Help me with this confusion of OE & EE!

[TheHappyHen21]

So this is my 1st year of raising Olive Eggers and Easter Eggers and Black copper Marans. I raise chicks to sell and sell eggs for consumption.


MY QUESTION IS!

I keep my chickens separated, right now there not as there still young. There only about 4 months old. But we are in the process of putting up a large fence with dividers, ok so heres the question.

1.) I like to keep one roo with 4-6 girls
2.) Do i keep a Olive Egger Rooster with Olive Egger Hens? Or will that make different color eggs? Doesnt really matter.
3.) Do i keep EE roo with EE hens? what colors come out when the same mix is bred together?

SO CONFUSEDDDD

Please someone explain it to me easy, i cant very well understand what the internet says, im new to this breeds so please bear with me! I have Jersey Giants and Brahmas and there not so confusing as the OE and the EE!

 

[QueenMisha]

1. 1 cock to 4-6 hens is fine for breeding, provided the cock is well mannered and is not stressing them. If he's not well mannered, you don't want him for breeding anyways. Even the most gentle cockerel can sometimes be clumsy, causing feather loss. As long as you are seeing only feather loss and no one is acting stressed, this issue can be fixed using hen saddles.

2. F1 OE x F1 OE will give a lot of egg colors. Here's a chart that may help you:

3. That depends on your goals. To best understand this you would be wise to have a simple understanding of egg shell color genetics. (this is quite crucial when working with any kind of colored Eggers). To start with you have the color of the shell itself. This is always either white (Gene symbol o) or blue (Gene symbol O). As with all genes, birds can have one or two copies. Meaning that you can have birds who are oo (white egg layers), Oo (blue egg layers), or OO (blue egg layers). The blue egg gene is dominant over the recessive white egg gene. They is why when you have one each of the white (o) and blue (O) genes,
the blue gene wins out and you get a blue egg.

Now for green and brown eggs. Brown eggs are actually white eggs (oo) covered with a layer of pigment. Were you to scrub them really hard, some of this pigment would even come off. I've heard numbers anywhere from 12-30 quoted as to how many genes there are controlling brown egg shell pigment. Because there are so many, nobody is really sure of each exact gene or its function as dominant, recessive, etc. Suffice to say when that many genes are working together you tend to get an intermediate effect. So, for example, if you breed a bird who produces really dark brown eggs with a bird who produces really light brown eggs and you will likely get offspring which lay a range of medium brown eggs. And so on. Now green eggs are the exact same thing - varying amounts of brown pigment covering the shell. Except in this case, the bird's genes are Oo or OO, dictating that the shell being covered is blue, not white, resulting in a green egg.

So now to answer your actual question: you could keep an Easter Egger rooster with Easter Egger hens. But you may not get offspring who lay blue or green eggs from him. Easter Eggers are mutts. Only about 80% of them (depending on the hatchery) will actually produce colored eggs. In the case of a hen, determining whether or not she carries the blue egg gene (or any brown pigment genes) is rather simple - you look at her eggs. If they are blue, she is either Oo or OO, and if they are green, she is also either Oo or OO, and has some brown pigment genes added as well. But with roosters, you can't exactly just look at the eggs, since he will lay none! What this means is for all you know, you could be using a bird who isn't a colored Egger at all in crosses with your hens! This would dramatically reduce your number of offspring who produce colored eggs. For the best outcome
in breeding, it would be wise to use a True Ameraucana cockbird in breedings with Easter Eggers. This guarantees he is OO, pure for the blue egg gene, and guarantees 100% of your offspring from him will have at least one copy of the blue egg gene.