How to label hens

[Fisherfarmspraz]

I'm starting to breed chickens to sell. The rooster I will be using is a French copper maran, as I plan to mostly sell French copper maran pullets. However, I was interested in selling other breeds too, and I'm curious how I should label their egg color?

For example, if I crossed a French copper maran with an olive egger. What color egg should I say they will lay? Or French Copper Maran x white leghorn, easter egger, etc. What would I tell people to expect their eggs to look like?

 

[Slothinc]

There are lots of egg color charts available online, they may be worth looking up. Basically though the Marans rooster will give his offspring the white egg gene, with a coating of brown “paint” on it. So any hen he is bred to, the color that she lays will have an extra coating of brown on it in the next generation.

If a hen lays blue eggs (and has two blue egg genes) then all girls will lay a blue egg, with brown coating which gives an olive/green egg. If she lays a white egg, then all female offspring will lay a tan/brown egg. When you get into Easter eggers or olive eggers which may only carry one blue egg gene, then only half of the female offspring will receive that blue egg gene and thus will lay green. The rest will lay brown/tan. Hope that kind of makes sense.

If you don’t know for sure what egg genes your hens carry then I would probably just label them as barnyard mixes with a chance of getting brown or green eggs. You won’t get any blue eggs because the brown coating from the male will turn them green.