The Olive-Egger thread!

[Frosty]

Quote:
Ahhh... and there was the answer as to why they weren't sex linked. I had a barred roo with the EE hen. And now that you mention some solid colored feathers, it jogged my memory and the roosters did have a stray rust colored feather here and there.

So if I cross the barred EE hens to a BCM I should get barred roos? I wonder if I should keep any to cross back and get a line of barred olive eggers going.

Thank you for the explanation!

 

[DMRippy]

Quote:
Ahhh... and there was the answer as to why they weren't sex linked. I had a barred roo with the EE hen. And now that you mention some solid colored feathers, it jogged my memory and the roosters did have a stray rust colored feather here and there.

So if I cross the barred EE hens to a BCM I should get barred roos? I wonder if I should keep any to cross back and get a line of barred olive eggers going.

Thank you for the explanation!

Yes that should work for sex links. Do you have Cuckoo Marans? If you did you could use your barred EE with the CM and have barred olive eggers

 

[Frosty]

Quote:
I had a CM rooster, but culled almost all of my older birds. But If I get barred roosters by crossing barred hens with a BCM, I could breed the sons back to the mother and do some line breeding. I have 4 barred hens, one has a straight comb. If I put them in with the BCM I'll be able to pick which eggs I set.

 

[DMRippy]

Quote:
I had a CM rooster, but culled almost all of my older birds. But If I get barred roosters by crossing barred hens with a BCM, I could breed the sons back to the mother and do some line breeding. I have 4 barred hens, one has a straight comb. If I put them in with the BCM I'll be able to pick which eggs I set.

That works too

 

[Frosty]

These are my olive eggs... and this wasn't a planned breeding. I had a bunch of different roosters in there and just hatched the eggs for fun. I had to turn the flash off on the camera, it was making the eggs look more of a khaki color. On my computer this is pretty close to the color they are. The eggs on the left are from my BCM.

 

[Mrs. Fluffy Puffy]

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Gorgeous eggs Frosty!

My OE girls are FINALLY, I repeat FINALLY starting to lay!! So happy! I have at least 2, maybe 3-4 OE's laying and then some new brown and blue eggs as well...still haven't figured out who is laying what eggs. Hopefully I can find out who is laying what.

HappyChooks, the new Olive girls that are laying are from you..three of them anyway!

~Aspen

 

[jeremy]

Look what I got today!

 

[flgardengirl]

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OMG there must be something in the air...I got an egg very similar to that from one of my OE girls today. It was a greenish bluish grey. Really more blue gray than green and chalky like. I never got one like that before.

 

[DMRippy]

I have 2 olive eggers. They laid a pretty green/olive color egg. I moved them to the new breeding pens and the egg color has changed to a more brown color. Anybody else had egg color changes like that? Could it be the weather, it has been wet and colder.... maybe it is just me

 

[smoothmule]

I am so ready for spring. My Araucana's are laying and fertile and I'm hatching them now. I thought I'd raise a few olive eggers this spring. I have 4 Cuckoo Maran hens, one is the French type, and I put 2 hens in my white Araucana pen and 2 in my black Araucana pen. Both pens have a tufted and a clean faced rooster, all rumpless. The last time I did this cross, every chick was rumpless, some had tufts and all had pea combs. These chicks will also be sex linked. I can't wait to see what I get this time. The previous rooster was a birchin color. I've seen some gorgeous white to barred cross roosters and if they're tufted and rumpless, wow. I don't plan to keep more than a few hens for myself.

A good friend at work got all the last ones I raised a couple of years ago and a neighborhood pack of dogs raided her yard this fall and nearly wiped her out, all the hens and all but a couple roosters. She was heartbroken. She doesn't want another breed, her "girls" laid huge dark green eggs and were very good layers. Frenchie, my feather legged hen, had already been living in the white Araucana pen and she laid her first egg of the New Year today! So, into the bator it will go. I hope it's fertile, she's been in that pen a few weeks now. I just put the other Maran hens in the Araucana pens today and have now laid since late summer so I'm hoping some lights will get them going too.

We have usually eaten the Maran eggs but I have some standard Cochin pullets so when they start laying, I'll be able to use those for eating and hatch more Maran eggs so I'll probably have started chicks available in the spring. For more colors, I may look for some BCM's for my rooster Rudy, he's a gorgeous, huge Araucana rooster that is the same coloring so the chicks should be that color as well and rumpless.