It is a project I am starting with my two current hens, the result of raising about 30 chicks from 3 sources. I am hoping I will have a keeper out of this batch but only time will tell. Unless this white chick develops some interesting characteristics as it feathers out, it will not be a keeper other than to be a growing companion for the second one. I will keep looking for suitable eggs to see if I can hatch something I can use to produce the birds I want to put under my rooster but it is a specific looking Easter Egger I am looking for and most of what I see is too far away from the blue egg to take a chance on egg color.
I need the bluest Easter Egger eggs I can find with a small pea combed rooster over the laying hens. I want a variety of feather coloring but slate or willow legs and pea combs, plus muffs and beards, are essential characteristics I am looking for to bring the crossbred Easter Egger back to the original Easter Egger. There is a trend towards mixing breeds for olive eggs by adding more and more brown to blue egg genetics and I neither like the birds nor the eggs. I want both blue and the original green (from initial "improved" version) eggs, plus true pink (not rose beige) eggs, and not all the dirty green colors from too many brown egg genetics in the mix.
My Orpingtons are beautiful birds that lay nice beige eggs so I need my Easter Egger eggs to stand out from theirs once I mix the hens together again. We eat the colored eggs and hatch the beige eggs (to preserve a heritage breed) so I only need a good first and second generation to have blue and green eggs plus the breed characteristics that defined the original Easter Egger. I don't want to buy hens or chicks due to biosecurity (unless I can find some from a clean closed flock) so I need hatching eggs to get started and that creates a big unknown when people do not sell quality hatching eggs. I am not willing to buy shipped eggs due to the mishaps during handling shaking them up too much.
I know there have got to be some older lines out there but so many have been crossbred at this point that they are hard to find. Now I understand why people think of them as mutt chickens and not as the chickens that were popular over 25 years ago. Unfortunately I sold mine 10 years ago, unaware of how hard they would be to get back.
When I got back into chickens after a break from having any due to moving, I wanted to have Easter Eggers again but I could not find what I wanted so I fell in love with the Orpingtons and decided to raise them. I still like my Orpingtons but I miss having a nice mix of feather color under the same rooster. The Orpingtons have a number of standard colors but I can't mix the colors in good conscience and they will never have the "wild type" coloring I like.
Our codes have changed here in the past year so I can keep the roosters I have but I can't add roosters, so that means I can't change breeds. I have thought about just keeping ducks since they are grandfathered in and they live longer than chickens but for now I need to enjoy my right to have chickens since I had to fight for that right against a city that wants to join the urban sprawl instead of being the small town many residents thought they were buying into when they purchased homes here. Someday I hope to own agreage (I had to rent to have acreage in the past) but I need equity to afford acreage and that takes doing my time in a residential area.
Coon 
