Olive Eggers!

Who wouldn't want to open their carton of eggs and see a rainbow of colors? Blue, brown, dark brown, green, white and more! One of our goals here at our little homestead is to have beautifully colored eggs. I'm currently down to only one Easter Egger hen and she lays a pretty blue-green egg, when she actually lays. The rest of my girls lay nice, light brown eggs. The chicks I have in the brooder will lay light brown and white eggs. I'm super excited to have more eggs being laid come Summer but, I need more color! Enter, my project chickies. :-)

I have just ordered 4 Blue (true) Ameraucanas and 4 Blue Copper Marans! Ameraucanas lay blue eggs and Marans lay dark brown. They will be so lovely! My hope is that I will get a nice, Blue Ameraucana rooster so that he can pass the blue egg gene onto my Marans, thus creating Olive Eggers. The Olive Egger hens should lay lovely, olive green eggs. I could also breed the same rooster to a lighter brown egg-laying hen and get Easter Egger hens, which can lay blue, green and sometimes even pink eggs. I'm so excited about this little breeding experiment. (And I have no idea what I'm doing so, lots of research happening!)

On top of the beautiful eggs these new hens will lay, by buying the "blue" breed of both the Ameraucanas and Marans, they will also produce blue, black and splash colored chickens. Should be beautiful! Here are some examples of these colors:

Black Copper Maran

Splash Maran. (From http://www.maranschickenclubusa.com/)

Blue Copper Maran (What I've ordered)

Blue Ameraucana (Hopefully I'll get a roo like this)

Black Ameraucana Hen

Splash Ameraucana (Whitmore Farm)

I just love the splash color. There's a bit of science that goes into all of this and I know I have a lot to learn. For a basic breakdown of what breeds what, I found this chart on northwoodspoultry.com:

Blue x Blue = 50% Blue / 25% Black / 25% Splash 

Blue x Splash = 50% Blue / 50% Splash 

Blue x Black = 50% Blue / 50% Black 

Splash x Black = 100% Blue 

Black x Black = 100% Black 

Splash x Splash = 100% Splash

As you can see, the reason I ordered the blue variety is because you get the most color change possibilities. After the first few hatches, you can do more color selection for what you want and begin to shape your flock for bird color, egg color and, most importantly, health, egg quality and temperament. It's a lot to think about but, I'm excited for the challenge. Anyone else have any breeding projects going or any tips to pass on to me?