Egg color question / green egger x white egger

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Hi!
Will a green egger crossed with a white egger 'clean up' the brown and possibly give you blue eggs
OR just a paler green egg?
Thanks,

Lisa

 

[chicken_boy_Kurt]

it would probably make it a more green-blue

 

[bugladyleah]

From what I have read (I am no expert!), the green gene sort is dominant over both white and brown, so it will be expressed, but it does not eliminate the presence of the brown or white gene (if I remember correctly from biology, this is called co-dominance). So, if you cross a brown egg layer with a green, you will get darker green eggs (often called "olive eggers") so I would imagine that you would just get either the same color green/blue or a bit lighter with a white egg cross. JMHO, I have never tried it. Good luck!!

Leah

 

[Windy Ridge]

Blue is dominant over white. With a green egg laying bird, then, you may or may not pass along the blue egg gene to the offspring, because your EE may have two or one copy of the "blue egg" OO gene.

As for brown, I guess the genes for that are quite complex, on many different loci, and so far as I know, they haven't entirely been figured out, yet. Some are thought to be sex linked, to make it even more difficult to study, and there are intensifying and diluting genes, as well. If brown is passed along, it may be a slightly different color brown. You never know, though. There are many "brown" genes, but maybe none of them would be passed along and you would get white.

Since green is a mixture of both blue and brown (in an eggshell at least

), my GUESS is that you'd either get green/turquoise or some tint of brown. I don't think it's likely to get plain blue, but it's difficult to tell what genes your current bird has. I will say that the pea comb is closely tied to blue-egg laying, so if you get a pea-combed pullet from a green egger, she's likely to either lay blue or green, not "pinkish" or brown.

(I don't know if that helps, or is even more confusing...)

 

[megshenhut]

Genetic wise I don't know. But from my experience I had a EE roo who definitely had a green gene for egg laying because all of his female offspring laid green eggs of some sort. I crossed him with Australorps and got the dark olive green eggs. I also crossed him with some brown leghorns and those two pullets' eggs are definitely bluer than the my other green EE eggs. Their eggs are a very pretty bluish green color. They were definitely not a paler green!

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Hi! Thanks!
The blue egg shell gene has been dominant in all my crosses.
I can't think of an outcross from blue/green egger to brown or white egger that didn't give a green tinted egg (some were an unpleasant green/khaki color).
I was curious if my crosses were the exception or the norm.
LOL, what I *know* about the genetics you could fit in a thimble and still have room for a finger.

Lisa