Olive eggs

[GoodOldDays]

Hey all!
I've been doing some research into different egg colour layers.
What I aim to achieve is to have 2 pens of purebred flocks. One of a dark egg layer, preferably Barnevelders because they are beautiful and a good breed on their own, and one of a blue egg layer so that I may cross breed them at times and have good looking chooks that lay green eggs.

My questions to you are:
- Does a black barnevelder lay the darkest egg colour out of the barnevelders?
- Out of Araucana and Americana (and possibly Legbars, but I presume they are rare) what breed and colour would you cross with a Barnevelder to produce a "pretty" chook? In your personal opinion of course, any pictures would be welcome.

Thanks everyone

 

[JABehrens]

Araucanas are cool, but I've heard they are not as hardy as Ameraucanas, especially in regards to fertility: https://www.chickencoopguides.com/raising-araucana-chickens/

Ameraucanas are fabulous birds - friendly, relatively intelligent, colorful, great layers, active, and they don't go broody very often. (So they keep laying.) I love their beards. They come in the Blue-Black-Splash variety, which is very pretty sort of bird that would go well with black Barnevelders. https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/basic-chicken-color-genetics.48815/

I have heard good things about the Legbars, but they do only come in a couple of colors.