What color is this olive egger?

[Celtic Hill]

I hatched these two olive eggers out this spring, the mother is a hatchery EE and the father is an austro/Barred Rock cross. Not sure what color to call these guys but they sure are pretty! What can I breed them to to keep the color, or a similar color?

Here is a close up of the hen, She almost appears to have some incomplete barring going on, not sure. Whats your guy's take?

(click to enlarge)

 

[onthespot]

Black ameracuanas or black, copper black marans will get you fifty fifty blues and blacks. Not sure about the markings on hte girl. Looks almost like blue spangled minus the brown background.

 

[Celtic Hill]

So bred to blacks ill get split to the blue/black?

 

[onthespot]

No, the blacks will be pure black. The blues will be blues. If the father was barred, I'd watch for the pullet to produce some barred offspring that will show up more if they are black. I had some blue marans that masked the barring genes they carried. You could see little bits of it showing on tail feathers and what not, but if you looked at them from several feet away, they just looked blue. They weren't and it wasted a year of breeding for me and a LOT of money...

 

[Celtic Hill]

Oh okay. Thanks! Im using them for a project so I was just clarifying! What would happen if I bred them to a bird with a barred phenotype?

 

[onthespot]

Depends. If the barred is a pullet, she can only gve a single copy to her male offspring. She will not pass it to the females.
If it is a roo, single barring gene, he will pass it to about half of the boys, half of the girls. The rest will not get it from him.
If he carries two copies of the barring gene. (should be able to tell because hiis shanks are lighter than hens of the same breeding, and his overal plumage color strikes you as lighter, more white between the bars) then he will give a sngle barring gene to all of his offspring, (I think) LOL

 

[Celtic Hill]

Humm what about the color? I have a black barred EE hen and i was going to put her in with the cockerel above.

 

[onthespot]

That would be sex linked. The male offspring should be barred. (not sure if it will show with the blue. It can be masked by blue to varying degrees) and half the offspring of each sex will be blue based, the rest will be black based.

 

[ezekielSM]

Wow! To be honest, I'd call that a "Smoke"... not black, not grey, too dark for lavender, not a blue... but in between. It's beautiful!