The Olive-Egger thread!

[Ihilani Coffee]

No.

*L*. I love honest and direct answers, and I concur with yours! The difficulty of sexing any Am or Am X is why I'm going with the single comb OE options of Marans X CCL and Marans X Isbar.

 

[gladahmae]

*L*. I love honest and direct answers, and I concur with yours! The difficulty of sexing any Am or Am X is why I'm going with the single comb OE options of Marans X CCL and Marans X Isbar.

I'm working on making barred EEs for a sex-linked OE project next year. Should be interesting.

 

[seventreesfarm]

Does anyone have a pretty OE pullet for sale? I want to add color to my egg basket and a pretty girl to my flock. I can't have a rooster so it needs to be sexed correctly but would prefer a something in the 8-12 week range. I love cuckoos and fun project colors! I am in Houston.

Dang!
I wish you were in my area. I have a nice flock of 4 month old pullets and plan to cull out some once they start laying.

 

[seventreesfarm]

Just out of curiosity, with your sex-links and auto-sexers, do you cull the boys out at hatch or just like knowing who is which early on?

I've never bred for sex-links on purpose, since I'm working with other colors right now, but I do enjoy the challenge of roo-guessing with the little peepers. I have a spreadsheet for each batch of eggs that I update into chick info and later into laying info (for the hens) so I can track lineage, colors, and egg appearance. So one of the columns on my 'chick check' spreadsheet is 'roo?'. We always mark our guesses based on comb appearance, leg stoutness, and general demeanor. It's fun to see how right or wrong we are as they get older. If we're not putting the boys in the freezer, they usually go to auction. We don't get much for them, but it beats hassling with craigslist weirdos.

This hatch season I am pondering keeping back an oliver roo for test breeding. Kind of a pain to keep another roo around, but someday I'd like to work on the holy (or is that olive) grail of self-replicating olivers.

 

[Ihilani Coffee]

Just out of curiosity, with your sex-links and auto-sexers, do you cull the boys out at hatch or just like knowing who is which early on?

I've never bred for sex-links on purpose, since I'm working with other colors right now, but I do enjoy the challenge of roo-guessing with the little peepers. I have a spreadsheet for each batch of eggs that I update into chick info and later into laying info (for the hens) so I can track lineage, colors, and egg appearance. So one of the columns on my 'chick check' spreadsheet is 'roo?'. We always mark our guesses based on comb appearance, leg stoutness, and general demeanor. It's fun to see how right or wrong we are as they get older. If we're not putting the boys in the freezer, they usually go to auction. We don't get much for them, but it beats hassling with craigslist weirdos.

This hatch season I am pondering keeping back an oliver roo for test breeding. Kind of a pain to keep another roo around, but someday I'd like to work on the holy (or is that olive) grail of self-replicating olivers.

We purposely breed BCM X BR for black sexlinks for the "urban" market who can't have cock/erels but want to raise their own chicks. The cockerels make fine meat birds.

 

[seventreesfarm]

We purposely breed BCM X BR for black sexlinks for the "urban" market who can't have cock/erels but want to raise their own chicks. The cockerels make fine meat birds.

Oh yeah!!
I almost forgot we raised a batch of those before we sold out our BRs. I still remember some tasty 'forgotten chicken' made from 3 nice little cockerels. I still have one rotten hen from that batch. She's a hellion and one of the few chickens we keep as a pet. Her name is Button because she used to be cute as a button before she grew up into a dragon.

BCM's can sure put some size on a cross though.

 

[Ihilani Coffee]

Oh yeah!!
I almost forgot we raised a batch of those before we sold out our BRs. I still remember some tasty 'forgotten chicken' made from 3 nice little cockerels. I still have one rotten hen from that batch. She's a hellion and one of the few chickens we keep as a pet. Her name is Button because she used to be cute as a button before she grew up into a dragon.

BCM's can sure put some size on a cross though.

We're noticing that too.

 

[Peach2u]

My first hatch is over. I started out with 48 EE and OE eggs. My first chick came out on the 19th day. Then the others came out on the 20th-22nd day. I had 4 zip or put holes in the shells but not make it out on day 20. Day 22 The last 4 where doing the same peeping but couldn't get out of the shell. So I helped them out. I had 20 hatch in all. I'm not sure if the last 2 will make it they look very small against their hatch mates.

 

[TammyTX]

BCM's can sure put some size on a cross though.

I have 9 three month olds and 3 of them are BCM crosses. I chose the largest eggs to hatch, about 65'ish grams each. I think they will be monsters when they are full grown.

Here are two photos I took of them right at 12 weeks which was May 2nd.

That' a 5 gallon waterer he is standing next to....also my only straight comb out of the bunch.


The black is a pullet and she is the same size as the one above:

 

[seventreesfarm]

Speaking of size and BCMs...

Right now I have an Ameraucana roo, a blue copper Marans, and a golden cuckoo Marans. I have been trying them with different combinations of hens, but none of the pullets hatched are laying yet, so I don't know what the eggs will look like, or what size they'll be.

Will the Am roo make for smaller pullets and eggs? I like having the pea combs for better guessing at the blue egg gene, but if he's going to make smaller babies, maybe not.

What traits tend to come more from the roo?