The Olive-Egger thread!

[Kate McKae]

I think the thing I like best about olive Eggers is not having to figure out a seperate pen. They can go in with marans or ams and there will be no mistaking the eggs lol

 

[DMRippy]

I think the thing I like best about olive Eggers is not having to figure out a seperate pen. They can go in with marans or ams and there will be no mistaking the eggs lol

I will eventually do that when I have more than two olive eggers. They are in with my Marans roos and I have an extra Marans roo sooooooo he is just making olive eggers to keep him busy for now.

 

[chickeneyfoot]

So, after you mix a am with a marans. whats the breeding strategy afterwards?

 

[Illia]

It's all up to you. Each direction you go gives you different results, but here's a little diagram that may help -





Basically it is saying that if you take the first gen Olive Egger and breed it to a dark layer (Marans) again, you'll get much darker eggs but they'll be more on the brown side. Do it again and you're eventually going to get back to the dark reddish browns. In between and like seen in those collection photos, you may get some neat true chocolate colors too instead of red shades.

Cross the F1 back to a blue layer and you're headed back to a green shade of egg, do it again and you're back to blues.

Cross the F1 to another F1 and you're going to get anything and everything from normal olive green to normal dark reddish brown to anything else, including blue, mint green, green/brown speckled, avacado skin green, emu egg turquoise, etc. But you need to hatch out a lot of girls because the chances for some of those color options are slim, so it takes patience and mass batches to wait til laying age. The chart there shows if you went the most GREEN route possible, breeding for a bird carrying homozygous, pure blue as well as homozygous, pure dark reddish brown.

 

[roncrna]

Thanks for sharing the chart and explaining it Illia. As soon as my F1s start laying I plan on breeding them to a Maran to get the deep olive color.

 

[Christie Rhae]

It's all up to you. Each direction you go gives you different results, but here's a little diagram that may help -





Basically it is saying that if you take the first gen Olive Egger and breed it to a dark layer (Marans) again, you'll get much darker eggs but they'll be more on the brown side. Do it again and you're eventually going to get back to the dark reddish browns. In between and like seen in those collection photos, you may get some neat true chocolate colors too instead of red shades.

Cross the F1 back to a blue layer and you're headed back to a green shade of egg, do it again and you're back to blues.

Cross the F1 to another F1 and you're going to get anything and everything from normal olive green to normal dark reddish brown to anything else, including blue, mint green, green/brown speckled, avacado skin green, emu egg turquoise, etc. But you need to hatch out a lot of girls because the chances for some of those color options are slim, so it takes patience and mass batches to wait til laying age. The chart there shows if you went the most GREEN route possible, breeding for a bird carrying homozygous, pure blue as well as homozygous, pure dark reddish brown.

Awesome! An olive egger cheat sheet! Printed and saved!!

 

[mstricer]

Look for wynette on here and her avatar. She got some crazy looking eggs on her first attempt. They are nice.

 

[dfdesigns]

Does anybody have photos of Black Ameraucana x French Black Copper Marans chicks? I'm trying to see what I've hatched... I'll have pictures this afternoon!

 

[spunkychickenmomma]

It's all up to you. Each direction you go gives you different results, but here's a little diagram that may help -





Basically it is saying that if you take the first gen Olive Egger and breed it to a dark layer (Marans) again, you'll get much darker eggs but they'll be more on the brown side. Do it again and you're eventually going to get back to the dark reddish browns. In between and like seen in those collection photos, you may get some neat true chocolate colors too instead of red shades.

Cross the F1 back to a blue layer and you're headed back to a green shade of egg, do it again and you're back to blues.

Cross the F1 to another F1 and you're going to get anything and everything from normal olive green to normal dark reddish brown to anything else, including blue, mint green, green/brown speckled, avacado skin green, emu egg turquoise, etc. But you need to hatch out a lot of girls because the chances for some of those color options are slim, so it takes patience and mass batches to wait til laying age. The chart there shows if you went the most GREEN route possible, breeding for a bird carrying homozygous, pure blue as well as homozygous, pure dark reddish brown.

Thanks so much for posting Illia! My first set of oliver eggers (Welsummer x lavender Ameracuana) were hatched January 5th. So it will be a bit before they are laying, but I wondered what I needed to breed them back to for the rich dark olive shade. I no longer have the Welsummer rooser. I now have a French Black Copper Marans. I have a broody setting on 5 "test" eggs from this rooster with the same hens to just see what I would come up with. I am running out of room for my experiments!

 

[dfdesigns]

Here's some chick pictures; just taken. Any ideas on gender?


#1: Blue or Black Ameraucana over French Black Copper Marans



#2: Blue or Black Ameraucana over French Black Copper Marans



#3: Blue or Black Ameraucana over French Black Copper Marans; has white spot on head.



#4: Blue or Black Ameraucana over Cuckoo Marans... pullet!

Thanks for looking!