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Olive Egger

Olive Egger chickens are produced from a crossing of breeds. Like Easter Eggers, crossing a blue...
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General Information

Breed Purpose
Egg Layer
Comb
Pea
Broodiness
Average
Climate Tolerance
All Climates
Egg Productivity
Medium
Egg Size
Medium
Egg Color
Olive to khaki
Breed Temperament
Varies
Breed Colors/Varieties
Varies
Breed Size
Large Fowl
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Olive Egger chickens are produced from a crossing of breeds. Like Easter Eggers, crossing a blue egg layer or chicken carrying a blue egg gene (i.e., Ameraucana, Araucana) to a dark brown layer/gene carrier (i.e., Marans, Welsummer), you will get a layer of olive colored eggs.

Breeding results can vary depending on what types of breeds are used and if they are pure. Olive Egger chickens will vary greatly in appearance, body type, etc., and are not an official breed with a set of standards. However, they are becoming quite popular with breeders and backyard enthusiasts as a way to diversify egg colors in your egg basket.

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(Green) Olive Egger eggs

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Olive Egger chick

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Olive Egger hen

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Young Olive Egger Rooster

There is a thread here on BYC dedicated to Olive Eggers: http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/131131/the-olive-egger-thread/3540#post_8233099
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Latest reviews

F
Olive Eggers can have various breed parentage!
Pros: Lovely olive eggs in the basket and typically high productivity. My girl is very heat tolerant in my mild winter/searing hot summer Zone 9B climate. She is also one of my very quietest.
Cons: Unknown breed parents for their cross. Any Chocolate or Light Brown Egger with any Blue Egger will do! So feathering, temperament and climate durability are highly varied also.
:hmm Hard to tell what you'll get with a cross-bred chicken like the Olive Eggers unless you know the specific parents or even parentage breeds! My "Livvie" appears to be Crested Cream Legbar (blue) crossed with a Plymouth Barred Rock (brown)??? She's just turning two, a teensy bit flighty and decided to go broody! I might try to use her to raise me a rooster for them, plus 2 more girls to my current healthy mixed Heritage & Cross 8???
ChickenMath!
Purchase Price
~$5???
Purchase Date
Spring 2022
talkinboutchickens
such gentleman rooster
Pros: very sweet
Cons: can be mean
I only have one olive egger, his name is Benny and I got him from a local breeder. Let me just say- the SWEETEST boy to his hens. He will literally make nests for them, cuddles with them, and he even stuffs his face in their backs when they are cuddling 🥺
Whenever anyone comes to my house they always comment on how beautiful he is.

I can't say that they are all nice though.....
I once had a really mean olive egger named Dumpling, he would attack me all the time and chase me around the yard. I have tried 2 times to get an olive egger hen and have not got one yet 😠 Only have got roos.
I just really want those olive eggs.

Benny😇
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Purchase Price
Around $12 or more from a local breeder
Purchase Date
2021
Muscoweewee
Pros: Beautiful sky blue eggs, beautiful unique chicken, big personality, MUFFFFSSSS, BEEEAAARDDDSSS
Cons: Bad egg patterns, has big voice box, enjoys sound of ones own voice, not very hygenic (gets food stuck in muffs and beard)
My olive egger is an Ameruacana mix. She's a pretty crap layer (she gave up laying after two sky blue eggs and now hogs the laying boxes to lay her phantom eggs), and she came home with a bumble foot. She also enjoys screaming her heart out for no apparent reason. Mine is a little on the dumb side, with some difficulty eating (you have to hand feed them, and when they're full, they'll just look at you).

Negatives aside, olive eggers have big personalities and beautiful eggs (when they choose to lay them). They are friendly inquisitive bird (a little too heavy to fly as much as the average leghorn), and enjoy massages and sitting in your lap (a little too much as tehy sometimes fall asleep - once she's on, she'll never leave!). They are also relatively beautiful, and once you've looked into their derpy eyes, you know you're not going to let this chicken go. Seriously, who doesn't want a bearded, muffed wonder!
I would recommend this chicken for kids (please DON'T use this beautiful inquisitive breed for meat)!!!!!!

everything is worth it for the muffs
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Comments

Chook Kingdom
My Olive Egg runs in the coop herself. Sometimes it helps to put her in the coop at night a couple times. My chicks stay out until 10:30 p.m. before realizing it's bed!
 
