The Olive-Egger thread!

[matt81c]

My first try with breeding and incubating eggs got me two olive Eggers and I have four more who haven't started laying yet.Breed a bunch of brown layers with an americana roo.My first two are white birds that are laying the others are brown and one is like a black white mixed hoping they lay the same as well.Sold prolly 30 chicks this summer regular size and 11 that were crossed with a silky.Some people may get a shock when green eggs start popping out but I let them know in advance that it could happen.

 

[Olive Oil]

Usually, an OE is an EE that lays dark green eggs.

My Olive Eggers are Marans Ameracauna crosses. But there are several other breeds that can be crossed to make OE's. I do have Easter eggers as well. Your standard EE will not lay "olive" green eggs.

 

[Olive Oil]

"Pumpkin" My young Ameracauna roo. Very excited to see how the OE's from he and my Birchen Marans turn out! I really didn't want another roo, but made room for this pretty boy.

 

[aart]

Quote: But an EE crossed with a brown egg layer might turn out an OE...I've got one in my coop just started laying, hatched her late winter, out of an EE roo over an Amberlink hen.

 

[ronott1]

My Olive Eggers are Marans Ameracauna crosses. But there are several other breeds that can be crossed to make OE's. I do have Easter eggers as well. Your standard EE will not lay "olive" green eggs.

I have OEs that are Cream Legbar x Crele Penedesenca. They are not in the Ameraucana world so EE does on really apply.

The Ameraucana folks call any chicken that does not meet the APA Standard for Ameraucana EEs so OEs that are bred from Ameraucanas would be a type of EE to them. EEs can lay green eggs, which would DQ them As Ameraucana even if they met one of the standards in other ways.

It does not matter to me though. I think they are all great and I like the variety of egg colors from the EEs and OEs. One of my OEs has been laying a grey egg.

Very nice!

 

[matt81c]

I shouldve kept my americana roo.All I have gotten from him was hens maybe it was my incubator as I usually lost 1/3 of my eggs.But it was a cheap secondhand Styrofoam one.I didn't care for the hens at first knowing now I could get olive Eggers and females I could've hatched and sold more.Next year I'm hatching deleware partridge rocks and maybe barred rocks.I also have 7 welsummer hens but no roo yet.My americana was great until he started acting sorta mean then he had to go.

 

[hotlipshens]

"Pumpkin" My young Ameracauna roo. Very excited to see how the OE's from he and my Birchen Marans turn out! I really didn't want another roo, but made room for this pretty boy.

I don't believe your pretty boy is an ameraucana but a mixed breed :-(

 

[Olive Oil]

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.

Love this chart! I have been trying to figure something out, maybe you can help. I keep reading that hybrids don't "breed true" so when you want to produce the hybrid offspring again, you cannot just cross the hybrids with other hybrids, you have to go back to crossing the purebreds again. Is this true for OE's? If I cross an OE to an OE, will the chicks produced be OE's? Say I cross 2, 2nd gen OE's, will all chicks be OE? Thanks for looking!

 

[Olive Oil]

I have OEs that are Cream Legbar x Crele Penedesenca. They are not in the Ameraucana world so EE does on really apply.

The Ameraucana folks call any chicken that does not meet the APA Standard for Ameraucana EEs so OEs that are bred from Ameraucanas would be a type of EE to them. EEs can lay green eggs, which would DQ them As Ameraucana even if they met one of the standards in other ways.

It does not matter to me though. I think they are all great and I like the variety of egg colors from the EEs and OEs. One of my OEs has been laying a grey egg.

Very nice!

Agreed. Would you still call your "gray egger" an olive egger, or are you going to make another confusing category for her? Would love to see pics of those eggs!

 

[Olive Oil]

I don't believe your pretty boy is an ameraucana but a mixed breed :-(

Why would that be?