Breeding for both blue color and blue egg - genetics experts?

[AmCanyonStables]

I love the blue birds, and blue eggs too. I have EEs and Barred Rocks - they were supposed to be all pullets, and now at 20 weeks, I think they are. If I were to get a rooster, and wanted blue chickens that would lay blue eggs, from my reading here I think my best bet would be a splash blue true Americauna.
Is this correct? From what I can tell, the Splash is what we call in horses homozygous for the blue (feather) gene. But, would a splash Americauna be homozygous for the blue egg gene? (OO), or would there be a chance it was herterozygous (Oo)?

 

[Kev]

Yes splash are homozygous.

True Amers are supposed to be homozygous for O. But do not be too shocked if there are a few heterozygotes floating around, as it is hard to find out and cull out all the heterozygotes.

So going with that, yes a splash Amer rooster would be your best bet.

However, if you have some EE hens showing blue(blue is relatively common in EE)- if you don't have any splashes or solid blues, did you notice if any of the brown hens have greyish looking or even mostly white tails, primaries, striping on the hackles? Blue normally has little or no effect on the gold pigments so a blue on a "brown" EE is limited to the tail, striping on neck, and the primaries.

If you have blue present in your EE, you can go with a black rooster and breed him with these hens showing blue and some blue chickens will show up.

 

[AmCanyonStables]

All seven of the EEs are brown or gold, two of the them have what looks like grey/blue bellies (not sure what to call that area on a chicken, but I'm sure you know what I mean), and some have some slight white striping on the hackles. As has been posted here before, they look like hawks. Some have tufts and beards, some not.

 

[AmCanyonStables]

Oh yeah - any idea what the crosses with the barred rocks would look like? I only have five of them, so I could easily just not hatch out their eggs and concentrate on the EEs.

 

[Kev]

Chickens can have gray down(the base of each feather) this is not the blue gray. If the chickens have tails that are plainly black, they don't have blue.

Splash x barred rock hen= all blues.. however the sons will also be born with a white head spot at hatch and these will grow up blue with the barring over them. Daughters will be solid blue.

Here's the fun part- if the splash rooster is homozygous for O, all of those daughters will be solid blue however it's far more likely they will lay green eggs. Green egg is the visual effect of brown pigments laid over a blue eggshell. If you don't mind the green eggs, this will hit on the color birds you want.

While splash over a brown will give blues, however a lot of them will eventually show off-color at maturity such as either brown or white lacing on their necks & the sons solid blue and eventually showing either red or white on the hackles, saddles and wing patch.

 

[AmCanyonStables]

Well, that way I will know who are the girls from the barred rocks.
I don't mind green eggs, and if I get too many, I can sell as blue EEs.
The other colors on the blue from the brown hens sounds pretty, and will still be an unusual color for resale EEs, plus they will be far more likely to have blue than green eggs, which I think a lot of people want.
I may try this, and of course have an option in the future to add some true Amerucana hens, for breeding blues.
Thanks so much for the info!