Easter Eggers....

[bbethea104]

Ok before I ask this, I know that Easter Eggers are a mixed chicken to begin with....my question is, I have Easter Egger hens but no Easter Egger roo....if I breed them with a Gold Laced Wyandotte Roo, would the babies still be Easter Eggers? And if not, what type of roo other then an Easter Egger can they breed with and still end up Easter Egger chicks?

 

[donrae]

I'm not going to get into the semantics of what an Easter egger is--that's a whole can of worms folks get pretty passionate about!

I'll just talk about egg color, cause I think that's what most folks are concerned about. That's going to depend on your current birds' genetic make-up. I'll give simplified examples that cover most scenarios..

If your hens lay blue eggs.....

you can breed them to a blue egg layer and get pullets that lay blue eggs
you can breed them to a brown egg layer and get green eggs
you can breed them to a white egg layer and get light blue eggs


If your hens lay green eggs....

you can breed them to a blue egg layer and get some blue, some green eggs
you can breed them to a brown egg layer and get some brown, some green eggs
you can breed them to a white egg layer and get light green eggs



Again, the above are generalities. Easter eggers are a genetic crapshoot and egg shell genes can get pretty complex, it's much more than A+B=C. This can give you some guidelines.

In my personal experience crossing Easter eggers, the beard/muffs seem dominant. I like that cause I love puffy cheeks!
pea combs are linked to blue/green eggs on the DNA strand.