The Olive-Egger thread!

[ochochicas]

Lost my last OE pullet to Marek's this week. It looks like I'll have to breed my Marans to the new rooster we have when he is old enough. All the new chicks will be vaccinated.

I miss my sweet girl.

 

[LisaLouHoo]

Lost my last OE pullet to Marek's this week. It looks like I'll have to breed my Marans to the new rooster we have when he is old enough. All the new chicks will be vaccinated. I miss my sweet girl.

So sorry. I have new chicks that are not vaccinated that I hatched myself. I should probably read up, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. Sorry for your loss.

 

[estamets]

Lost my last OE pullet to Marek's this week. It looks like I'll have to breed my Marans to the new rooster we have when he is old enough. All the new chicks will be vaccinated. I miss my sweet girl.

So sorry for your loss. I've lost some of my favorites to Marek's, it's a terrible disease. (I now vaccinate and booster all new chicks.)

 

[ochochicas]

Thanks guys! I'm hoping I don't lose any more, but realistically they are only 5 months old so there will probably be more. I only have one 8 month old left, and I even lost a one year old hen earlier this year. My babies were exposed to Marek's during a critical time during their development and I'm sure my losses will be high. Unfortunately, the olives were the first to go along with the Marans crosses. I think they don't have much natural resistance. The australorp crosses, on the other hand, seem to be doing quite well. (fingers crossed)

The olive in the photo was my absolute favorite - great personality, beautiful coloring, and look at that crest! LOL

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Sorry, I hope enough make it so you can rebuild your flock. Hugs

 

[estamets]

Thanks guys!  I'm hoping I don't lose any more, but realistically they are only 5 months old so there will probably be more.  I only have one 8 month old left, and I even lost a one year old hen earlier this year.  My babies were exposed to Marek's during a critical time during their development and I'm sure my losses will be high.  Unfortunately, the olives were the first to go along with the Marans crosses.  I think they don't have much natural resistance.  The australorp crosses, on the other hand, seem to be doing quite well.  (fingers crossed)

The olive in the photo was my absolute favorite - great personality, beautiful coloring, and look at that crest!  LOL

I lost my absolute favorite too, and none of the new birds comes close to matching her personality. so sorry. I know how it feels, even months later.

You can vaccinate older birds, there's no harm in it, and it *might* help. No studies have been done on it, so there is no scientific evidence either way.

 

[Ihilani Coffee]

I copied all that info to my iPad so I could study it slowly. It scrambled my brain, but I want to learn it. I envy people who have this info down and understand it. Good job!

Here's a link to a visual that may be more helpful. It's the best OE color chart I'm aware of. Thank you Steve Neumann!
https://drive.google.com/a/flex.com/file/d/0B2tKFvBKXZesVDZxaUYteElKTE0/view

 

[Ihilani Coffee]

Here are some pullet eggs from our F1 single comb olive eggers. These are BCM X CCL. The BCM is a Bev Davis cockerel (dark egg line). We love the color!

We also have Isbar X Marans single comb OE...waiting for those eggs to show up soon.

 

[jeremy]

We also have Isbar X Marans single comb OE...waiting for those eggs to show up soon.

I can't wait to see those eggs!

I'm anticipating setting another round of eggs in May... do you think you'll have Isbar X Marans hatching eggs still available then?

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Here's a link to a visual that may be more helpful. It's the best OE color chart I'm aware of. Thank you Steve Neumann!
https://drive.google.com/a/flex.com/file/d/0B2tKFvBKXZesVDZxaUYteElKTE0/view

Nice chart... I like.

I left out that natural shiny egg: appears to be caused by a recessive gene & matte egg a dominate gene.

Of course egg color is not the only thing to breed for in laying or dual purpose birds. As I have been poking about in books and sites so I can do it better too, here are a few useful sites:

This site has a little mini-series on genetics that helped me start wrapping my brain around chicken genetics https://scratchcradle.wordpress.com/genetics-mini-series/

Late versus Early Molting: http://msucares.com/poultry/management/poultry_feathers.html

Culling Hens or at least info to help you choose which hens & roos you want to use for breeding & which ones to not use where egg production breeding is concerned: http://msucares.com/poultry/management/culling.html

Video picking your breeders:

An article on comb size & egg laying: http://www.liu.se/forskning/forskningsnyheter/1.360538?l=en

https://archive.org/details/BreedingAndCullingByHeadPoints

The above archive has a ton of old poultry books... free reading and even though out of date it can still be useful info. I just posted one PDF book.