Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

[hyzenthlay]

Hi @kie4 Well, I have two young Meyer Olive Eggers right now, but they are only 14 and 5 weeks old, respectively, so no eggs yet (and the older one was supposed to be a sexed pullet and turned out to be a boy, which is why I got the second one!). I am interested in dheltzel's for the quality, of course, and because the picture he posted of his is so nice! I've seen some really unattractive olive egger hens (in pics, not person!), but dheltzel's are pretty. I'd also be interested in people's project Olive Eggers, the ones that are past F1 and are laying even darker or more unusual olive eggs. At the hatcheries, or I think Meyer, at least, they are always F1. I'll be sure to report back on egg color when the Meyer pullet starts laying!

As for waiting until spring, maybe you know this already, but it's best to go online around January or February (whenever the Meyer catalog comes out, can't remember now) so that you have the greatest chance of getting some of the harder to get breeds (BLRW for sure is in this category) hatching on the same day. You might have to place the order in February for April, but at least you'll be set. They are not show quality, for sure, but I have been overall very happy with my birds from Meyer over the years--generally healthy, low maintenance, and good layers. I have a 7 year old EE hen that is my last survivor of my original 3 hens, and she is still active and healthy and lays probably 3-4 eggs a week (except now, since she just molted). I lost another hen from that same group earlier this year to a predator--a silver laced wyandotte--who was also still laying and very healthy before she was attacked. My only complaint about Meyer lately is that I have had a string of bad luck with sexed pullets turning out to be boys. I ordered 11 pullets from Meyer this year, and definitely 2 and possibly 3 of them are cockerels (still holding out hope on the 5 week old lavender orpington). Before that, I had ordered about 10 pullets over the course of several years, and only one of those turned out to be a roo. I'd love to get more birds from good breeders, but the appeal of getting sexed pullets of many breeds pretty much at will and close to home has kept drawing me back to Meyer.

 

[hyzenthlay]

@dheltzel , good luck!

 

[kie4]

Tomorrow is the big day! I am giving my first Chicken Keeping 101 seminar at the Pughtown Agway. Feel free to come by, even if you are a seasoned chicken keeper.
There will be discounted supplies and some manufacturer samples for everyone that comes! If you know anyone that is thinking about getting chickens, tell them to come by at 2:00 to get an overview of what is involved and all the basic info you need to keep chickens successfully.

I'm including a link to BYC at the end of the presentation when people want more info. Hopefully some of those people will come join us here.

Very cool Dennis! Depending on how the kids are behaving we'll try and make it.
Is this the place?

 

[hyzenthlay]

@dheltzel , have you made OE with the legbars and welbars before? I thought welbars laid fairly standard brown eggs, which would mean crossing them with a legbar should produce an EE, with a greenish blue egg rather than an olive one--is that not right? Or do your welbars lay darker, more welsummer like eggs?

 

[kie4]

Hi @kie4 Well, I have two young Meyer Olive Eggers right now, but they are only 14 and 5 weeks old, respectively, so no eggs yet (and the older one was supposed to be a sexed pullet and turned out to be a boy, which is why I got the second one!). I am interested in dheltzel's for the quality, of course, and because the picture he posted of his is so nice! I've seen some really unattractive olive egger hens (in pics, not person!), but dheltzel's are pretty. I'd also be interested in people's project Olive Eggers, the ones that are past F1 and are laying even darker or more unusual olive eggs. At the hatcheries, or I think Meyer, at least, they are always F1. I'll be sure to report back on egg color when the Meyer pullet starts laying!

As for waiting until spring, maybe you know this already, but it's best to go online around January or February (whenever the Meyer catalog comes out, can't remember now) so that you have the greatest chance of getting some of the harder to get breeds (BLRW for sure is in this category) hatching on the same day. You might have to place the order in February for April, but at least you'll be set. They are not show quality, for sure, but I have been overall very happy with my birds from Meyer over the years--generally healthy, low maintenance, and good layers. I have a 7 year old EE hen that is my last survivor of my original 3 hens, and she is still active and healthy and lays probably 3-4 eggs a week (except now, since she just molted). I lost another hen from that same group earlier this year to a predator--a silver laced wyandotte--who was also still laying and very healthy before she was attacked. My only complaint about Meyer lately is that I have had a string of bad luck with sexed pullets turning out to be boys. I ordered 11 pullets from Meyer this year, and definitely 2 and possibly 3 of them are cockerels (still holding out hope on the 5 week old lavender orpington). Before that, I had ordered about 10 pullets over the course of several years, and only one of those turned out to be a roo. I'd love to get more birds from good breeders, but the appeal of getting sexed pullets of many breeds pretty much at will and close to home has kept drawing me back to Meyer.

Very interesting @hyzenthlay , have you ever considered shipping from MyPetChicken to get an F2/F3 Olive Egger? The blurb on their website says they use "Some F2" Olive Eggers in their breeding.

