Hi horsegirl,
I bought some pearl white Leghorns and some blue (think I got splash, actually) Andalusians to make blue egg layers, some cuckoo marans for the olive, along with the motley assortment you see in my signature line. They are hatchery birds, so I don't expect much from the Marans as far as dark brown egg color on their own, but it's OK.
We sell rainbow dozens of eggs. As many different colors as we can fit in the carton, including cream, blue, green and as many colors of brown as we can get. They are really pretty cartons, and people love them! Problem is, we guarantee at least two blue/green eggs per carton, and our MMM EEs lay medium sized eggs. That's OK legally, because the cartons are marked "mixed size," but I know that people really want cartons of large eggs so that they have consistency when they bake. Also, I would like to close the flock for biosecurity as much as possible.
Hence, the good layers of large-sized blue and green eggs project. To do this, I bought some EEs from two hatcheries (MMM and Meyer), the Leghorns, the Marans, and three purebred (but apparently poorly colored
) Ameraucanas--two hens and a roo. I also bought some Meyer EE and Barred Rock roo peeps. I have three BR and three EE roos. I'll narrow them down to one of each, and the rest will be dinner. I chose BR because they are my favorite hens and I increased the number of them in my flock with new peeps this year, so I'll breed some BR as well.
Plan is to let the pure Ameraucana roo run with the flock, and the other boys live in cages. I want a rooster in with the flock for all the good reasons to keep a rooster, and if he happens to father some blue/green egg layers when I expected pure BR for instance, it will still be OK because I can always use the EEs. He'll also be put into the chicken tractor sometimes for selective matings to make sure I get fertile eggs, since 50 hens to one rooster is a bit much.
I will do selective matings, both with the breeds I already have and with the best layers of the EEs I have. For instance, I have a MMM EE that lays a 61 gram bright green egg. I told my husband to be extra nice to her, because she's definitely getting bred.
Once I have the hens from these selected pairings, then I'll start gathering and weighing their eggs. I think it will take a few years and some really intense record keeping, but hopefully I'll have my own strain of good layers that lay large blue and green and olive eggs.
Whew! Anyone see any obvious problems with this plan? I have bred horses and dogs and cows before, but not chickens. The nice part of this plan is that it doesn't matter what color the birds come out, so that's one variable I don't have to track. The other nice thing is that since I'm not going for type, every hen I get is useful as an egg layer for the farm even if I don't breed her.
