The Olive-Egger thread!

[TurkeyMountainChickens]

Hi Julie -

I think you've got the genetics correct there. The blue egg gene is easy, since there is only one. However, it is my understanding that there are several different genes that can add brown to an egg.

A couple more more to consider:

If you breed two olive eggers together, you'll get 3/4 green (olive) eggers, and 1/4 brown eggers.
If you breed the olive egger back to a blue egger, you'll get mostly green eggs, but not as dark olive as you had before.
If you breed your olive eggers back to a very dark egg layer, like a Marans, you should get 1/2 very dark olive and 1/2 brown egg layers.

I hope you find homes for your boys!

 

[hipeatall]

Quote:
I thought if you breed two olive eggers (both w/ pea combs) you get all (100%) olive egger offspring...
oh dear... am I going to have re-read the thread... again

 

[texasgal]

My roo is a Salmon Faverolles .. a tinted egg breed. It will be interesting to see what the offspring of his mating with my blue-eggers and my olive-eggers lay. I'm not doing special breeding, it just turned out that he is my roo .. lol.

Someone will have to go broody, though, cause I don't feel inclined to fire up the incubator anytime soon ..

 

[TurkeyMountainChickens]

Quote:
I thought if you breed two olive eggers (both w/ pea combs) you get all (100%) olive egger offspring...
oh dear... am I going to have re-read the thread... again

It depends on the genetic make-up of your olive eggers. In this case, the olive eggers are 1st generation crosses between EE (OO) and BCM (oo), so they will all be heterozygous for the blue egg gene (Oo). When you cross two of these, you get 1/4 two blue genes (OO), 1/2 one blue gene (Oo), and one half no blue gene (oo). Because the blue gene is dominant, you should have 3/4 of the pullets laying blue eggs, coated with brown to make green. The other 1/4 of the pullets will lay brown eggs.

If, on the other hand, you cross two olive eggers that are homozygous for the blue gene (OO), like the 1/4 you got above, then you will get 100% olive eggers.

 

[TurkeyMountainChickens]

I should add about the pea combs - pea comb is dominant to single, so the first generation cross is Pp and will have pea combs. However, because the pea comb is an incomplete dominant, they may be funny looking pea combs with a larger central ridge (some good examples on this thread).

If you have second generation olive eggers, you should be able to identify those that have two dominant alleles (PP) because they will have smaller, more normal looking, pea combs. Given that the pea comb gene is tightly linked to the blue egg gene, these birds will probably also be homozygous for the blue egg gene (PP OO), and crossing them *should* give near 100% olive eggers.



*edited for spelling!

 

[pinkchick]

Hi everyone!

So my first Olive egger has started to lay....I guess I was expecting a darker egg than this....does this color look about right for an OE and do each generations eggs get darker? I had to wash it off when I brought it out of the coop...somebody smashed another egg right next to it, it had beautiful dark brown spots on it before I washed it off.

Here it is on the left next to an AM egg for comparison. Thanks in advance!

 

[alicefelldown]

Quote:
What birds did you use to make your OE?

 

[pinkchick]

Hi Alice!

I used my Blue AM hen and a very dark blue copper Marans rooster.

 

[onthespot]

The color may darken up over time. One of my "olive eggers" lays a nearly blue egg. Full sister to the one that lays the darkest egg. You could still cross her back on an olive egger or marans from very dark eggs lines. Or make breakfast. SOME of those eggs gotta go in the fridge, don't they? LOL. Someitmes I let girls hang around that don't "fit" anywhere and just use their eggs for cooking.

 

[pinkchick]

Thanks Spot! I did notice a nice blue egg under the brownish coating when I washed it off, accidentally got a little over zealous and wiped it down to the blue shell. It is a very pretty blue underneath. I have 2 more OE gals that should start laying anyday as well, hoping one of them lay a little darker egg. If not, like you said breed them back. Breed them back to a Marans or an OE roo, either will darken the egg color right? Thanks again!
Off topic for one second.......How is Tipsy doing? Ok back on topic.