They’re mainly leghorns with blue egg genes.
Tom Whiting didn’t start this breed, he was given it to him from a friend that crossed production leghorns with ameraucana or Easter eggers from Ideal Hatchery in TX. Whiting continued the line selecting for blue eggs and would backcross the line back to high production leghorns. His goal is a high production blue egg layer that came in a multitude of attractive colors/patterns.
There’s really only 2 “official” sources of whiting true blues. Whiting Hatchery and McMurray. McMurray gets bad reviews sometimes for sending out birds that lay off-colored eggs. Some people are very happy with their birds from McMurray. Tay from silverhomestead has written a lot about hers.
And Whiting hatchery is usually pickup only in Delta Colorado. So it’s not easy to get the real thing direct from the breeder.
I wanted hatching eggs so I ordered them from Dragonfly farms. They had been keeping them for about 8 years.
I enjoy the whitings, they’re the opposite of flighty. Some of mine will come to the door to be let into the house. I like that they lay blue eggs and don’t have a crest like the CCL and they can be beardless unlike the ameruacana. The eggs are very light blue and they can be thin shelled too. They don’t seem to go broody. 1 of mine is a prolific layer and the other is not.
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