Perhaps our Olive Eggers reveal a bit more about our purebred breed selections. Our purebred flocks provide a wide array of breeding combinations to achieve rainbow layers while also providing a flock of calm, gentle birds.

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Our Olive Eggers come from multiple mixes of blue layers and dark brown layers. The general base "recipe" for an Olive Egger is a dark brown egg layer (Black Copper Marans or Welsummer) and a blue egg layer (Ameraucana or Silverudd's Blue). This results in offspring that will lay a blue egg with a brown pigment coating, thus creating the dark green we love! This first generation is an F1 Olive Egger, and this first generation is the only one guaranteed to lay a green egg.

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Even more colors of the rainbow can be created with further breeding of Olive Eggers. Breeding two first generation Olive Eggers (F1) gives you a second generation or F2 Olive Egger. 

 

F1 Olive Egger x F1 Olive Egger = F2 Olive Egger

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F2 or later generation Olive Eggers have the propensity to lay eggs of almost any color (brown, green, blue) and everything in between! Add in genetics for heavy blooms and speckles and the rainbow continues to expand!

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For those looking for the darkest green possible, Back Cross Olive Eggers intensify the green by crossing an F1 Olive Egger back to a dark brown layer. The downside to these crosses is there is a 50% chance they will lay a dark brown egg, but is that really a downside?

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Read more on our breeding practices here.