oh yess. Ameraucana X almost any single comb will throw some with straight combs and they tend to lay brown. Have a bunch of EE x Welsummers that lay some shade of brown. suspect dad might have only had one blue gene and one brown. Also have some EE xWellie crosses that look just like Wellies but with muffs and beards; some with single combs and some with modified peas, most laid brown, some light olive.
It all depends on the Egg coloring DNA of each parent bird that make your F1 cross. First off Earlobe color and comb type do not equal egg color. It just happens to be that we humans have bred most brown layers (but not all brown layers) to have red earlobes and most white egg layers to have white earlobes for instance, but you can easily have red earlobe hen that lays white eggs or a white earlobe bird that lays brown. Pea Comb is DNA strand wise is near the gene that creates blue eggs but does not determine egg colour, that is why there are Straight Comb birds that lay Blue/Green Eggs. On top of all that there are genes that block the browning genes you need to get green, so if a bird has that you will get either blue or white eggs even if the bird is caring the brown genes, but in theory a few generations removed of only crossing descendants of the F1's you could have a brown/green layer pop up as all the recessive brown egg genes are hiding in the DNA. Avoid the Leghorn breeds they carry this gene for blocking brown genes if you want green eggs. So in theory you could breed any comb type you want and also breed for egg colour, also you could breed for a specific earlobe color, and many other traits. Now Pea Comb is dominant over Straight Comb so if both parents are PP you will have all Pea Comb chicks in the F1 generation regardless of what colour genes they carry for eggs, but if one bird is Straight and one Pea Comb in the F2 generations you should get a few Straight Combs but until they lay or you test the roos you have no idea for sure what DNA each bird carries for egg colour. The only way to know for sure what a hen will lay is to see it, and the only way to see a roos DNA is to breed him to a hen you know the DNA of and then see what his daughters lay. Shinny Egg gene makes your eggs look darker in my opinion.
Hope that helps.I have some olive eggers (at least I'm hoping) that will start laying around August.
I have two "main roosters", one is a welsummer/EE cross and the other is a cuckoo marans. The chick in the back has barring and I believe it is a pullet. I know her mother is an EE. Is it probable that her father is the CM?
It all depends on the Egg coloring DNA of each parent bird that make your F1 cross. First off Earlobe color and comb type do not equal egg color. It just happens to be that we humans have bred most brown layers (but not all brown layers) to have red earlobes and most white egg layers to have white earlobes for instance, but you can easily have red earlobe hen that lays white eggs or a white earlobe bird that lays brown. Pea Comb is DNA strand wise is near the gene that creates blue eggs but does not determine egg colour, that is why there are Straight Comb birds that lay Blue/Green Eggs. On top of all that there are genes that block the browning genes you need to get green, so if a bird has that you will get either blue or white eggs even if the bird is caring the brown genes, but in theory a few generations removed of only crossing descendants of the F1's you could have a brown/green layer pop up as all the recessive brown egg genes are hiding in the DNA. Avoid the Leghorn breeds they carry this gene for blocking brown genes if you want green eggs. So in theory you could breed any comb type you want and also breed for egg colour, also you could breed for a specific earlobe color, and many other traits. Now Pea Comb is dominant over Straight Comb so if both parents are PP you will have all Pea Comb chicks in the F1 generation regardless of what colour genes they carry for eggs, but if one bird is Straight and one Pea Comb in the F2 generations you should get a few Straight Combs but until they lay or you test the roos you have no idea for sure what DNA each bird carries for egg colour. The only way to know for sure what a hen will lay is to see it, and the only way to see a roos DNA is to breed him to a hen you know the DNA of and then see what his daughters lay. Shinny Egg gene makes your eggs look darker in my opinion.
The more traits you breed for the more complicated your breeding becomes. Now some Comb types affect fertility, others create bigger nostrils, some help the birds cool down in heat, some are more susceptible to frost bite, or can help a roo in chicken society. Most Combs we humans breed for is because we thought it looked cool or made the birds more attractive or prevented a health problem. In theory if you understand the Comb DNA you can breed for a specific comb type and egg colour the same as some people breed for egg colour and feather colour.
What Comb type do you want to breed for?
There are at least 13 genes that affect the browning colour of eggs. There is a dominant gene that blocks browning and a recessive gene as well, so those are 2 genes you want to weed out of any Green Egg breeding program.
If you like wattles on your birds for instance the Pea Comb has to go as it causes the wattles to go bye bye. So what I am getting at is you can breed for different traits but you have to understand what those traits do to other traits you may want or not want, Pea Comb causes a dew lap for instance, thus if you don't want a dew lap you must breed for a comb type that does not have Pea Comb genes. A real example in futility: the Silkie Standard about a Walnut Comb with big Wattles for Beardless Silkies is an impossible genetics... Walnut is created by Pea Comb Genes, in time no doubt DNA reality will change the Standard. Silkies used to have a type of Rose comb, then Walnut became the standard but who ever wrote it didn't understand wattles go bye bye with Pea Comb DNA, so down the road after a lot of arguing no doubt the Beardless Silkie Standard will hopefully get changed to something genetically possible, the same thing happens to dog breed standards too. (sigh) People write standards sometimes that sound good but are not genetically possible because the DNA was not understood properly at the time.
Well I am not that knowledgable I am working on understanding the genetics a whole bunch better then I did in the past so that when I can have roos I can breed with intent and understand what I see the birds expressing in both dominate and recessive genes. I started with egg colour & any scientific studies I could find on that, that naturally branched into the lobe info and then combs and finally wattles. The gene that causes the nice beards and muffs is dominate and does make wattles smaller but does no block them like the Pea Comb Gene seems too. 2 Rose-comb (RR) genes lower fertility in males but do not affect the hen's fertility. Pea Comb birds are going to be PP/r+r+, p+P/r+r+ or Pp+/r+r+= 75% population while your Straight Comb will be p+p+/r+r+ = 25% and then your Blue Egger gene carriers would break down in a mixed population over a few gens to OO, o+O, Oo+ = 75% with the wild white egg type poping up o+o+ 25%. What I think is happening statistically is that as the majority of the chicks born have Pea Combs it seems like they are more likely to carry the big O gene, but seems is the word to remember, so with less Straight Combs born the few that are not O gene carries makes it seem like their chance of inheriting the gene is less just because population is less, when in fact they have the same chance as the Pea Combs to get the coveted gene.
