The Olive-Egger thread!

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Good reminder!

 

[seventreesfarm]

My Oliver roo is turning out beautiful!
He's either a cross of Donna's or my BCM x wheaten-ish EE's. I'm leaning towards mine, due to naked legs, but who knows. I haven't been able to get pictures because they are in bed when I get home, or the weather has been rotten on the weekends, but this weekend for sure. He's too pretty not t oshare.

Today I nabbed one each of the best-conformed cuckoo marans and welsummer hens and put them in with him. I'm not set up for trap nesting, but I should be able to tell who laid what. If the eggs look as nice as the hens, I'll leave them in. This weekend I'll grab another one of each hen and check their eggs. Then leave them together for a while before I start collecting eggs to hatch.

Then wait 6 months to see what those babies lay.

The other line I have going is my BCM roo. He's not breed standard, but he has good conformation and disposition. Once my batch of pullets start laying maturely, he'll get crossed with them. I sold all but one of the cockerels from that batch, and am left with 6 ladies. One looks obviously like a BCM x barred rock, so she'll go in the laying flock, not breeding. The other gals have good conformation, great facial hair, and pea combs, so depending on what their eggs look like, they'll be used for breeding.

I'm hoping to select for both conformation and pretty eggs, and work on production and winter laying later. We actually sold most of our commercial laying flock and abandoned our poor customers to start playing around with Olivers

There is a great market in our area for just-laying pullets, and ones with olive eggs will sell even better. It costs around $8 to raise a hatchery pullet-run hen to laying. And around $12 to raise straight-run home hatched chicks once the cockerels are factored in. That price is variable though. But we could easily sell Oliver hens, that are actually laying, for $25-35.

 

[seventreesfarm]

Here's Sasquatch:



And 2 of the 3 red/blue pullets:


I love the edging on the feathers:


Blue pullet, hints of copper showing up, but no facial hair:


Black pullet with awesome fluffy face:

 

[SeattleLeah]

Here's Sasquatch:



And 2 of the 3 red/blue pullets:


I love the edging on the feathers:

Incredibly beautiful birds, I am so jealous! Are they first gen olive eggers?

 

[seventreesfarm]

They should be. The pullets haven't started laying yet, but when they do we'll pull the best ones out to pen with our BCM roo. I love those welsummer-looking pullets. Can't wait to see their eggs and babies.

I just hope the Oliver roo has some blue egg genes. Guess we'll find out when his babies start to lay. The 2 hens we put with him still haven't settled much yet, and we'll be adding 2 more tomorrow. My empty incubator is calling

 

[roncrna]

FINALLY! After 10 long months, My OE decided to give me an egg. That's the longest I have ever waited on an egg. Crazy chicken.





EE on left, OE in middle, Wyandotte on right

 

[Lrkel]

I didn't get an answer about what my chicks from a Welsummer rooster x Wheaten ameraucana would look like. I want to use the chicken calculator but it's not user friendly to me. Would the welsummer be a gold duckwing for color? I'm looking at the pictures because the codes are confusing. It's the only one I see that looks close.

 

[seventreesfarm]

FINALLY! After 10 long months, My OE decided to give me an egg. That's the longest I have ever waited on an egg. Crazy chicken.

Pretty egg!
That is a long wait though.

 

[seventreesfarm]

I didn't get an answer about what my chicks from a Welsummer rooster x Wheaten ameraucana would look like. I want to use the chicken calculator but it's not user friendly to me. Would the welsummer be a gold duckwing for color? I'm looking at the pictures because the codes are confusing. It's the only one I see that looks close.

I'm planning to buy the $100 chicken color genetics book just so I can have a better clue how to plug what into the calculator

 

[maryhysong]

I'm planning to buy the $100 chicken color genetics book just so I can have a better clue how to plug what into the calculator

ouch. I think I'd just do the cross and see what happens ;-)