Blue Egg Layers from University of Arkansas

[HallFamilyFarm]

Those are some funky lookin' chickens!! Very cool!

You should see the rest of the photos I loaded from Dr. Bramwell. With his permission!

OHHHHHHHHH I think they are cool looking love the white lobes. and color.... they seem a bit on the light side, did he give any infor on size weights, eggs per year? ect........ Kim

He said about the size of a commercial Leghorn. Not certain on the eggs per year. Guess we will find out.

I am not much for hybrids or mixed up breeds, but I like the sound of these and the color is great!

 

[Illia]

I'd love to see them next to some white eggs for comparison. They look quite nice and bright though.

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

I'd love to see them next to some white eggs for comparison. They look quite nice and bright though.

We should have some more white store eggs in a few days, i will try to place some in the incubator just for a photo.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Me being the sumatra lover I am, I have to point out a correction. He said they were like a sumatra but don't have the black skin. Sumatras have yellow skin but are supposed to have a mulberry/black face.

The blue birds are interesting because they are solid blue without much lacing. To me they look like an andalusian x araucana, not too sumatra looking to me. I would like to see pics of the leghorn like birds too. I am getting some cream legbars and plan to work on a some side projects like getting a blue egg laying long tail and some others. The cream legbars are already like a blue egg laying leghorn but with a tassel added. The peacomb on a light brown leghorn is what interests me

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

Me being the sumatra lover I am, I have to point out a correction. He said they were like a sumatra but don't have the black skin. Sumatras have yellow skin but are supposed to have a mulberry/black face.

The blue birds are interesting because they are solid blue without much lacing. To me they look like an andalusian x araucana, not too sumatra looking to me. I would like to see pics of the leghorn like birds too. I am getting some cream legbars and plan to work on a some side projects like getting a blue egg laying long tail and some others. The cream legbars are already like a blue egg laying leghorn but with a tassel added. The peacomb on a light brown leghorn is what interests me

I think he may have been referring to the mulberry/black face skin.

He also has some Black Sumatras in his exhibition breeding house. We have over 50 eggs set from these. He gathered some of the best quality stock, acquired hatching eggs and started his various breeding pens. No live birds are permitted to enter the UA Farm so he has to bring in hatching eggs from clean flocks. He does not ship eggs so folks wanting any of his eggs for 4H/FFA projects must drive to Fayettville, Arkansas to pick them up. The 300 eggs we have set were worth the trip!

 

[stoneunhenged]

Commercial blue egg layers will not happen. They do not candle very well. I worked for six years on a production blue egg layer. The Leghorns I used contained genes that lighten the blue egg color to the point they were almost white. I could not get a descent blue color on the eggs. The university may be producing them for the back yard.

Tim

Oh ye of little faith. I bought these blue eggs at Herrod's in London in the summer of 2011. They sell for almost $1 each.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The big commercial enterprises electronically candle their eggs to keep customers from finding blood spots or meat spots, get cracked eggs, things llike that. Can you imagine the look on the average customer's face if they cracked an egg and found a blood spot? That egg producer would lose a customer.

Specialty niche producers don't always do that, like blue eggs, free range eggs, organic eggs, eggs in a farmer'smarket or a roadside stand, things like that. I did not just say none of them do, I said they don't always do that, especially the smaller producers.

I don't candle my eggs before my customers get them. I'm sure they occasionally find blood spots, because I find them in the ones I use. But my customers have a country background and understand.

 

[tadkerson]

When I said commercial, I meant you will not be able to go to Wal Mart and pick up some blue eggs. Commercial egg production is large scale- a company like Egg Lands Best. I should have been more specific in my answer. I am sure there is a niche market some place for blue eggs if a person wants to pay the extra money for the eggs. I sold blue, white, brown and green eggs to a health food market under the Rainbow brand but I was not a commercial egg producer.

I should have said a large scale ( thousands of eggs a day) commercial operation. In the future when I post I will very specific and make sure there is not a possibility of a misunderstanding in my communication.

Tim

 

[alohachickens]

I would LOVE to see a photo of the other "L" marked pen's birds. (The brown colored blue egg layers.) I'm working on a pet project (Alohas) to develop a colorful dual purpose backyard chicken with flashy color. (Basically, an American version of the "Swedish Flower Hen.") Got the colors down, now the work is improving body type and egg laying ability.

A friend wanted to introduce the blue-egg gene, but these are supposed to be single-combed and yellow-legged, without muffs. When I tried introducing EE'er, it just added too many unwanted traits. By the time I bred out the muffs, pea combs, the blue egg color was totally lost - and I'm still trying to breed out the EE'er gray legs! LOL.

Something that looked like a brown leghorn and bred like a brown leghorn, but laid a blue egg, would be PERFECT for this program. (Specifically the single-combed ones.) Would love to see pics of that group . . . is there a way to get a photo of those, too? And do they share eggs from that group with folks? I wanted to introduce Production Red bloodlines anyway, to improve egg laying abilities. To add in blue egg genes on top of that would be icing on the cake! Wow.

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

if a Blue egg layer could produce like a commercial leghorn or Bovan Brown, why wouldn't it be possible to sell the blue eggs in say...Wal-Mart? Perhaps CCFBrands would consider the idea?

CCFBrands http://www.ccfbrands.com/ produces the Farmers Market brand eggs and sell them at Wal-Mart in many states.