The Olive-Egger thread!

[Happy Chooks]

Quote:
If you are wanting to darken the olive, you can breed back to the Welsummer.

Breeding olive egger to olive egger, you increase your chances of getting brown eggs instead of olive.

 

[Illia]

Mrs. AK-Bird-Brain :

Interesting that this is the topic this morning... my OE laid a soft shell this morning, then spit out this... She's the one that I posted about earlier that lays very deep olive green eggs (BCMxAmer)...
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/6962_img_0002.jpg
You can see that it's a green egg with red ink on it...

LOVE weird colored eggs. I would love a little handful of girls who lay consistent to near consistent weird colored eggs.

And, I have just two months left until my OE's are of laying age!!!!

 

[livin-green]

Quote:
If you are wanting to darken the olive, you can breed back to the Welsummer.

Breeding olive egger to olive egger, you increase your chances of getting brown eggs instead of olive.

Forgive me--I'm learning, too. So, my question is this: If OE to OE does as you said, how do you get second generation OEs? Is it just a process of weeding out the brown gene? Seems like that would take a couple of generations, no??

 

[Goose and Fig]

Quote:
If you are wanting to darken the olive, you can breed back to the Welsummer.

Breeding olive egger to olive egger, you increase your chances of getting brown eggs instead of olive.

Forgive me--I'm learning, too. So, my question is this: If OE to OE does as you said, how do you get second generation OEs? Is it just a process of weeding out the brown gene? Seems like that would take a couple of generations, no??

From what we have been seeing pop up in the subsequent generations, it's best to breed them back to either a dark layer breed or a blue layer breed to keep the color "in the middle". Ruth has gotten some really nice super dark olive eggs, but thanks to her pics we were able to see that too many generations bred to a dark layer breed will take you back to dark brown eggs. So- what I plan to do...is take a look at my eggs and if they seem light, put the hen in with a wellie or marans roo, if they seem too brown, put them back in with the ameraucanas. It's just one of those things you have to do when working with 2 different egg color genes.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Quote:
Forgive me--I'm learning, too. So, my question is this: If OE to OE does as you said, how do you get second generation OEs? Is it just a process of weeding out the brown gene? Seems like that would take a couple of generations, no??

From what we have been seeing pop up in the subsequent generations, it's best to breed them back to either a dark layer breed or a blue layer breed to keep the color "in the middle". Ruth has gotten some really nice super dark olive eggs, but thanks to her pics we were able to see that too many generations bred to a dark layer breed will take you back to dark brown eggs. So- what I plan to do...is take a look at my eggs and if they seem light, put the hen in with a wellie or marans roo, if they seem too brown, put them back in with the ameraucanas. It's just one of those things you have to do when working with 2 different egg color genes.

Also with olive egger to olive egger mating, you have recessive genes, so theoretically, you could end up with blue layers, brown layers and some olive layers. I do know Ruth is experimenting with olive egger to olive egger mating because she's trying to get hers to breed true.

I have a multiple generation olive egger rooster from Ruth that I'm experimenting with (bred to pure Ameraucana hens), and I'm anxiously awaiting eggs from the offspring. The pullets are helping themselves to oyster shell, getting more vocal, but nothing yet.

ETA: for clarification.

 

[Wynette]

To me, it seems like it would be an easy procedure for OE to OE breeding; eventually (as in within two generations, I should think), you'd be able to easily weed out any brown-egg layers...as to the blue layers, well - olive is just a dilution of blue, so you will have light olive, darker olive, and olive in the middle. Of course, I could be wrong, and as we know, when you breed two crossbreds, your recessives jump right out, but they would be phenotypical at that point, so easy to remove from the line...at least that makes sense to me. Thoughts?

 

[Illia]

Haven't you bred Olive x Olive before Wynette? You'd be the one with the most experience to say in this, yes?

I always think of doing OE x OE a lot to make your eggs become more and more a weird golden color.

 

[hipeatall]

Quote:
Those golden colored eggs are awesome... I would love to have that recipe

!

 

[ruth]

Quote:
From what we have been seeing pop up in the subsequent generations, it's best to breed them back to either a dark layer breed or a blue layer breed to keep the color "in the middle". Ruth has gotten some really nice super dark olive eggs, but thanks to her pics we were able to see that too many generations bred to a dark layer breed will take you back to dark brown eggs. So- what I plan to do...is take a look at my eggs and if they seem light, put the hen in with a wellie or marans roo, if they seem too brown, put them back in with the ameraucanas. It's just one of those things you have to do when working with 2 different egg color genes.

Also with olive egger to olive egger mating, you have recessive genes, so theoretically, you could end up with blue layers, brown layers and some olive layers. I do know Ruth is experimenting with olive egger to olive egger mating because she's trying to get hers to breed true.

I have a multiple generation olive egger rooster from Ruth that I'm experimenting with (bred to pure Ameraucana hens), and I'm anxiously awaiting eggs from the offspring. The pullets are helping themselves to oyster shell, getting more vocal, but nothing yet.

ETA: for clarification.

I'm only just now trying to breed the olive egg laying hens to olive egger roosters (roos who hatched from olive eggs and have peacombs). I have 3 of them in the breeding pen. So I'll have to hatch some eggs and wait for them to grow up and lay eggs and see what it yields. Until now, every olive egg laying hen was bred back to the same pure BCM roos. So anyone who has chicks from olive eggs from me can know that the daddy was a pure BCM roo.

 

[Wynette]

Illia, nope - I've never bred olive egger to olive egger. For me, I just don't have the room for one more rooster, so I need to just use what I have so to speak. All the hatching eggs that I sell that are olive egger are first generation, and I hatch a few each year; they are put back into my Marans pen, which are very dark eggs, and so the offspring is 2nd generation.