Brown Egg layers laying green/olive eggs?

[NatJ]

Can you get more $$ for the olive eggs at farmer's markets? lol.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

You could sell dozens of just the olive eggs, or you could sell mixed-color dozens (some people like those.)

If you want to make your eggs visually distinctive in some way, so they do not look quite the same as the ones other people are selling, you could do some kind of predictable pattern (like putting 1 olive egg in each carton with 11 brown ones.) Of course, you would need to be sure the customers know that olive eggs are special, not turning green from being old or spoiled

 

[MMelton67]

I finally caught the crested one in the nesting box. We'll see what's there later. I did talk to Hoover's this morning and sent them some pics.

 

[FunClucks]

I finally caught the crested one in the nesting box. We'll see what's there later. I did talk to Hoover's this morning and sent them some pics.

View attachment 3706071

Biting my nails to see...

I'm almost sure she'll lay olive but I want to see the egg color. Olive eggs are so cute!!!

I agree, I think you got cream crested legbar x barred rock olive eggers, at least one, probably two or more since you're getting more than one olive egg a day. To make it even more fun (confusing), sometimes purpose bred olive eggers lay brown or tan. So you could have some that are supposed to lay green/olive that lay brown/tan because the blue egg gene skipped them. So they'll have a head crest but lay brown/tan. I've had a few of those I got from Hoovers. Ticked me off but I loved the chickens anyway.

 

[MMelton67]

One olive egg, 5 brown.

1st day of 6 eggs, too. All laid in a 3 hour span mid-morning.

 

[NatJ]

I agree, I think you got cream crested legbar x barred rock olive eggers, at least one, probably two or more since you're getting more than one olive egg a day.

The usual cross is Cream Legbar x Cuckoo Marans, not Barred Rocks (the Marans are supposed to give genes for darker brown, which makes a darker green shade when it is on a blue eggshell.)

To make it even more fun (confusing), sometimes purpose bred olive eggers lay brown or tan. So you could have some that are supposed to lay green/olive that lay brown/tan because the blue egg gene skipped them. So they'll have a head crest but lay brown/tan. I've had a few of those I got from Hoovers. Ticked me off but I loved the chickens anyway.

Yes, that is also a good point.

 

[Fallenone05]

If you'd like to find who is laying what the easiest, put food dye on their booties and put colored zip ties to identify which hen had what color(s). Like if you make purple dye, put red + blue zip ties on one leg. Some people use lipstick (gross) or water-soluble, non-toxic paint on their vents. It'll smear on the eggs and you can identify who is laying what that way - it might stain some feathers but it'll tell you who is laying what at least.

 

[NatJ]

If you'd like to find who is laying what the easiest, put food dye on their booties and put colored zip ties to identify which hen had what color(s). Like if you make purple dye, put red + blue zip ties on one leg. Some people use lipstick (gross) or water-soluble, non-toxic paint on their vents. It'll smear on the eggs and you can identify who is laying what that way - it might stain some feathers but it'll tell you who is laying what at least.

Sometimes it works, and it is really handy when it does.

The food coloring trick has worked for me sometimes but has also failed sometimes, and I wasn't able to figure out what made the difference. Same food coloring, and I thought I applied it the same way.

I've had times when the hen laid an egg without the color on the egg (If every hen in the pen is marked, but some eggs are not marked, then it is pretty obvious that something didn't work right.)

And I've had times when the food coloring dripped on the hen's vent feathers because she wiggled at the wrong moment, and then she rubbed it on several other eggs in the nest. (That was something like one hen with blue color, but 2 brown eggs and 1 green egg with blue color. She absolutely did not lay all of them.)

 

[MMelton67]

So, Hoover's response was that their line of BPR's is 'heritage' and there shouldn't be any mixed breeding...but then when I sent pics she acknowledged something had gotten in the mix because of the crest. But, otherwise didn't offer any explanation except 'due to high volume...blah, blah, blah' Anyway, she refunded me the price of one chicken...which wasn't what I was after, lol. I just wanted to understand how the industry apparently works. I guess they don't operate in 'laboratory' like conditions which is honestly surprising to me since they all seem to be claiming to sell very specific breeds and if you're saying you're selling X, Y, or Z you'd want to be sure you were breeding true.

 

[NatJ]

I just wanted to understand how the industry apparently works. I guess they don't operate in 'laboratory' like conditions which is honestly surprising to me since they all seem to be claiming to sell very specific breeds and if you're saying you're selling X, Y, or Z you'd want to be sure you were breeding true.

My understanding is that some hatcheries operate their own breeding farms, and others have contracts to buy eggs from farmers.

They keep separate pens of each breed, that are supposed to be chicken-proof so no accidental mixing takes place. When selecting the breeding birds for each pen, they should remove any with obvious flaws (like wrong foot color, or wrong comb type, or badly wrong size, etc.) But they will probably not bother test-breeding to see which birds carry recessive genes that should be culled, and they are not going to pick through large numbers of birds to select the best few for breeding. At a guess, if they need 100 hens for breeding, they probably try to hatch enough chicks to get 110 to 200 pullets, then remove the worst ones until they are at the right number.

