Olive Egger

[chickenmamasc]

Hey all, I'm new here so I'm hopefully posting this in the right place!
We recently started our third flock of backyard birds and ended up with one rooster who was named Big Mama before we knew (oops)! For those wondering, we are definitely keeping his name Big Mama.
We are interested in breeding him with our hens (speckled sussex, splash and buff orpingtons, ISA brown and hopefully soon blue maran, olive egger, and ameraucana). He is an olive egger and has a sweet, pet chicken personality with the appropriate urgency with predators and toddlers. While I'm thrilled to breed for personality, good egg production and foraging, I would love to have some beautiful eggs and can't seem to find information on breeding for egg color with an olive egger! I know he's a grab bag for genetics but was wondering if anyone has seen offspring from an olive egger rooster and the color combos they could lay based on our hen's egg color genetics.
Thanks in advance for any knowledge on the topic!

 

[WVBirdsAndBees]

There are some good egg color genetics charts online. Just Google olive egg genetics and they'll come up.

The basics are that olive eggers come from crossing a blue and dark brown layer. Assuming a roo does have both blue and brown genes, crossing to a dark brown layer may darken the green. A blue or green layer may lighten it. But you may get surprises and there's no way to know for sure with a roo without breeding him, growing out some of the hens, and seeing what they lay.

Good luck! We have a cream legbar roo going in with our olive egger and some marans soon. Hopefully we'll end up with little olive eggers but I'm especially curious to see what the eggs of our legbar x olive egger crosses will look like.

 

[chickenmamasc]

Thank you! Let us know how your next generation look and lay! I’m excited to try the waters and see what we get.

 

[AusHen]

When I had my OE rooster I put him over cream, tan and light brown layers and their daughters laid shades of greens and browns. Nothing too dark but if you added a dark laying Marans you could expect darker brown and greens/olives if your rooster does indeed have a blue egg gene. If the Ameraucana is a true Ameraucana and not actually an "Americauna" (aka easter egger) then all offspring from her will be coloured.