Soot the silkie
I left them in the coop for a week, but it didn't work. It's mostly because they are afraid of my BR's I think.
 
N F C
Olive eggers are on my wish list so this was interesting to me to hear about your breeding and the different shades of green eggs. Thanks for writing a review!
 
dekel18042
You're welcome. So many different shades of olive to try for. hmmmm, if I breed an OE hen to a white egg laying rooster will that give me paler eggs? So many questions to answer and chicken math kicks in.
 
IslaBean
My girl Misty looks exactly like the black and silver chicken in the first picture. However, her comb is slightly larger. She lays brown eggs that are slightly darker than the rest. Is she an olive egger? :wee
 
BreezyBre
IslaBean said:
My girl Misty looks exactly like the black and silver chicken in the first picture. However, her comb is slightly larger. She lays brown eggs that are slightly darker than the rest. Is she an olive egger? :wee
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Chicken in the picture looks like my blue Wyandotte ...but then again. I guess they say the breed varies ,my Olive eggers never looked like that they were black with tinted green feathers ,some light copper around the neck and laid Hunter green colored eggs .So I would say if yours is laying brown def not an oe
 
samzoost
Interesting. I'd say my Sapphire Gem looks exactly like that first grey and black olive egger....could my sapphire gem lay green eggs?
 
Col1948
I've got one of these, don't know about Olive eggs, I would be thankful for any colour from her.
 
F
BreezyBre said:
Chicken in the picture looks like my blue Wyandotte ...but then again. I guess they say the breed varies ,my Olive eggers never looked like that they were black with tinted green feathers ,some light copper around the neck and laid Hunter green colored eggs .So I would say if yours is laying brown def not an oe
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From what I've read, Olive Eggers are technically HYBRIDS with diverse parentage rather than any kind of dependable pure breed. So egg color, temperament, feather color, beards/muffs etcetera are all going vary widely!

There's an Olive Egger egg color image that is almost all shades of green, but does include a brown and even a white egg. The blue/brown egg-laying parentage is what gets chicks labelled as Olive Eggers, not the actual color they end up laying!
 
F
Illia said:
Olive Eggers actually aren't a breed
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So you do understand that the parentage of F1 Olive Eggers ONLY require a Blue Egger and Brown (Chocolate or Light) to breed! Any temperament, productivity, feathering, SIZE or climate durability can happen depending on the parents' genes, known and unknown! Olive eggs are even not 100% guaranteed. Everything depends on which genetics it gets. And Punnet Squares (British geneticist Punnett who also developed the amazing sex-linked Crested Cream Legbars!) mean that all genetic outcomes occur in a predictable ratio. So no single offspring can be known at hatch, only likely proportions decreasing to apparent randomness as we look at smaller and smaller numbers down to just one.
 
F
Mitsos Lamprogiorgos said:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/reviews/easter-egger.12146/

They are just a mutt variety of the easter eggers.
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If specifically bred with a Chocolate Egger and a homozygous OO dominant Blue Egger, you will be 100% guaranteed an Oo olive-laying/carrier Olive Egger F1 (first generation) hybrid. You can breed F1's back to Chocolate for 50/50 olive OR chocolate, but the F2 'olive' 50% possibility can be much darker with Chocolate for the others. F1 to another F1 Olive Egger and then a wider color pallet of options, like with Easter Eggers, appears, even to include tan & white. Or, breeding back to a OO blue egger can give a bluer/tealer? green, but no browns. I'm planning to use my barred & cuckoo girls (only one is purebred CCL/others F1 Olive Egger/cuckoo feathering, and Cuckoo Marans and 2 Light Brahmas) to add a sex-link with my just matured Heritage French BCM roo.

Careful planning & purebred parentage takes out much of the "mutt-ness".
 
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Item information

Category
Chicken Breeds
Added by
livin-green
Views
106,185
Watchers
14
Comments
40
Reviews
11
Last update
Rating
4.36 star(s) 14 ratings

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