The Olive-Egger thread!

[nicalandia]

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F1 means first filial generation of offspring of two different breeds, chickens in this case BC means: mating of heterozygous F1 generation individual with the homozygous parent(Welsummer/BCM in the Olive egger Case)

 

[seventreesfarm]

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[JFreeman]

Oh! Thank you for clarifying. This is so interesting.

 

[Sterkfarm]

Color inhibitors are theoretically possible of course.
Or very big luck that all the brown eggshell genes were segregated out.
Or the breeds you started with did not have that many different brown eggshell genes, but maybe a few very powerful ones. Or a lot of recessive ones.

HTH

Always great to hear your take on such matters, Henk. If I interpret correctly, it seems like such a long shot that it is not worth being concerned with in the grand scheme of the project and we can reasonable expect f2/f3 to continue to stabilize and even out the green colouration in subsequent generations. Nicalandia brings up a very good point about pointing out the difference between F vs BC the birds together to artificially 'create' olive eggers vs 'maintain' them.
My takeaway is that the white egg 'sport' I suppose is possible albeit quite unlikely for our purposes here. Just like any genetic anomaly, such as an 'off-combed' or 'off-coloured' feather/comb/leg/toed/etc sport/mutation is possible with any breeding.
The theory behind it reminds me of albinism a bit, 'suddenly' cropping up in a generation of offspring, essentially just absence of pigment via inhibitors... Or, could it have just been random mutation which is always possible I suppose? Agree or disagree? I'm not formally trained in any of this so please forgive my (mis)use of any incorrect terminology...still wondering if all this is based on Punnet's findings or are other olive egg breeders seeing this in actuality?

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Well over on one of the Ameraucana threads there is someone that said they had a chick hatch from good lines, good parent stock, that lacked all the bearding and muffs and not a blue egg layer... all genetic recessive traits. Those recessive traits can hide for generations until they pair up by chance. So it could happen a white or brown egg depending on what is in the woodwork all you need is 2 o+ genes to pair up and Bazinga no Blue Eggs, then if those o+ genes where linked with 2 recessive inhibitor genes Capow a white egg surprise! I don't remember which thread. I doubt it would happen often in a big gene pool.

Now they way I figure if you are breeding your own stock and all your birds are mostly related the recessive traits you don't want will seem to pop up more often as you have genetically similar birds thus your % chance of specific recessive genes pairing goes up. Now this could be a good thing not bad as it allows you to focus on weeding out those traits you don't want by removing the parent birds and any off spring from your breeding program or shows you which birds not to mate together again and allows you to consider a different breeding. But remember like Jaws lurking in the water, recessive genes can lurk, and lurk and lurk and then all of a sudden surface.

It is actually easier to breed away dominant genes then recessive ones. In the dog world there used to be Wire Haired Whippets the last remaining stock in the world of which was bred by a dog racer in CA because they performed well on the track and where papered "pure breds" just not SQ dogs but when dog racing became illegal and all his dogs where euthanized that gene was lost forever in the breed... the Whippets used to have 3 coat types, but the show bench folks decided they only wanted short coats, so they set the SOP even though dogs where racing at one time with all 3 coat types and where once shown with all 3 coat types. So short hair is what exists now, but there is a lurking recessive Long Hair Gene that has surfaced, which has cause all sorts of controversy.

So it could happen... a white egg.

 

[TammyTX]

My (hopefully) new Olive Egger chicks started hatching yesterday!

 

[Hangtown Farms]

 

[chrissyr]

very nice!!

 

[8isenuff]

MY FIRST GREEN EGG!!!!!

 

[TammyTX]

MY FIRST GREEN EGG!!!!!

Nice!! I love the tiny speckles on it.

Did you breed for green eggs or did you buy her?