Yes it can work, I've crossed an EE rooster over a cuckoo maran hen before and it made an offspring hen who laid a medium shade of olive, more olive than any EE shade I've seen. But I do believe that it is better to cross a dark egg gene carrying maran rooster over a blue/green or olive colored egg laying EE or Ameraucana hen as long as it carries the blue gene. I have done this with my BCM rooster over a light blue egg laying EE hen, so far the offspring look neat, they have heavy facial muffs and feathered legs lol... I guess my rooster carries his feathered leg genes pretty heavy. I just put about 18 more of those eggs In the incubator. I've read that if you want an even darker olive egg laying hen you should breed to the first generation of my described cross bred hens back to a maran rooster again and then the offspring would be better. I do believe that's how you ultimately produce the dark olive army green shades. The rooster does in fact have the most control over egg color normally, but I know from experience the blue gene is very strong even through the hen, I've seen blue/green eggs pop up several generation later when I was a boy at the farm. Then we just had a bunch of mixed breeds everywhere that were crosses of bantams and game birds and some american breeds that were all related to an EE hen I had when I was 5 years old. That's why these crossed between these breeds work so well. The blue gene is so strong, the hard part is making sure you have good enough dark genes to cover the blue to get the darkest olive as possible. I've seen people try to use welsummers and even barred rocks to EE's to achieve "olive eggers" I guess it's fun either way and yes other similar crosses will produce an olive/brown and blue gene mixed colored egg but just depends on how dark you want your olive eggs to be.... As for me I'm working to produce DARK ones!
