Successful experiment!!

[aart]

Several months back I bred my Easter egger rooster to my black maran and my heritage reds. The first part of the experiment was to see if older refrigerator eggs would hatch or not well 23 out of 24 eggs hatched one wasn't fertile so that worked and the eggs were from a day old to 3 weeks old! So I hatched my little mutts then decided to try the wing feather test to see what's a roo or a hen I banded all the roosters and maybe it was luck but I got all that right. Well I had to many birds so I have them all away except one maran ee hen mix and one red ee hen mix. The red mix actually turned out to be a white hen. In the hopes of getting an olive egger today I finally got the first egg from my maran ee hen and it's indeed an olive egg!!! My red ee hen hasn't laid I don't think if she has it was a dark brown maran looking egg but I don't think that was hers I'll keep y'all posted!!

Nice olive!
Was the EE hen a blue layer?
I use a Welsummer cock over blue laying EE's and have gotten some pretty nice olive-ish eggs from the pullets.
Have also had a broody hatch a refrigerated egg that was 13 days old.

 

[yellowherb]

I believe that if you do a google search, you will find a study that correlates with chilled eggs resulting in increased percentage of pullets. But the over all hatch rate is decreased because the male embryo is not as strong, so does not develop.

Awesome, I think I'll set refrigerated eggs from now on unless I need more roosters.

 

[cmobley]

All of my hens are heritage reds except one black maran. My black maran and we rooster made the hen that lays olive eggs. My white hen which is a heritage red and her daddy is the same ee rooster lays little blueish colored eggs.