Got my first olive egg today!!!!

[Lark Rise]

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Can you post a link to the thread?

 

[Illia]

Olive Egger Thread - Pretty popular, actually. More and more people are realizing, especially with F2 Olive Eggers, how awesome they are.

 

[Lark Rise]

Thanks!!!!

 

[Evelle]

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was it a double yolk??

im still waiting on my EEs to lay

that is sooo awsome i cant wait to get all kinds of colors i need to find a chocolate layer.

 

[Cattitude]

That's a beautiful olive egg!! Yes, the folks on the Olive Egger thread would love to see your birds and pics. Congratz on your first one!

 

[Rachy]

Woo hoo!

 

[zzGypsy]

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Hatcheries sell Easter Eggers. They don't sell Ameraucanas. Never have. EE's were never "invented" since they aren't a true breed, in fact, that's simply what they are - a mutt/unrecognized bird that lays colored eggs. Also, since Ameraucanas were recognized in the early 80's I'm sure the term EE still stuck before yours were born.

But that's aside the topic of this thread.

well I'll just say I bought Ameraucanas sometime in the late 80s or early 90s from a hatchery. read all the hachery sites I could find before I got them, had printed catalogs for most, no easter eggers in any of them. saw a lot of discussion at the time about araucanas vs. ameraucanas and no mention of easter eggers.
got light blue, light green and distinctly olive eggs from my hatchery birds, all out of the same batch.

orderd some ameraucanas from a hatchery again in maybe 2005? and got only light blue & light green eggs, and all of them consistently thin shelled... probably 80% didn't make it into the egg basket because they were so thin. no problems with the shells on the other chicken breeds in the same coop... figured it was poor breeding on the ameraucanas.

that's everything I know about it, not a chicken breeder, just a chicken keeper.

but I've had olive eggs, and never owned an easter egger or an olive egger.

ETA: when I bought the second batch they were advertised as <Americaunas - the "easter egg" chicken>. first batch weren't advertised that way. now I see "easter eggers" for sale, separate from Americaunas and auracanas.

 

[Illia]

Thin shells has nothing to do with the breed, it has to do with the diet and care of the parent stock.

Easter Eggers can lay olive eggs too though

Olive Egger is the term for a dark brown layer x blue/green layer. Olive Eggers technically are Easter Eggers, just a special kind.

The thing is, if your birds have yellow soles or green legs, they're not Ameraucanas. Yes, most hatcheries didn't use the term Easter Egger back then, but, half of them still don't today. They don't really care. Take for example Rhode Island Whites and Buff Cornish - They don't actually sell the real deal, but won't admit to it either. In fact several hatcheries to this day deny selling under false claim.

The term Easter Egger grew common on the internet and through businesses now because the case of people entering birds in shows, etc that are not Ameraucanas (hatchery based in most cases) became more and more common as more and more people are getting chickens now, so, the easiest way to differ them is using a name that fits. Besides, Murray McMurray doesn't call theirs Easter Eggers but they use the term Easter several times. In fact in the old days, it was either Araucana or Easter Egg chicken. It wasn't about a breed, never was - It was about colored eggs.

As soon as Ameraucanas were a breed, well, that was that. If your bird wasn't bearded/muffed, slate legged, white soled, and of the following colors recognized or at least based from those colors, it is an Easter Egger, or if you don't want to use that name, it's simply not an Ameraucana.

But just consider - In the 70's we had a lot of colored laying "mutt" chickens, they didn't really have names, but we did eventually have the Araucana later on, which was rare than and still is now. Then in the 80's the Ameraucana was developed, but still, most hatcheries and bird owners had Easter Eggers/ colored laying mutts. To this day, they still have Easter Eggers mostly from the same stock as then, but the birds are not actually Ameraucanas, and most of them are from stock before Ameraucanas were a recognized breed. Doesn't make them related though because most of the hatchery stock is the same as it was then, with a couple modifications. Ameraucanas were taken from a handful of "Easter Eggers" (also known as the Quechua) and bred selectively from there, hardly introduced again to the yellow skinned EE.

Hatcheries continued with whatever blue, green, olive, pink layers while the true breeds were being developed, because back then the big craze was the colored egg and its supposed lower cholesterol. They called them Araucana or Easter Egg chickens, but, they didn't really keep attention or care into the fact that the birds did not breed true and were not an actual breed.

 

[nanawendy]

Illia... what does F2 mean????

 

[zzGypsy]

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22 hens, 3 roosters, all in the same very large coop and run, same feed, same living conditions, all the same age. all birds healthy, in good feather, in good weight. 7 or 8 americaunas, the rest included RIR, varous polish, giant white, various cochins, one jungle fowl, and one frizzle. nice thick shells on all of the white or brown eggs. very thin shells on all of the blue and green eggs. don't think it's diet (they all eat the same, and it's free choice so they're not getting pushed to the back of the line) or care of the stock (all birds in exactly the same conditions.) my observation is the comon factor is the breed. at least 8 varietys of chickens all laying with nice thick shells. one variety laying blue/green eggs, and they all have thin shells. breed is the only variable between the two.

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intersting reading, thanks.