They should be careful about which eggs come from which pen, keeping them sorted or marked as they go into the incubators, then having them hatch in different trays or different hatchers or some such system. Then the chicks should be taken out of the hatchers, sexed if needed, and boxed for shipmeny-- without being able to mix with other chicks.

Of course there will be a few mistakes (either from chicks jumping where they shouldn't, or from human errors), but the hatchery should make all reasonable efforts to keep such errors to a minimum.

Poking around hatchery websites can turn up quite a bit of information about how they do things. For example:

Cackle Hatchery has videos of their breeder flock for many of the breeds, which give some idea of how the birds are housed for one hatchery. (Look for a box that lists breed facts, description, videos, etc: videos are there if they exist.)
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/cinnamon-queens/
They have a large flock of parent stock for these. This exact "breed" is a cross of red roosters with white hens, which makes it easy to see how many males vs. females are in the building.
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/lakenvelder/
This is a smaller group, and at one point in the video I can see a wire-mesh divider with a different breed on the other side (they look like White Polish, about the 0:33 mark in the video.) I notice that they look quite different (so if a chicken accidentally does get into the wrong pen it will be quite obvious.) Also, if you look at the Lakenvelders, you will see that the color/markings differ a bit. The ideal is black neck and tail, with clean white everywhere else. The actual breeding hens & roosters have some with black necks & tails and some with bits of white showing there. Some have clean white on their bodies, and others have quite a bit of gray or black in places where it should not be. That is a good example of how "hatchery quality" can be different than show-winning quality for coloring and pattern.

https://www.cacklehatchery.com/tour-cackle/
This page has a link to a .pdf "Take a virtual tour of Cackle Hatchery 1999-2009"
It has photos and text.

https://meyerhatchery.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/12987067569165-Virtual-Tour-Meyer-Hatchery
This page has link to youtube videos with tours of various parts of their Myere Hatchery operation (hatchery, breeder barns, etc.)

https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/history.html
McMurray Hatchery has a page about their history, with a link at the bottom to a video tour on youtube.

(Of course this is not a complete list of what hatcheries have on their websites, just some that I remember seeing before or could easily find today.)

 

[MMelton67]

My understanding is that some hatcheries operate their own breeding farms, and others have contracts to buy eggs from farmers.

They keep separate pens of each breed, that are supposed to be chicken-proof so no accidental mixing takes place. When selecting the breeding birds for each pen, they should remove any with obvious flaws (like wrong foot color, or wrong comb type, or badly wrong size, etc.) But they will probably not bother test-breeding to see which birds carry recessive genes that should be culled, and they are not going to pick through large numbers of birds to select the best few for breeding. At a guess, if they need 100 hens for breeding, they probably try to hatch enough chicks to get 110 to 200 pullets, then remove the worst ones until they are at the right number.

They should be careful about which eggs come from which pen, keeping them sorted or marked as they go into the incubators, then having them hatch in different trays or different hatchers or some such system. Then the chicks should be taken out of the hatchers, sexed if needed, and boxed for shipmeny-- without being able to mix with other chicks.

Of course there will be a few mistakes (either from chicks jumping where they shouldn't, or from human errors), but the hatchery should make all reasonable efforts to keep such errors to a minimum.

Poking around hatchery websites can turn up quite a bit of information about how they do things. For example:

Cackle Hatchery has videos of their breeder flock for many of the breeds, which give some idea of how the birds are housed for one hatchery. (Look for a box that lists breed facts, description, videos, etc: videos are there if they exist.)
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/cinnamon-queens/
They have a large flock of parent stock for these. This exact "breed" is a cross of red roosters with white hens, which makes it easy to see how many males vs. females are in the building.
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/lakenvelder/
This is a smaller group, and at one point in the video I can see a wire-mesh divider with a different breed on the other side (they look like White Polish, about the 0:33 mark in the video.) I notice that they look quite different (so if a chicken accidentally does get into the wrong pen it will be quite obvious.) Also, if you look at the Lakenvelders, you will see that the color/markings differ a bit. The ideal is black neck and tail, with clean white everywhere else. The actual breeding hens & roosters have some with black necks & tails and some with bits of white showing there. Some have clean white on their bodies, and others have quite a bit of gray or black in places where it should not be. That is a good example of how "hatchery quality" can be different than show-winning quality for coloring and pattern.

https://www.cacklehatchery.com/tour-cackle/
This page has a link to a .pdf "Take a virtual tour of Cackle Hatchery 1999-2009"
It has photos and text.

https://meyerhatchery.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/12987067569165-Virtual-Tour-Meyer-Hatchery
This page has link to youtube videos with tours of various parts of their Myere Hatchery operation (hatchery, breeder barns, etc.)

https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/history.html
McMurray Hatchery has a page about their history, with a link at the bottom to a video tour on youtube.

(Of course this is not a complete list of what hatcheries have on their websites, just some that I remember seeing before or could easily find today.)

cool stuff. And, Cackle is new to me. I've had Hoover, Murray, and Metzer bookmarked so far. I went with Hoover because they had lower minimum orders than the others at 15.