Bought 5 EE from Hoover’s & I’ve been reading up on combs and egg colors.. is this a thing? Two have started to lay and they are cream. One on left definitely has the floppy, huge comb. She’s laying cream. You can tell in the pic. I’m not too good with understand pea combs, but does it look like the 5 in the picture (minus the wyandottes) have the big combs & not pea? Any info on this is great.. eggs are eggs but this is interesting. Thanks!
Easter egger combs
- Thread starter coatsra
- Start date
Yes and no.
Green eggs are blue eggs with a brown coating on the outside. So green and blue eggs both require the blue eggshell gene.
The gene for pea or not-pea comb is linked to the gene for blue or not-blue eggshell color. That means when people breed colored-egg breeds to other breeds the comb type and egg color tend to be inherited together.
But they can be linked in any combination:
pea comb, blue egg (Ameraucana)
pea comb, not-blue egg (Brahma)
not-pea comb, blue egg (Cream Legbar)
not-pea comb, not-blue egg (Rhode Island Red)
Easter Eggers can have any combination of comb type and egg color, depending on who their ancestors were.
- Thread starter
- #3
You’re amazing. Thank you so much for explaining! Makes a lot of sense now!
FunClucks
Crowing
So, if I have pea comb hens that lay a blue egg (bred to a single comb rooster who has brown egg genes), the progeny from that mating that have pea comb (hens) would lay green (or blue if there's a zinc white gene), and the single comb progeny (hens) would lay brown?
Yes, if the hen has one gene for pea comb linked to blue egg, and one gene for not-pea comb linked to not-blue egg. (Such a hen often comes from a cross of pea comb/blue egg parent with not-pea/not-blue parent.)
But if the hen has two genes for pea comb, all her chicks will have pea combs. And if she has two genes for blue eggs, then all her chicks will lay blue eggs. (A purebred Ameraucana is expected to be a hen like this.)
And if someone's been crossing something like Cream Legbars (not-pea/blue) with Brahmas (pea/not-blue), then the not-pea birds would be the blue eggers and the pea comb ones would lay brown.
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They’re all legbar-based Easter eggers, so they have single combs. Since their blue-egg laying relative didn’t have a pea comb, the pea comb/blue egg shell link doesn’t apply.
FunClucks
Crowing
And because pea comb is dominant, the hen above would present as pea-comb even if she had both types of comb genes? And lay some version of green.
Yes.
- Thread starter
- #9
Just to update, one of the others starting laying & I got this color! (with one of the buff orp eggs).. so, pretty cool. Thanks again for explaining!
Attachments
I copied this from an article at the Ameraucana Breeders Club Website. I "bolded" certain sections. The link to read the whole article is
Ameraucana Breeders Club Breed History
No history of the “Ameraucana” could be complete without understanding some of the history of the “Araucana” breed. But one should first understand that the “Araucana” as we know it, was never a “pure” breed, even in Chile. To generalize the situation as briefly as possible; going back Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, the Mapuche Indians in Chile had TWO breeds of chickens raised in different areas of the country: One they called the “Collonca”, which was small, laid BLUE eggs, rumples, and had a small single comb; the other they called the “Quetro” or “Quetero”, derived from their word “kerto” meaning stammering, referring to its peculiar crow. The “Quetro” was TUFTED, had a flowing tail, pea comb, and laid brown eggs --- “Tufted rumples” occurred when a rumples bird crossed with a tufted tailed bird, but these offspring were rare. The latter were later called “Collonca de Arêtes” by the Spanish, meaning “Collonca with EARRINGS”. These “Collonca de Arêtes” were blue egg layers, since the blue egg gene is dominant. In 1556, the Mapuche Indians were attacked again by the Spanish, and an epic poem named “La Araucana”, was written by Alonso de Ercilla about their bravery. This name later stuck with the Indians, and subsequently with their chickens. The name derives from the Gulf of Arauco, near Conception, Chile. Dr. Rueben Bustos, a chicken expert in Chile, had himself developed a strain of the so-called “Collonca de Arêtes”, and wrote about the Araucanas in his country, in 1914. But these breeds remained quite unknown to the world until Professor Salvador Castello, a Spanish poultry expert, who had observed and photographed some “Collonca de Arêtes” at an exhibition in Santiago in 1914, later reported on these birds in 1921 in a paper to the First World’s Poultry Congress in the Hague (Holland), causing a flurry of excitement throughout the poultry world. Prof. Castello did not realize at that time that the “breed” that he had seen and described was NOT native fowl, as he had been told by Dr. Bustos, but rather were the product of Dr. Bustos’ many years of selective breeding. Professor Castello later corrected himself in 1924 – but by then the wave of interest in these birds had already begun, and many erroneous ideas had already developed, based upon the original 1921 paper, which was erroneous. [Many of these erroneous ideas are still in circulation today.]
This article dispels many myths about the Easter Egger. The original Easter Eggers were not derived from Ameraucana or Araucana. Ameraucana and Araucana were derived from the original Easter Eggers. There is all kinds of misinformation out there about the blue or green egg layers.
