets dedicated to that color. Now that I said that I bet there a is run on green egg layers this spring, LOL.

 

[dheltzel]

I think the 'spearmint' is the bright green that I've seen... anyone make a cross like that? Looks like F1 olive egger and a blue egg layer. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/80079699599945214/

Incidentally, I don't believe that chart. Genetically, it is far too simplistic in dealing with the brown egg color genes, which are the only ones that matter when it comes to green eggs. I think the "Easter egger" in that chart is going to be some shade of mint green also, not the wide variability implied by the EE designation.

 

[TillyPeeps]

I was being funny about the limit of course, but it *is* very hard to pick just 4, am I right?

The Ameraucana hens have been real slackers this winter, no eggs for months. I have a dozen pullets growing out, some of which will be point of lay before too long, so I expect to have blue and black Ams in the spring, but no blue Ams for a while.

My favorite dark egg layers are the Welsummers and Welbars, I think they are superior to Marans in many ways (probably gonna step on some toes with that declaration). Between those 2 it is a tough call, I *think* the Welbars are a bit stronger genetically and seem like better layers, but if there is a difference it is very slight. The Welbars have more genetic diversity for sure, but that could translate into a stronger chance of getting a pullet that lays lighter eggs. Even the light Welsummer/Welbar eggs are pretty, usually closer to the color of hot chocolate or a "dusty terra cotta" color. I get those from time to time. If someone wanted to best chance of a dark brown egg, I'd give the edge to the Welsummer, I just don't have enough experience breeding the Welbars. If you picked the darkest 50% of the eggs from my pens of Welsummer, Welbar and BCM's, I defy anyone to tell them apart. Likewise with the lightest eggs, and the percentage or dark to light seems similar to me, but my sample size is small and erratic (4 BCM hens and 7 Welbars, vs probably 40+ Welsummers over the last 2 years).

The very predictable eggs colors are white and light brown (is that why all commercial layers are those colors?). Once you get out of those colors, including green, the variability can be substantial. I refuse to predict the exact shade any hen will produce. Blue is more consistent than brown, and the variation in blue egg colors, toward turquoise or green, is caused by some amount of brown. Lightening the brown will lighten the green, so an olive-egger crossed to a blue egg layer "should" produce lighter green, but that's far from guaranteed.

I have 2 "crosses" this year for making green eggs:
1) An Olive egger that snuck into my CCL breeding pen x Reese CCL roo -- I think I only have 1 pullet, the most eggs I've gotten in a week is 7 (every one just hatched too!), and last week was 4.
2) Rhodebar pullets x Reese CCL roo -- only 2 pullets in that pen and they have not started laying yet. Rhodebars are my lightest brown egg layer.
I expect both of these to be autosexing. The second cross I did last year, but all were sold and I haven't heard from anyone that got them how they turned out.

Ameraucana and CCL breeders hate the green tint on an egg and it seems to be very hard to breed out the last of the brown and get a really blue egg. OTOH, it's easy to get green anytime you want it, but hard to get an exact shade because of the variability of the brown. If you bred for "mint green" for several generations I think you could get a good shade consistently, Isbars are like that. But if you breed CCL's or Ams for that, your efforts will be snubbed by the breed purists, lots of breeders will declare your birds to be "mutts" if you breed for green eggs. That's why I use hybrids to get green, and also why I have so few pullets dedicated to that color. Now that I said that I bet there a is run on green egg layers this spring, LOL.

I think rhodebar X legbar will lay beautiful mint green eggs. Too bad they are not laying yet. Now I know which chicks I want next year : welbar and these babies, even though I haven't gotten this year's first set of chicks yet. I think hubby is right about someone needs to stop me, or he'll be building coops every year.

 

[dheltzel]

I think hubby is right about someone needs to stop me, or he'll be building coops every year.

That's a fact. It may already be past the point of reversal.

Maybe you should casually mention you think you could make a business selling eggs and chicks . . .

Let us know how he reacts.