hen or cock???

[WalkingOnSunshine]

But the rooster she has is a marans rooster not an ee rooster..... did I miss something?

Blah. For some reason I thought it was an Ameraucana rooster. Serves me right for posting when I have 50 million other things going on. Mea culpa.

 

[bantamsrbest100]

Blah. For some reason I thought it was an Ameraucana rooster. Serves me right for posting when I have 50 million other things going on. Mea culpa.

no probs!! so... please correct me if im wrong but if I put my marans rooster with Ameraucana hen I will get EEs?? little confused but awesome prospect of breeding my own EEs is exciting!!

 

[farmerChef]

EEs are mixed breeds that lay blue/green eggs, most often they look like ameraucanas because thats what they are often bred from. When you mix breeds, you can end up with brown or whiite egg laying EEs, but I personally only call the blue/green egg layers EEs.

Breeding a Blue/green egg layer with a dark brown one will make Olive eggers, which are just EEs that lay olive eggs. You may get some brown egg layers from breeding your marans and EEs, as the chicks inherit a egg color gene from each parent. So if your EEs already carry 1 blue and 1 brown(which make them look green), some of the chicks will get 2 brown genes and lay brown eggs. These chicks usually will have single combs, as the blue egg gene and the pea comb gene are very close on the chromazone.

If there are some EEs to pick from when you get them, look for one with an even pea comb. The single comb is recessive, so when you cross a pure pea comb with a single comb, all of the chicks will have pea combs, but they usually are squiggly or noodle like, because the single comb gene shows though. This may sound a little confusing, you can look under the breed and showing section for the "EE braggers thread", and it will have lot of pictures you can look at. You can alo go thouh the olive egger thread I posted earlier

 

[ramirezframing]

Blah. For some reason I thought it was an Ameraucana rooster. Serves me right for posting when I have 50 million other things going on. Mea culpa.

Sounds like me when I am feeding the live stock and thinking about something else, I often skip someone and have to go back

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

no probs!! so... please correct me if im wrong but if I put my marans rooster with Ameraucana hen I will get EEs?? little confused but awesome prospect of breeding my own EEs is exciting!!

Ok, here's the scoop. And I'll try to get it right this time!

Ameraucanas, real ones, should be homozygous for the blue egg gene and will contribute blue egg genes 100% of the time (or should, but that gets into a whole can of worms about the breeding practices of the breeder you got the birds from). The blue egg gene is dominant, which means that anything crossed with an Ameraucana will be an Easter Egger and will lay an egg with blue in it somewhere--straight blue, various colors of green, olive, etc. This works regardless of whether the Ameraucana is the hen or the rooster in the mix. So an Ameraucana crossed with your Marans will most likely make olive eggers, with the blue coming from the hen and the dark brown coming from the rooster.

If you cross your Marans with an Easter Egger, they are most likely heterozygous for the blue egg gene. That means that the hen will contribute a blue gene half the time and another color the other half of the time. That means that if you breed a first generation EE to your Marans, you'll most likely get 50% olive eggers and 50% brown egg layers. It's also possible to have a second generation EE whose mother was bred to an Ameraucana and is homozygous for the blue egg gene, just like an Ameraucana. But there's no way to tell that by looking at her.


All of the above is over-simplified, but is good enough for simple chicken breeding. Hope it's helpful.

 

[bantamsrbest100]

Really helpful thank u soo much!!