Olive Egger Breeding Pen

ItsChicky

Chirping
Feb 25, 2023
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I apologize if this has been asked already (I’ll happily accept links!).

Now that I have all of my “chickens” in a row for my heritage breed breeding pens, i’m turning my attention to my olive egger project! My goals are to produce a large (hopefully dual purpose) bird that can lay multiple shades of earthy tones. Speckles are always fun to include. Eventually, if I can work with this group for multiple generations, it would be fun to produce a line with cold hardy combs.

For options for this project, I currently have:
-Variety of F1, F2, & BC1 olive egger pullets and cockerels from local breeders
-Olive Egger F1 pullets from a hatchery
-Welsummer Cockerel from a large speckled egg
-BCM Cockerel from dark chocolate egg (5-7 on scale?)
-Variety of blue egg layer pullets (for a different project, but could also use)
-*hopefully* 1-2 homozygous blue cockerels (pending blood tests before breeding)

The Welsummer and BCM cockerels were from BEAUTIFUL hatching eggs and my hope is to keep potentially both of them in the same pen with our favorite olive egger hens. Good plan, or should I go a different route? The local olive egger pullets include CLB and WTB based crosses. Would the resulting offspring be considered BC1? I’m hoping to not have to buy additional breeds, but I’m a hatch-a-holic, so I could be convinced.
 
I would pick your favorite shade of egg. But if it were me I would do both the first year compare the birds and see which cross you like the best for your needs and then cont from there. I am hoping to do a olive egger/ blue marans project in a few years so I am trying to learn as much about them as possibl.
 
I would pick your favorite shade of egg. But if it were me I would do both the first year compare the birds and see which cross you like the best for your needs and then cont from there. I am hoping to do a olive egger/ blue marans project in a few years so I am trying to learn as much about them as possibl.
Thank you! I’m growing out roughly 20 olive egger pullets to hopefully POL so I can pick my favorite layers from the bunch. I’m hoping both boys grow out well together and get along so I don’t have to pick a favorite yet!
 
Hey there! I would suggest putting your Welsummer cockerel over your Olive Egger hens. Roosters carry speckling genes better than hens. You can then breed back to the Maran to bring back darkness to the egg; doing this for a couple years will produce a deep army green egg with a bunch of speckling. Which. Is. Beautiful. 😍
 
It sounds like you have a lot of diversity in your flock!! Perfect breeds for what you're looking for! I wish I could meet them. Send your flufflebutts hugs and kisses
 

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