Easter egger x brown leghorn?

[Deleon98]

The Easter Egger always has pale ears that are never actually white but im just curious. Also is my welsummer a welsummer? I only have one pic thrown in there but ill add more if needed

 

[TheKindaFarmGal]

Easter Eggers are hybrids that lay coloured eggs. I don't know enough about Welsummers to help you on that.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Yes, you have an Easter Egger, which can have any color of earlobes depending on the other parentage. Easter Egger simply means somewhere, hopefully fairly close, Ameraucana (or Araucana) blood will be found...the point being for the blue shell gene. Earlobe color doesn't reflect the blue shell gene only whether there is base white or brown egg (brown is actually a wash on base white). Typically red earlobes indicate a brown egg layer while white earlobes indicate a white egg layer (with a couple of breed exceptions). Silkies actually have a blue earlobe but lay white-ish or light tinted eggs. (At least mine do).

Hybrids usually follow the white earlobe lays white eggs and red earlobe lays tinted or brown eggs, from my experience, but I'm sure there may be an exception or two.

More indicative with Easter Eggers is the pea comb. Those that inherit the pea comb are much more likely to inherit the blue shell gene as well. However, that can breed out fairly quickly as the pea comb is dominant but with a hybrid they will have only received 1 blue shell gene therefore statistically 50% of their progeny will not receive the blue shell gene.

I hope I answered your curiosity regarding the earlobe color of the EE...and my assumption as to why you were asking. Has the hen begun to lay? What color is she laying? ETA: If she lays dark blue, chances are she has 2 blue genes. If she lays pale blue, she likely received 1 blue gene. Blue is actually bile thrown back into the shell. Chickens either lay base white or base blue, with varying shades of how much bile is thrown back to produce the deeper blues. Green is produced by the brown wash (13 genes coding that) over base blue shell.

So if she lays a basically pure blue, she has a base white shell with the bile thrown directly into it to produce the blue base shell. (Pure white layers don't have the bile thrown into the shell base). If she lays green, then she has the blue base shell with brown wash applied on top of that.

As to your Welsummer....we are back to earlobe colors.

Yes, assuming that is a nice single comb (sun flare prevents me from seeing it well), and the fact that I am not seeing a white earlobe, you have pretty much the base Welsummer pullet pattern with salmon chest, yellow legs, brown partridge back with yellow-gold hackles. She is not high quality SOP, but I can believe she is a Welsummer. (Brown Leghorn, the other option, would have clear white earlobes, yellow legs, and more of a golden brown than salmon to the chest.) Is she laying yet? What color are her eggs? (Not all hatchery quality Welsummer lay especially dark eggs).

Which brings us back to your EE...do you know where that EE came from? Any idea of its parentage? It has some evidence of perhaps Welsummer in its background as well...someone may have been attempting an olive egger....you may get very lucky.

LofMc

 

[Deleon98]

The ee is laying the eggs are more of a pale blue. As for the welsummer she isn't laying yet. I got the ee from a random small farm shop so I don't know anything about her parentage. thank you for all your good information how do you know so much?

 

[Lady of McCamley]

The ee is laying the eggs are more of a pale blue. As for the welsummer she isn't laying yet. I got the ee from a random small farm shop so I don't know anything about her parentage. thank you for all your good information

how do you know so much?

You are very welcome.

I read a lot to prepare myself to breed for olive eggers. I am attempting to create a varied egg palette that I can tell by feather color who is laying what.

Good luck with your flock. I hope your Wellie lays a nice color for you.
LofMc

 

[donrae]

Your EE could have some Leghorn blood, some folks (me included) have done this to boost production in our colored egg layers. Or, she could just have funky light earlobes

.

Here's pics I have of an Ee/brown Leghorn cross. The white lobes carried down, and she was an excellent layer of large pale blue eggs.





You can see she was heavier than a Leghorn, but still not a very big bird. She also had a funky comb from being a first generation cross, so she was easy to spot in the crowd.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

X2 with Donrae.
Since you are getting pale blue eggs (not green showing brown egg shell genes from a Wellie), with the tail carriage, lighter earlobe, I think Brown Leghorn is very likely in the background.

 

[drumstick diva]

x3

 

[Deleon98]

Is the tail feathers also a sign too? Cause I noticed that my ee has a different tail from the others. Kind of like the one in your pic donrae where it's angled a lot more.

 

[donrae]

Some of my hatchery EE have pretty upright tail feathers, but they can vary. Personally, I think hatcheries breed Leghorn blood into some breeds to boost egg production, so it wouldn't surprise me if some hatchery birds have a good amount of Leghorn blood. Just my theory.....

But Leghorns are very upright birds with high tail sets, and that carries down to the offspring most of the time.

I was thrilled with my Leghorn/EE crosses. This was before they were marketed as SBEL or Sapphires, just my own cross I did for my own eggs and project. Now, they're a Big Thing and I'm thinking of doing some more. I have some white Leghorn hens I didn't sell as pullets I'm going to keep, and a pretty blue barred blue egger (Ameraucana mix) rooster, so I may see what I get next spring. Of course, that means I'll need another breeding pen........

. good thing my Honey loves me and wants me to be happy!