The Olive-Egger thread!

[the simple life]

Okay so I have some olive eggers and they are laying some really beautiful deep olive green eggs.
Recently I hatched some chicks from my olive egger hens and my black copper marans rooster.
Has anyone crossed their olive eggers back to a brown egg layer?
I am curious to see if I get a deeper olive egg color or if it goes back to brown or what shade of brown.
I guess I will find out this coming spring but I am wondering if anyone else has had this experience.
I am also on occasion getting eggs from my one of my olive eggers that are sort of a golden color.
I don't know which one or why it happens but its really pretty.

 

[GraceAK]

Next time you get a golden egg, post a picture, please! I'm really curious about how it looks

 

[smoothmule]

I want to see too,

 

[the simple life]

I sure will, I wish I had thought to take pictures before. I regretted not doing it.
I don't know why I get one every so often or which one is laying it.
My olive eggers lay extremely well, better than all of my other layers.
I can count on eggs every day from them even in this bitter cold weather. I just hatched a bunch more for this spring.
I use to only have a couple of colored eggs in each dozen that I sell but now I have enough colored egg layers that I can make up an entire dozen of colored eggs, between the dark brown marans, olives, blues, greens, whites and creams.
Aren't these colored layers fun? They all look so different too, some are very interesting.
I just crossed some easter eggers with my blue cochin too, I can't wait to see what they end up looking like.

 

[BeardedLadyFarm]

Quote:
The more you cross back to Marans, theoretically the darker the eggs will get. You would expect about half of the hatch to carry the blue egg gene, yielding the olive eggs. Assuming your olive eggers are pea-combed, select the pea combed chicks for your next generation.

The straight combed chicks probably won't lay olive eggs (but on rare occasions can), but should lay a dark enough egg to be worth keeping, as they are 3/4 Marans, genetically speaking. The more you cross back to the Marans, and keep the pea combed chicks, the more Marans blood will be in each chick and theoretically, the darker the egg.

I've been getting a golden brown egg from my Cuckoo Marans who was laying about a 7 on the darkness scale. I think the cold turn off her dark shellack or something. I hope it will come back with warmer weather. It's definitely more golden than my other brown egg layers.

 

[the simple life]

Thanks for the advice, the hens that I have been hatching from all have the pea combs so that is good to hear.
So you are getting a gold color from your marans? I have been getting them from the olive eggers, interesting.
I got a couple of good looking dark eggs today from my copper marans after getting a couple of lighter ones so either I have some pullets that went into lay or the older ones are going into their new cycle since they just finished a moult. It really could be either.
Your cuckoo may just be at the end of her natural laying cycle and the color will be better when she starts laying again.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Dang, I feel like I'm back in school, and learning chinese. I know nothing about chicken genetics.

This thread is fascinating. I'm going to give it a try as soon as my welsummer cockeral starts mating my girls. (he's only 10 weeks old right now) I have an EE that lays a green egg. He's breeder stock and she's hatchery stock, does that make a difference? He hatched from a nice dark egg.

So if I understand this correctly......After I initially cross the EE with my welsummer, I will take any female offspring that has a pea comb laying olive eggs and cross it back to the welsummer rooster, then the olive eggs will get darker (with the female offspring of course), correct?

 

[BeardedLadyFarm]

Quote:
If you have a nice dark Welsummer, the pea combed pullets from the crossing will likely give you a nice olive egg in the first generation.

If it's not dark enough for you, it's always possible to cross back to the father.

As long as she lays a green egg (meaning she has at least 1 blue egg gene) she will make some olive eggers. The advantage to using an Ameraucana for this initial cross is that they are more likely to carry 2 blue genes, (thus giving one copy to each of their offspring) making them all be Olive Eggers. The EE may only have 1 copy of the gene, and may only give it to half of her offspring.

The advantage of the EE is that they have mixed up genetics in the first place, so you could get quite a variety of egg colors from sisters of the same cross.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Thanks so much for the info.

So I'll get some olive eggers and some variation of color between green and brown. Cool, this sounds fun.

I plan on adding true Ameraucana's at some point, but this will give me something to play with in the meantime. (husband has to build another coop)

 

[flower]

I have four red star girls whose eggs are fairly dark , some blue and two large green eggs in the incubator. When I get a nice roo form the hatch I plan on trying him out with the red star girls to see what happens. Maybe I need some Welsummers also ?