Meyer Hatchery Olive Egger pics?

[WVBirdsAndBees]

Thanks!

Yours is almost identical to ours. Pretty wild how similar these few Meyer OE's look. We've really enjoyed ours, even though she has decided her run is only a suggestion and insists on being free.

 

[doughouse]

I just scrolled through this whole thread again and I must say, I've really enjoyed watching these little chicks grow up!

 

[WVBirdsAndBees]

I just scrolled through this whole thread again and I must say, I've really enjoyed watching these little chicks grow up!

I have as well. Really interesting to see the similarities and differences.

Finally got a decent photo of Carmen all grown up - or at least after having laid her first eggs the last 2 days.

 

[TwoShepherds]

Quite the surprise: We got our first little olive (ish) egg on 9/18 and since then she has given us two more. She's hardly even 16 weeks so we were not expecting eggs from her until next month at the earliest.

 

[WVBirdsAndBees]

Awesome. Carmen was between 19/20 weeks and has laid almost every day since. So 16 is really impressive. Love the egg color!

 

[doughouse]

How would you all describe your Olive Eggers personality-wise? Are they assertive? Shy? Where do they rank on the pecking order?

This weekend our olive egger attacked both of my young kids (I have another thread on that here) and it looks like we're going to have to try to rehome her. She's always been friendly but also very assertive, and I wanted to check to see if other Meyer's olive eggers are like that as well as we decide whether or not to try to replace her with another olive egger or just get another breed entirely.

 

[TwoShepherds]

Goodness! Are you sure it's a she and not a he? I would say ours is on the skittish side. She's friendly enough, comes over for treats if we have any, but not interested in being touched, certainly not aggressive. The kids (five and three years old) and I spend quite a lot of time out with the chickens, and they've all been docile so far, even the cockerels.

 

[WVBirdsAndBees]

I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with that.

Ours is very independent but not in any way aggressive. She likes ranging but will come running for treats. Never fights with any of the birds. As we've talked about, I think she's marans/cream legbar and neither is an aggressive breed in general. There's always variation among individuals, though. Between that variation and all the different hybrids used to make olive eggers, I wouldn't see any reason to avoid them in general. Sometimes you just get a bird with a bad attitude. Even "pure" breeds don't always meet their reputation/standard. I've had mean buff orpingtons and leghorns that loved attention.

We do have a lakeshore egger from meyer who likes to peck/bite occasionally. She's on thin ice with my wife - but that just means she's due to get carried around and given unwanted attention until she chills out.

 

[doughouse]

Yeah, it's a real bummer. My wife and I both think it's probably something that can be trained out of her with some behavior modification techniques, but the good folks of this forum convinced us not to take any chances, especially since the dangers to our children if she continues this behavior are so severe--one person who commented knew someone who lost an eye as a child when they were attacked by a hen in the same way. She'll go to my uncle's farm two hours away, so assuming she integrates okay with his flock we'll be able to visit her.

She's almost 27 weeks old and still no eggs! The only member of our little flock of five who is laying at all is our barred rock, who started laying a month ago and has been really carrying the weight for our flock of freeloaders. At this point, with the days getting so short, I'm not expecting any eggs from them until the spring. We're going to get three or four more chicks in the spring, and since my son is so attached to our olive egger it's possible we end up getting another.