The Olive-Egger thread!

[farmerChef]

Lol, guess so... We would love to go the ameracauna route, but im hesitant to buy one or two on account hatcherys sell EE labled as them... Figure for now we will screw around with our 3 EE's and our welsummer rooster... See how it goes... If we have no luck, maybe i'll try to find pure ameracauna and a breeder quality maran to go with her

most of the time if you ask what color the birds are you an find out if they are EEs or not. Most Ameraucana breeders keep their colors separate, like all other breeds/colors, and should always lay blue/sometimes green eggs. Most EE breeders just hav a mixed color flock and birds dont usually have a color pattern with a name. Look at (or ask for) pictures of their birds and eggs.

 

[Chickengirl47]

My 4 week old Barred EE's are crowing

I have a chick that looks like a Barred EE to! Here is a picture of Dustin. Any advice on his age would help.

He does crow.

This has to be one of the cutest little things I've ever seen! Is he as sweet as he looks?

Yep, he is very sweet. I love him.

He also has feathered legs.

 

[Hillschicks]

oops, I tought I was on the EE thread

Its all good, i appreciate the info you had... We are new to chickens last spring and are still trying to understand some of this... We are gonna see what happens with our EE's... If we dont get the results we desire after a few tries we will go back to trying to find a couple good ameracuana

 

[buckabucka]

Lol, guess so... We would love to go the ameracauna route, but im hesitant to buy one or two on account hatcherys sell EE labled as them... Figure for now we will screw around with our 3 EE's and our welsummer rooster... See how it goes... If we have no luck, maybe i'll try to find pure ameracauna and a breeder quality maran to go with her

I crossed my hatchery EE roo with a very dark laying Welsummer and got a nice olive egger. She looks just like a Welsummer, but with cheek tufts.
I got rid of that rooster because he attacked people and had fertility issues. I tried 2 hatches, 30 eggs total, and only 2 turned out to be fertile. One chick hatched and died, the other was miraculously a pullet with a nice olive egg.
No harm in experimenting if you have the room.

 

[Hillschicks]

Not only do we have the room, we have freezer space lol... Plus any excuse to build another coop is fine by me... The building and inventing is half the fun of chickens imo

 

[nicalandia]

Crossing an EE with a dark brown egg layer will give you an olive egger... My question, does it matter which is the roo and which is the hen???

Example...
EE roo + maran hen = olive egger
Maran roo + EE hen = olive egger
Both of those are correct??

for Olive Eggers I would preffer using EEs instead of Ameraucanas..why? well Ameraucanas lay blue eggs(should at least) and most EEs out there lay green eggs already(not Olive, but green) this means you will be at least a generation ahead if you use EEs instead of Ameraucanas, so what happens if the EE hen(always use EE hen as you know that she lays green eggs, you cant say the same for EE roosters) only has one copy of the blue egg gene? thats ok because all you need to do is keep the pea combed pullets. wait for them to start laying and watch your Olive eggs... also EEs have mare Utility traits to them than Ameraucanas, why? they are Hatchery birds and therefore they care more about how much eggs(money) the hens produce than how they look

 

[15littlem]

I was just thinking out loud for a minute. If it takes a blue egger x dark brown egger to get an olive egger, then what about a green egger x light brown or regular brown egger?

 

[maryhysong]

I was just thinking out loud for a minute. If it takes a blue egger x dark brown egger to get an olive egger, then what about a green egger x light brown or regular brown egger?

I have a little black EE girl who's mother was a Black Australorp and her daddy an EE. She lays a green egg with an olive overtone to it, whereas her hatchmate from an EExEE breeding lays a more purely green egg with bluish overtone. There's a picture of their two eggs in my blog post this morning; http://edible-garden.blogspot.com/2013/02/harvest-monday.html the Australorp girls egg is on the left and the EE's is on the right in the photo

 

[Stef82]

My Olive egger chicks. I have about 7 olive eggers

 

[Stef82]

More Olive eggers.

The lighter one in the back is a Welsummer/freedom ranger Cross


Cuddling up with his/her adoptive mother


Olive egger front, BCMs in the back (yawning)