Easter Egger club!

[debid]

Thanks for the info. I tried looking it up but couldn't find anything specific about interbreeding that I could understand. Good to know for future reference.. my girls are only 5 months old so we have a ways to go before anyone starts getting ideas about being broody, but it's good to know for any aspirations of breeding & possibly selling chicks.

If you sell offspring, just say they're barnyard mixes that *might* lay colored eggs. I wouldn't bother getting into probabilities.

 

[apryl29]

This is Sven and Olaf. So far they are the most unbelievably friendly and easy going chicks. They have hilarious personalities. Can't wait to see how they feather out.

You babies look similar to our Olive when she was a chick.. here's then

and now

.. oddly Damon looked different as a chick

but looks exactly the same as Olive, except she has blonde around her neck instead of red. (just now realizing I have no close up photos of Damon). Both Olive and Damon are very derpy.. Olive loves to chase wild bunnies and flap her wings while she runs.

I had 2 different colored yellow egger chicks (dark yellow and light) and both of them turned out to be pure white birds. One lays blue eggs, so far.
Also, love your chicken names!

 

[apryl29]

If you sell offspring, just say they're barnyard mixes that *might* lay colored eggs. I wouldn't bother getting into probabilities.

Great idea. It won't be something we do for a while. I really don't want to get into incubating eggs, but if someone goes broody I wouldn't mind seeing what turns out.

 

[FlyWheel]

The outcome of the crossing depends on whether your EE is pure for the blue shell gene. You see, blue is dominant so even if she only has one copy, she lays blue shells. If she has two copies, she'll pass one to every chick and all the pullets will lay blue shells. With one copy, she only passes it to half of the offspring.

The only shortcoming to that is (unless you are or you have access to a genetic engineer) how do you tell what 'egg genes' he has? Outside of coaxing him into laying one, that is!

 

[debid]

The only shortcoming to that is (unless you are or you have access to a genetic engineer) how do you tell what 'egg genes' he has? Outside of coaxing him into laying one, that is!

He's a Leghorn. He can't have anything but white which means no blue gene, no coating genes. Simple.

 

[apryl29]

The only shortcoming to that is (unless you are or you have access to a genetic engineer) how do you tell what 'egg genes' he has? Outside of coaxing him into laying one, that is!

My roo is a leghorn, my girls are eggers. Does the gene get passed by the male or the female, or both? Obviously in the case of the leghorn there's no gene to pass, which would make sense in Debid's reply that if my leghorn and egger had babies they'd only be passed (IF my eggers are from 2 egger parents) one set of colored egg genes which means any offspring from their offspring would not lay colored eggs b/c the gene would be too diluted, correct? But if the Roo was an egger and the female is an egger would the resulting offspring be eggers always?

 

[FlyWheel]

Of course. If both parents were leghorns the offspring would be leghorns as well, right? The same applies to EE's. But then 'Easter Egger' is not breed but a mixture of breeds (usually possessing a blue egg gene, but not always) so what qualifies a chicken as an EE is much broader with them.

If I remember my biology it doesn't matter which partner contributes it, the gene doesn't care; if it is dominant it will take precedence. But I was making a general statement concerning knowing what genes a rooster had. I guess I should have clarified.

 

[debid]

My roo is a leghorn, my girls are eggers. Does the gene get passed by the male or the female, or both? Obviously in the case of the leghorn there's no gene to pass, which would make sense in Debid's reply that if my leghorn and egger had babies they'd only be passed (IF my eggers are from 2 egger parents) one set of colored egg genes which means any offspring from their offspring would not lay colored eggs b/c the gene would be too diluted, correct? But if the Roo was an egger and the female is an egger would the resulting offspring be eggers always?

My understanding is that shell genes aren't sex linked so both pass a gene.

Second generation we can't predict percentages because we don't know the outcome of the first crossing yet. However, any pullet chick that inherits a single blue gene lays blue shells. Any cockerel offspring that inherit one could pass it along. It's both easy to keep getting blue shells and easy to lose depending on which rooster you keep.

And yes, if you have two EEs, their offspring are correctly called EEs. But, because you can't see his genes, you could have an EE cockerel that missed the boat on the blue shell gene and get the same outcome as your Leghorn.

 

[cow whisperer]

I only have the one EE, Boo, and the rest of them are either Buff Orpington order Rhode Island Reds. I would love to cross the EE with either BO or RIR. Has anyone done this or know of someone who has?

 

[FlyWheel]

What debid said. Your best bet is to somehow keep separate the eggs fertilized by each cock, see what colors each one's offspring lays. If it were me I would choose the one whose offspring lay a mixture of colors, not just blues and greens. But that's me.