Egg colours. First gen, second gen

[Radrussie]

You do have some nice dark eggs in that carton!

Okay, so next question is. These eggs (hens) over BCM rooster should give me gen 2 olive eggers and some chocolate?

I have a bunch of eggs that I bought in and hatched. In this bunch I have a araucana, EE, and OE rooster. Both OE and araucana have beards (a trait I like) but are not yet mature. When they are could I use OE hens with OE rooster and get easter eggers again? Understand that oe + oe can give all colours.

What will the colour prediction be if I use the araucan?

Olive done I would like to try for chocolate, blue and Grey next

 

[NatJ]

Okay, so next question is. These eggs (hens) over BCM rooster should give me gen 2 olive eggers and some chocolate?

That sounds right to me.

I have a bunch of eggs that I bought in and hatched. In this bunch I have a araucana, EE, and OE rooster. Both OE and araucana have beards (a trait I like) but are not yet mature. When they are could I use OE hens with OE rooster and get easter eggers again? Understand that oe + oe can give all colours.

I would say that Olive Eggers are one kind of Easter Egger (they lay eggs with blue or green in the coloring, and do not belong to any recognized pure breed of chicken.)

But if you also want chickens that lay lighter green eggs, then yes crossing with the EE or Araucana will give daughters that lay lighter eggs, as compared with daughters of the Marans.

What will the colour prediction be if I use the araucan?

If the araucana has the genes for actual blue eggs (no brown to make it look green), then his daughters will probably lay eggs of a lighter green than what their mothers did. Breeding the daughters back to him will give a generation that probably lays eggs even closer to blue with less green in the shell.

Olive done I would like to try for chocolate, blue and Grey next

For chocolate, hatch eggs that are dark olive or the darkest brown you have, sired by the Marans rooster. I would expect at least some daughters to lay dark brown eggs (chocolate.) Breeding back to the Marans, using the hens that lay the darkest browns, would be the way to get even darker browns.

For blue, you will be going to other way, trying to have as little brown in the shell as possible. If you have any hens laying white eggs, cross them to a rooster of a blue-egg breed and you will probably get daughters that lay blue. Otherwise, hatch use the lightest eggs you have (browns or greens), with the father being your Araucana or Easter Egger. Once you see what color eggs the daughters lay, you can tell which rooster is the better choice to sire the next generation, and breed the daughters with the bluest eggs back to him.

If your hens are already laying olive eggs, any you want eggs that are actually blue (no brown coloring at all), it will probably take several generations to get there, because of how many brown-shell genes there are. It will take a while to breed them out.

Gray would be blue or green eggs with a heavy coating of bloom on them. The bloom can make brown eggs look pink, and blue/green eggs look gray. I don't know the genetics that control bloom, but you could try to select the eggs with the heaviest coating of that and hatch them. (The bloom is the slippery stuff on the egg when it is laid, that dries to form a clear or whitish layer on the outside of the egg. The "whitish" aspect is what makes an egg look gray or pink.)

Both OE and araucana have beards (a trait I like) but are not yet mature.

Do you live in the USA or some other country? In some countries, Araucanas do have beards.

But in the USA, Araucanas should never have beards. I'm in the USA, so my first thought is "if he has a beard, he is not really an Araucana." If he has the wrong physical traits for his breed, then he may have the wrong egg color traits as well, but you won't know for sure until you hatch some daughters and see what colors they lay. But since Araucanas in some other countries do have beards, I realized I should check before making any assumptions about that!