Here are some of my home-grown olive egger pics. Along with some of the welsummers, ISA browns, & Easter Eggers that made the olives. My olives are not as dark as Minky's, which makes perfect sense because i have used welsummer, cuckoo marans, & ISA brown eggs to make the olives. (Dont have any black copper Marans.) But this thread isnt a contest to see who has the darkest olive eggs. (Athough you could make one!) When i answered this thread last year, it was because Meg-in-Mt was disappointed with the egg color of her hatchery-purchased olive egger. And i encouraged you to hatch your own olive eggers if you had the right breeds. Which you did, & now you are happy with your home-grown olive eggs. 
I'm perfectly happy with my olive eggers too. They are plenty dark enough to be considered olive, & i have no ambition to try and make them any darker. The reason i have so many olive egg layers is not because i hatched zillions of welsummer and isa brown eggs, but because for 3 years the lead roo was 1/2 welsummer & 1/2 easter egger. (With one dark brown and one blue gene.) And he made a lot of babies. Meg, i think if you select your darkest eggs to incubate, so long as u have your 1/2 ameraucana/1/2 wyandotte roo, u will get plenty of future olive eggers. As i said, i think All the colors are pretty. I also think it is the other egg colors that really make the olives pop!
I'm perfectly happy with my olive eggers too. They are plenty dark enough to be considered olive, & i have no ambition to try and make them any darker. The reason i have so many olive egg layers is not because i hatched zillions of welsummer and isa brown eggs, but because for 3 years the lead roo was 1/2 welsummer & 1/2 easter egger. (With one dark brown and one blue gene.) And he made a lot of babies. Meg, i think if you select your darkest eggs to incubate, so long as u have your 1/2 ameraucana/1/2 wyandotte roo, u will get plenty of future olive eggers. As i said, i think All the colors are pretty. I also think it is the other egg colors that really make the olives pop!
I think u would likely have sucess getting a marans roo from meyer hatchery since thats where your hens came from. If u want to be sure of getting Only marans chicks, then would yes be necessary to make seperate breeding pen. But if doing so is too much trouble, even if u kept the roos together (assuming your older roo would even allow the younger marans to share his space, and that the older hens would accept the young marans roo), u would def get Some pure marans eggs. Def creates more work, & only u can decide if u want to go that route as a personal challenge to see what u get!
Oh well. In another week I'll be hatching out 6 Cream Legbars so hopefully I get at least one girl in the batch.... Then I can check the box for blue egg layers.
