The EE braggers thread!!!

[ChickNmamma]

I really hope the plainer one is a pullet. She has a very narrow comb.

About what age do you think I'll know?

It will be very obvious about 8 weeks old - the combs start getting very red on the boys and shortly thereafter I believe the adult feather pattern shows up. Your brown one does look like a girl so far.

Quote: You got it right! It doesn't matter which parent the gene comes from, but it is easier to see if it is there on the hens... If the boy is from a blue/green/olive egg he will carry one for sure. If you cross them and get a boy from a blue egg, you can use him back over his blue egg laying mother and perhaps get the double dose of O/O (blue egg gene) for future generations.

The only other consideration is if the blue egg gene carrying parent has one or two copies of the blue egg gene - that is the only way it would skew things one way or the other. Most of the Auracana/Ameraucanas have two copies, but that is not a given. If you want a nice array of colors I would keep one Auracana rooster, that way you can make sure you have the blue egg gene somewhere to replenish. I would keep one Barnvelder rooster for the dark side.. of course I am sort of partial to the way they look

 

[eddiejrnkendall]

Here are the 3 EE (green layers) chicks I got from the feed store for Mother's Day. They are 5 weeks right now, I can't wait to see them fully grown! We also have BPR & Red Star's but I love how these 3 look so different, I can actually tell them apart. They aren't as lovey-dovey as my others though. Maybe they will come around

 

[shanadienne]

Wow, it's amazing how much they change colors after a molt. Did he have any brown or red on his wings when he was white? Mine has no color at all, just white and black.

I *think* he didn't have any colors around that age, but I don't remember and I didn't take many pictures of those chicks as they grew up. I just have the one small low-quality picture and it's mostly from the front. He had some markings on him but it doesn't look like there are any colors.



He's the white one in the back, the white one in the front happens to be Dorothy.

Malcolm looked completely white and black for a while, and the only bit of color was if you looked beneath her outer feathers. They looked gray, but there was a slight reddish-brown tint to them.

 

[Bens-Hens]

Very cool *someday soon* hahahaha

Thank you for the help, we have a little time before we have to make a choice, but it's down to 2x Araucana, one 1x Araucana and 1x BV. I will be back with pictures of our labor when the time comes!

 

[shanadienne]

Chickens are good at chicken math too.. hatching 17 chicks out of 15 eggs and having one left over is pretty good...

And yes, he was probably O/o, but you don't know what the White EE has unless you breed her to an o/o rooster and one of the daughters lay a brown egg. If they all lay green, then she is O/O. If approx half lay green she is O/o. However, if none of Rex's daughters lay green - did they at least come out of a green/blue egg? Because if they did somebody shudda gotten a copy from their mom....

Malcom's brother looks like my EE roo - I gave him away when I sold 4 hens. He had no beard/muffs so he lost that somewhere, he had a clean shave. I wasn't sure he carried O either... He did have green legs and a pea comb though.

Malcolm lays a light/dull green egg; all the other girls lay plain light brown. And their mother was a Rhode Island Red, so all hatched from brown eggs and got no fun genes from her.

Kirk has a ridiculous comb. It's a bit like if a single comb decide to split in three. Tall and thick, slightly floppy because it's so big. Combs in the whole group were weird...

 

[ChickNmamma]

Quote:
So you only have the O gene with Malcolm. However, it sounds like Kirk might have a modified pea comb - so he probably carries one copy of O because the O gene is closely linked to the pea comb gene. They can be separated (I have an Isbar and they have single combs) but they usually stay together.

Here's hoping the next generation gives you some nice green eggs! Use that White EE and put the O back in Eggs!

 

[Penny Hen]

Malcolm lays a light/dull green egg; all the other girls lay plain light brown. And their mother was a Rhode Island Red, so all hatched from brown eggs and got no fun genes from her.

Kirk has a ridiculous comb. It's a bit like if a single comb decide to split in three. Tall and thick, slightly floppy because it's so big. Combs in the whole group were weird...

OK with an outrageous description like that we need PICTURES! That just sounds too cool!

 

[SD Bird Lady]

OK with an outrageous description like that we need PICTURES! That just sounds too cool!

x2

 

[annewandering]

My easter eggers are getting so big! They are about six and a half weeks old now but look grown up!

 

[shanadienne]

OK with an outrageous description like that we need PICTURES! That just sounds too cool!

Now I'm worried he won't look as cool as you want him to look.

This is him when he was a few months old; his comb hadn't reached full size but it was already larger than his brothers's and father's combs.



These are more recent:

Kirk's in the back on the far left; it shows its size in relation to his head. (And the rooster in the foreground whose face didn't make it in the picture is his father.)


Every time he moves his head, his comb wobbles a little. Hence my calling it slightly floppy.


On the right side of his face, he has a few nubs that none of these pictures captured, but as you can see on his left (our right), he looks like he's trying to sprout an extra row.




Quote: ^I forgot to quote this in my post and I wanted to acknowledge I saw it but I didn't want to make two posts.

I waited until this part of my post to say it: This morning Malcolm got carried off by a predator, probably a fisher. She's gone.
If you're curious, I wrote what happened on my facebook page The Chickensphere; I don't really want to summarize it here. Beware, though, it's long.
The irony...

But we do still have Stevie the white easter egger. She and Kirk might make some pretty cool chicks.