How many chicks will you hatch in 2026?

[2ndTink]

Not sure but my freezer needs filling so

This is a good reason.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I haven't had any leghorns, but they door have huge combs. Have you looked into small combed white egg layers? (If there are any )

Leghorns come in rose comb varieties as well. Hamburgs also lay white and have rose combs, though they tend to be pretty flighty from my understanding. Sumatras have very small pea combs and Spitzhaubens have a V-comb, both white eggers. There's also Polish and Sultans with V-combs, though their huge crests can be problematic... There are other breeds, I'm sure, but those are the most readily available from hatcheries off the top of my head. Leghorns are the standard for production, though, as Echelontheory points out.

I wonder what an Ameraucana x Leghorn would produce for egg color?

It produces like a sky blue egg color because my blue splash ameraucana has two blue genes and the Leghorn is a white gene so the blue will take over but the white will add a tint to it so it'll be like a nice sky blue! There are some cushion and rose combed white egg layers but they're expensive and not as good of producers so I think I'm going to stick with my Ameraucana and exchequer Leghorn cross since the pea comb is dominant so the crosses will have pea just not white eggs anymore haha but in a perfect world it would be a high producer sky blue layer with a pea comb if that cross would go well!

Yeah, the blue egg gene acts as a partial dominant. Two copies, O/O, tends to make a deeper blue color than split, O/o+, which generally makes a paler blue shell. There are other genes that can impact this as well, such as the zinc white gene that many lines of Leghorns carry, which can make that blue shade even paler.

Pea comb is also a partial dominant, so P/P makes smaller, tighter to the head pea combs, while P/p+ splits tend to make taller, thinner pea combs, somewhat like an in-between of pea and single combs. The gene also impacts the size of the wattles, with P/P homozygous individuals generally having smaller wattles than P/p+ heterozygous individuals or p+/p+ individuals lacking the gene entirely.