The Olive-Egger thread!

[daps2000]

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Thank you

 

[daps2000]

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Is she a cross between an Americana/Welsummer???? I hope so ... because I am going to start collecting eggs tomorrow ... if this is so!!!

 

[onthespot]

F1, 2, 3, 4,... it is sort of meaningless to me with what I am working on right now. Technically speaking I have F4 in my brooder right now, but some of them are from the F1 hen, so are they F2 or F4?

I am not crossing to marans every generation. In fact, other than selecting out very weak egg color, single combs, solid colored hens and single barred roos, I am using every shade from khaki on to deep olive. I am selecting away from feathered legs.

My main effort right now is to fix type. My first effort was to get the barring gene set, barred pullets, double barred roo. I want to clean up the legs, get homozygous for pea combs and beards. Then when people buy eggs and cross them out, at least their F1's will ALL look like barred, bearded, pea combed birds and lay some shade of olive egg. What they do with them after that, totally up to them.

 

[Lensters]

You're the type of breeder I wanted to hear from. Are your "very weak egg colors" basically blue, brown and/or white? Can you tell that some have more brown or more blue than others? What percentage of these do you see? The egg you have pictured on your website might be from a double blue, double brown. It sure is pretty.

On a completely different topic, what did you use for the barring gene? While the birds on you website wouldn't be mistaken for SQ barred, the barring looks a lot cleaner than cuckoo.

Also, on your website you say "The advantage of the barring gene is once the trait is "set" and fully inherited to predictable patterns, you could sex the chicks and be able to use your time and money raising all pullets instead of cockerels." Are you talking about day old chicks or when their main feathers come in at week 3 & 4?

Oh, I forgot to answer your question. Breeding an F1 back to an F4 results in an F2, usually with a comment.

The generation identifiers are used to understand the percentages. It is like selecting for the double barred can be done in F2 and will breed true in F3. I'm guessing that only a lot of experience is going to achieve that for these combinations of egg colors as it probably isn't as obvious as barring. However, I don't know this so that is what I'm asking about.

edited to ask more questions and add the answer to the other question

 

[onthespot]

My "weak" eggs have too much strong blue showing through, so they are not a total bust, they just need more brown. There is only one hen so far laying them, F3 if that makes any difference, LOL. Same "F" another hen lays a VERY GOOD dark olive egg. I can't seem to find my camera cable or I would post pics of today's eggs. Just about everyone laid today so it shows the spectrum, which is definitely skewed toward olive, NO brown, No white or super pale eggs.

 

[onthespot]

The barring, gene, I have to admit, I don't know. The original hen was a feedstore chick. Because her barring was sharper, I assume her bars came from a barred rock, not cuckoo. Then that hen was in with a bunch of marans, cuckoo, copper black, birchen, blue cuckoo, blue copper, plain black, so I have no idea what roos are the "baby daddy" In this case. I just hatched what I could when I got her home and selected the best I could and went from there. I wish I had some well thought out master plan, with careful records to share with you, but it is not the case. Mystery hen, bred by several mystery roosters, bought as an afterthought on a buying mission of another breed entirely. I liked her so well I wanted more. Originally I wanted to try to make barred Ameraucanas, but I was shot dead in the water after my first post on their official breed site so i decided to go the other way as far as I could, the darkest egg possible so there would never be any mistake of what my birds were about, wich was ANYTHING BUT Ameraucanas.

 

[daps2000]

blah ... is this true ... I thought someone said on there that I could use an americana roo ... to a Welsummer hen ... but then someone I trust ... sent me this email .. and I'm just trying to learn here ... thank your for your help...

I’m not sure about breeding Americauna roo over Welsummer hens. I think it’s suppose to be the other way around. The rooster is the one with the dark egg gene.

 

[Lensters]

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How many F3s or later do you have laying? One brown gene from a Marans should be enough to cover any color of blue enough to make it green (brown is a coating as you probably know) so are these probably just one or two blue genes? I do have experience with single blue gene EEs and their color is very washed out and looks something like haze over a big city. Pictures would be great!

 

[Lensters]

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Ah, I understand. It sounds like my EE pen where I have a purebred Gold Duckwing Araucana over a mix of Ameraucanas, blue egg laying EEs, Marans and a Welsummer X Cuckoo Marans. At hatch I separate the blue eggs and the dark brown eggs and sell them as blue egg laying EEs and olive egg laying EEs. So far I haven't kept an Olive Egger but I'm tempted to.

So how serious are you at making a new breed? Are you ready to go through the APA rigmarole with backup breeders, exhibition shows and multiple flocks that breed true? If so it would probably be wise to set the egg color with two of each egg color gene. Though I can understand if that is too hard and it wouldn't actually be required as you only have to breed true 50% of the time and as you can see from the stats I posted you should easily exceed that. Also you will need to go back to F1s from a SQ Barred Rock to get the proper barring (see the birds in this post.

 

[Lensters]

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No that isn't true, it is an old wives tail that the roo carries the gene for egg color. Both hen and roo carry a pair of egg color genes (actually two pair, one for brown coating and one for blue shells). Those pairs split to create germ cells which become eggs and sperm. When the eggs and sperm combine they create a new set of pairings that determine the new egg color.

Ask your friend this: If the hen didn't carry the gene for the colored egg then how would it lay a colored egg?