Olive Egger pullet January 2022. Note the pea comb, feathered legs and similarity to the Marans colouring and body. After many years of breeding back to Marans roosters the OE pullets and hens look more like Marans now. The OE eggs are just the same size as our Marans eggs.
Olive Egger chick and egg shells 2021. The chick looks like a Marans chicks and the eggs are either olive or moss coloured now.
F6 Olive Egg (6 generations of breeding)
next to Marans Eggs Spring 2019
Show Champion Large Olive Eggs Interior Provincial Exhibition 2018
F4 Olive Egger Pullet with Marans colouring and muffed face.
4rd, 5th and 6th generation mixed breeding pen, various shades of green eggs
We originally crossed our best French Black Copper Maran hens with a Blue Wheaten Ameraucana rooster to get hens that lay a dark coloured olive egg back in in 2016. They are not a true breed as recognized by the American Poultry Association but they are worth having in the flock for their colourful contributions to the egg carton.
My Olive Eggers hens are vigorous, and they are larger than our Ameraucana hens. Our Olive Egger hens tend to be either blue or black in colour and similar in size now to our Marans hens. They may or may not have muffs and or feathered legs.
Our customers love the wonderful olive eggs and the hens so much we will be breeding F4, F5 and F6, F7, F8, generation chicks to obtain more green eggs for the egg basket. The roosters from these pairings are beautiful and make excellent dual-purpose stock. The hens are very winter hardy and lay large green eggs consistently throughout the year. We free range them with our Marans flock.
Presently, our Olive Eggers are very closely related to our French Black Copper Marans as much as 75-85% or more due to constantly breeding the Olive Egger hens back to various French Marans roosters. Therefore, their egg colour does fade through the laying season in the same way that the Marans eggs does.
Egg color varies by each individual bird, by the time of the year, diet, health, lighting and management (free-range on green pasture vs. confinement). They are not always super dark eggs as the colour is applied to the outside of the egg. An F6 egg can look like an F5 as the laying season progresses. In the spring or after a molt egg colour returns to a darker olive or moss colouration.
F2 Olive Egger hen and eggs 2016
F2 vs F3 and Olive Eggs at the IPE 2017
Olive Egger Chicks F2 vs F3
2nd & 3rd generation-looking more like a Marans but retaining the muffed cheeks of the Ameraucana