The blue egg shell gene and the pea comb gene are on the same chromosome and pretty close together when they are present so they tend to be passed down together. Dr. Tad Adkerson that started the thread about how genetic sex links work said in one of his papers that when they are both on the same chromosome there is a 97% chance that they will be passed down together. This is just one of the two chromosomes. If the other chromosome has either or both these genes they odds get all complicated.
This is Dr Adkerson's sex link thread.
Sex- linked Information | BackYard Chickens - Learn How to Raise Chickens
@coatsra I'll add one more thing to complicate it even more. The Araucana and Ameraucana are pretty new breeds. Some of the hatcheries we buy from had their colored egg layer flocks before the Ameraucana or Araucana breeds were developed. That was before they were supposed to have pea combs. I don't know when Hoover started their blue and green egg laying flock. I don't know if their flock was established that long ago or what they have done to it. Their ad says their Ameraucana are a mix of Ameraucana and Araucana but since they can lay brown eggs, that is not correct. Or maybe you got their assorted colored egg layers. Some of the photos in that section shows single combed birds.
So is a link between combs and colored eggs a thing? In certain circumstances there can be, but in general no.
Ameraucana Breeders Club Breed History
No history of the “Ameraucana” could be complete without understanding some of the history of the “Araucana” breed. But one should first understand that the “Araucana” as we know it, was never a “pure” breed, even in Chile. To generalize the situation as briefly as possible; going back Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, the Mapuche Indians in Chile had TWO breeds of chickens raised in different areas of the country: One they called the “Collonca”, which was small, laid BLUE eggs, rumples, and had a small single comb; the other they called the “Quetro” or “Quetero”, derived from their word “kerto” meaning stammering, referring to its peculiar crow. The “Quetro” was TUFTED, had a flowing tail, pea comb, and laid brown eggs --- “Tufted rumples” occurred when a rumples bird crossed with a tufted tailed bird, but these offspring were rare. The latter were later called “Collonca de Arêtes” by the Spanish, meaning “Collonca with EARRINGS”. These “Collonca de Arêtes” were blue egg layers, since the blue egg gene is dominant. In 1556, the Mapuche Indians were attacked again by the Spanish, and an epic poem named “La Araucana”, was written by Alonso de Ercilla about their bravery. This name later stuck with the Indians, and subsequently with their chickens. The name derives from the Gulf of Arauco, near Conception, Chile. Dr. Rueben Bustos, a chicken expert in Chile, had himself developed a strain of the so-called “Collonca de Arêtes”, and wrote about the Araucanas in his country, in 1914. But these breeds remained quite unknown to the world until Professor Salvador Castello, a Spanish poultry expert, who had observed and photographed some “Collonca de Arêtes” at an exhibition in Santiago in 1914, later reported on these birds in 1921 in a paper to the First World’s Poultry Congress in the Hague (Holland), causing a flurry of excitement throughout the poultry world. Prof. Castello did not realize at that time that the “breed” that he had seen and described was NOT native fowl, as he had been told by Dr. Bustos, but rather were the product of Dr. Bustos’ many years of selective breeding. Professor Castello later corrected himself in 1924 – but by then the wave of interest in these birds had already begun, and many erroneous ideas had already developed, based upon the original 1921 paper, which was erroneous. [Many of these erroneous ideas are still in circulation today.]
This article dispels many myths about the Easter Egger. The original Easter Eggers were not derived from Ameraucana or Araucana. Ameraucana and Araucana were derived from the original Easter Eggers. There is all kinds of misinformation out there about the blue or green egg layers.
Yes and no. It gets complicated. The original blue egg layers had single combs so there was no link between comb type and egg shell color. Doctor Bustos developed a line of chickens that had the blue egg shell and the pea comb from two native "breeds" of chickens. That was what was introduced to the world as the blue egg laying chicken.
The blue egg shell gene and the pea comb gene are on the same chromosome and pretty close together when they are present so they tend to be passed down together. Dr. Tad Adkerson that started the thread about how genetic sex links work said in one of his papers that when they are both on the same chromosome there is a 97% chance that they will be passed down together. This is just one of the two chromosomes. If the other chromosome has either or both these genes they odds get all complicated.
This is Dr Adkerson's sex link thread.
Sex- linked Information | BackYard Chickens - Learn How to Raise Chickens
@coatsra I'll add one more thing to complicate it even more. The Araucana and Ameraucana are pretty new breeds. Some of the hatcheries we buy from had their colored egg layer flocks before the Ameraucana or Araucana breeds were developed. That was before they were supposed to have pea combs. I don't know when Hoover started their blue and green egg laying flock. I don't know if their flock was established that long ago or what they have done to it. Their ad says their Ameraucana are a mix of Ameraucana and Araucana but since they can lay brown eggs, that is not correct. Or maybe you got their assorted colored egg layers. Some of the photos in that section shows single combed birds.
So is a link between combs and colored eggs a thing? In certain circumstances there can be, but in general no.
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