Egg colours. First gen, second gen

[Radrussie]

Thank you. Amazing info.

 

[wrathsfarm]

I'm new to all this genetic egg stuff but my understanding is, If you hatch out these Olive eggs and then cross them back to your BCM roo. You'll deepen the darken up the olive eggs even more for different shades.

Here's a useful link I found that has a ton of great info ...
https://silverhomestead.com/easter-egger-egg-shell-color-genetics/

 

[Radrussie]

I'm new to all this genetic egg stuff but my understanding is, If you hatch out these Olive eggs and then cross them back to your BCM roo. You'll deepen the darken up the olive eggs even more for different shades.

Here's a useful link I found that has a ton of great info ...
https://silverhomestead.com/easter-egger-egg-shell-color-genetics/

Okay so you have just added a new colour that I didn't know about. Lol. Peach I beautiful. Think I am going to use my BCM over all my hens again and the move over to an EE rooster over all my hens. And repeat the process a few times. Can't wait to see what I get.

 

[wrathsfarm]

Okay so you have just added a new colour that I didn't know about. Lol. Peach I beautiful. Think I am going to use my BCM over all my hens again and the move over to an EE rooster over all my hens. And repeat the process a few times. Can't wait to see what I get.

Check out the other menu items in that link. There's a ton of cool stuff there like how to start selling eggs, photographing/staging eggs, breeding heavy bloom layers.

Way too much to list....

 

[LaFleche]

If you hatch out these Olive eggs and then cross them back to your BCM roo. You'll deepen the darken up the olive eggs even more for different shades.

Doing this will result in only max. 25% Olive Eggers as the parents already bring 100 % brown from the BCM and only about 50% blue/green from the EE hens.

Pairing this offspring again to BCM leads to 75% BCM genetics and about 25 % EE genetics, but there even is the risk of some other non blue/genetics in the EE ancestry expressing, so your resulting percentage of olive eggs might even be lower.

 

[wrathsfarm]

Doing this will result in only max. 25% Olive Eggers as the parents already bring 100 % brown from the BCM and only about 50% blue/green from the EE hens.

Pairing this offspring again to BCM leads to 75% BCM genetics and about 25 % EE genetics, but there even is the risk of some other non blue/genetics in the EE ancestry expressing, so your resulting percentage of olive eggs might even be lower.

This is really great info... Thank you for the correction. I may have to start tagging you in threads where I have limited knowledge.

 

[Radrussie]

Doing this will result in only max. 25% Olive Eggers as the parents already bring 100 % brown from the BCM and only about 50% blue/green from the EE hens.

Pairing this offspring again to BCM leads to 75% BCM genetics and about 25 % EE genetics, but there even is the risk of some other non blue/genetics in the EE ancestry expressing, so your resulting percentage of olive eggs might even be lower.

Olive eggs would be great.

Currently I have

2x green laying EE red beared hen
1x green laying EE black Hen
4x salmon faverolle x EE - not laying but expecting cream eggs bearded
The rest of my hens are mix breeds but I get cream and white eggs from these girls.

I just really like the EE and the beard trait.
First goal would be more bearded hens. If they could lay olive, brown, green or blue eggs all the better.

I battle to find hens for sale in my area. So my flock has been put together through.deals and hussels.

 

[NatJ]

Doing this will result in only max. 25% Olive Eggers as the parents already bring 100 % brown from the BCM and only about 50% blue/green from the EE hens.

Um, I don't think that is correct. You do not know whether the EE hens are going to produce 50% or 100% chicks with the blue egg gene.

But once the first mixed pullets are laying eggs, you know exactly what each one has. She has a not-blue gene from her BCM father. If she lays eggs that are blue, green, or olive, then she has exactly one blue egg gene. If she lays brown eggs, she has no blue egg gene.

For those mixed pullets that do lay olive eggs, you can breed them back to the BCM rooster and half of their daughters will lay brown eggs (probably dark brown), while the other half will lay olive eggs (probably a darker olive than the mixed pullet that is their mother.)

You can do this for as many generations as you want. Every pullet that lays blue, green, or olive eggs has at least one blue egg gene. If her father is from a brown egg breed, then she has one not-blue egg gene from him, so she cannot have more than one blue egg gene.

As a practical matter, you could use the BCM rooster as many years as you want, only hatch eggs that are blue/green/olive, and get about 50% olive-eggers in every hatch. Hatching only the eggs that have some blue in them is a way to be certain that you are hatching eggs from hens that have the blue egg gene, which they give to about 50% of their own chicks.

 

[NatJ]

Hens hatched from green eggs. I have 2 green layers. Only hatched out there eggs. And only have the BCM rooster.

Offspring 4. Are slightly different looking in their appearance:

1x looks more like a BCM
2 x plain black
1x beared black

Would this make a difference?

The color of their feathers will not help predict what egg colors they lay.

If the EE hens have pea combs, the comb type of the daughters might help predict whether they inherit the blue egg gene. If the EE hens have single combs, then breeding them to a single comb rooster will produce just chicks with single combs, no matter what egg color genes they have.

There is a linkage between the pea comb gene and the blue egg gene, so they tend to be inherited together. But they can be linked in any combination:
pea comb + blue egg (example: Araucana)
pea comb + not-blue egg (example: Brahma)
not-pea comb + blue egg (example: Cream Legbar)
not-pea comb + not-blue egg (example: every single-comb chicken that lays brown or white eggs.)

Because of the linkage, you can sometimes track the blue egg gene by the comb type.

If you start with Araucanas and Marans, then the pea comb goes with the blue egg gene and the not-pea comb goes with the not-blue egg.

If you start with Cream Legbars and Brahmas, you have the pea comb going with the not-blue egg gene, and the not-pea comb going with the blue egg gene. Again, you can track the blue egg by the comb type, but they are exactly backwards of the previous example.

In either of those cases, you can get some crossovers (chicks where the linkage switched around to be the other way.) That happens about 5% of the time (so about 1 chick in 20).

But if you start with chickens that have the same comb type and lay different colors of eggs, then the comb type does not tell you anything about which offspring have the blue egg gene (you could do this with Cream Legbars and Marans for single combs, or Araucanas and Brahmas for pea combs, or quite a few other combinations as well.)

Since I know the Marans have single combs, that is why I say you *might* be able to predict the egg color of your pullets by their comb type, if the EE mothers have pea combs.

 

[LaFleche]

Well, @Radrussie you will discover soon enough the difference between theory and how it pans out in real life