 

[dheltzel]

Hi @hyzenthlay , yes I think that might be our best option next year when the breeds we want hatch on the same day. I see Olive Eggers are available at Meyer hatchery now https://www.meyerhatchery.com/productinfo.a5w?prodID=OEGS if you want some. Or do you prefer to buy from a top breeder like @dheltzel because you know then that you'll be buying quality? The reviews for the Olive Eggers on the Meyer hatchery site are quite mixed. Most reviews reporting blue and brown eggs after purchasing F1 Olive Eggers.

Olive Eggers never breed true. They are a hybrid and a genetic mix. If you cross an OE with a blue egg layer, you will get some shade of green. That is what I did this year, and the resulting F2's have been laying dark green eggs, but I don't trust that too much for the future, that's why I'm doing a direct hybrid, to ensure the eggs will be truly olive in color (or as close as I can get being sure).

 

[dheltzel]

Very cool Dennis! Depending on how the kids are behaving we'll try and make it.
Is this the place?

Yes, that is the place, 2 to 4 PM. I will be there early of course.

 

[dheltzel]

@dheltzel , have you made OE with the legbars and welbars before? I thought welbars laid fairly standard brown eggs, which would mean crossing them with a legbar should produce an EE, with a greenish blue egg rather than an olive one--is that not right? Or do your welbars lay darker, more welsummer like eggs?

My Welbars were derived from dark egg laying Welsummers (from Whitmore Farms) and their eggs are indistinguishable from pure Welsummers or (my) Black Copper Marans. The OE's I produced this year are F2's, 3/4 Legbar and 1/4 Welsummer. I was worried they would not be very dark, but the pics my customers have sent me are nice and dark. I'm sure they will fade some, as all dark egg layers do.

I have a single Rhodebar in my Legbar pen to produce light green egg layers, if there is demand for them, otherwise we will eat those eggs.

 

[kie4]

Olive Eggers never breed true. They are a hybrid and a genetic mix. If you cross an OE with a blue egg layer, you will get some shade of green. That is what I did this year, and the resulting F2's have been laying dark green eggs, but I don't trust that too much for the future, that's why I'm doing a direct hybrid, to ensure the eggs will be truly olive in color (or as close as I can get being sure).

Have you ever made it to the F3 stage?
The chart I posted is very interesting the way the F2 Olive Egger outcome is predictable. Then when F1 crosses with F2/F3 the outcome is a whole range of possibilities.

 

[dheltzel]

Have you ever made it to the F3 stage?
The chart I posted is very interesting the way the F2 Olive Egger outcome is predictable. Then when F1 crosses with F2/F3 the outcome is a whole range of possibilities.

I would not put a whole lot of faith in that pretty chart. I've seen it before, I'm not sure who made it up, but not someone with a deep understanding of egg color genetics. When you take a disparate cross like this and breed for varied outcome as a goal, the end result would be considered a "barnyard mix" by most people. Easter Eggers from hatcheries fall into this category. I like being able to say with certainty what color egg a chick will lay (and also that it will lay eggs and not end up crowing). Knowing at least those 2 traits makes a chick very desirable. It's nice to be able to say if it will have dark legs, or muffs, or a crest, but the egg color and gender are key.

I have seen claims of autosexing olive eggers that breed true for olive eggs. That is not an unattainable goal, but developing a line if chickens that consistently lays olive eggs is a lot harder than it sounds because both the blue egg and brown egg genes are dominant, meaning they hide the non-blue (white) very effectively. Dominant egg colors are extra hard to fix because you can't tell how many copies a male has (they could have none, how would you know since they will never lay an egg). The only way to be sure you have homozygous blue male (needed to get all olive egg laying daughters) is to do test matings to a non-blue egg laying hen and raise all the pullets to point of lay. If any lay brown (or white) eggs instead of olive, the rooster is heterozygous and not what you want. It could take years, and hundreds of chicks being raised and evaluated, before you could prove you had the real deal, and getting a proven homozygous hen is nearly as much work, you also have to do test matings with her to a white egg laying breed roo and see if any chicks lay white eggs. So call me skeptical about the people claiming to have lines of true breeding autosexing olive eggers.

OTOH, I can guarantee that the F1 of a Legbar x Welbar will lay olive eggs and will be 100% autosexing. Future generations will produce some olive eggs and some brown eggs, but you will never be able to tell by looking at the chick what color egg you will get. They would be autosexing Easter Eggers, not a bad thing perhaps, but not what I'm looking to produce when for the same effort I can produce 100% olive egger pullets.

I'm not trying to put down anyone's efforts to make hybrids and enjoy the results, I'm just trying to explain why I don't breed toward those goals. I look forward to a not -to-distant future when I can send a blood sample from a bird to get a DNA profile that can tell me exactly what the genotype is. That would make the huge problem I described above be reduced to a very simple genetic screening to find the right 2 birds to pair up.

What I did to create Welbars was far easier because I was only concerned about genes that were recessive or partially dominant, so it was easy to tell the genotype of the birds in each step.

Sorry if all that is confusing. I know not everyone is as "into" the genetics of chickens as I am.