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Cream Legbars have yellow legs and lay blue eggs. (But you might not have any.)

Some people put everything compostable into the chicken run, and then when it's nicely broken down they move it to the garden. If you are able to put the chickens in the garden area, you can even save moving the stuff: just move the chickens out in the spring and till everything under, then...

Typically the brown on an egg is just on the outside of the shell, with the inside looking white. A blue or green egg will typically have the blue color all the way through the shell, although it might be somewhat faint. The membrane is white, so you can see the shell color better if you peel...

I'm never quite sure who knows how much ;) That sounds like a good plan, expanding the space as you are able to and then getting the chicks to live in the space. As a long-term plan, after all the coops are built, you may be able to get new chicks just once a year and still maintain a fairly...

People tend to post when they have a question or a problem. It is less common for people to post a thread that says "I ordered chicks from a hatchery and nothing went wrong!" (Although there are some threads that pretty much say, "look at my cute chicks!") If you look at threads about brooder...

My understanding is that some hatcheries operate their own breeding farms, and others have contracts to buy eggs from farmers. They keep separate pens of each breed, that are supposed to be chicken-proof so no accidental mixing takes place. When selecting the breeding birds for each pen, they...

Sometimes it works, and it is really handy when it does. The food coloring trick has worked for me sometimes but has also failed sometimes, and I wasn't able to figure out what made the difference. Same food coloring, and I thought I applied it the same way. I've had times when the hen laid an...

The usual cross is Cream Legbar x Cuckoo Marans, not Barred Rocks (the Marans are supposed to give genes for darker brown, which makes a darker green shade when it is on a blue eggshell.) Yes, that is also a good point.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You could sell dozens of just the olive eggs, or you could sell mixed-color dozens (some people like those.) If you want to make your eggs visually distinctive in some way, so they do not look quite the same as the ones other people are selling, you could do some...

Actually, for olive eggers, you can be sure without a DNA test. Put any hen in a cage by herself until she lays an egg, then look at the color of the egg. If she lays an olive-colored egg, then she is an Olive Egger.

The crest proves that she is not a pure Barred Rock. Olive eggs prove that somebody is an Olive Egger. Since some Olive Eggers do look like your barred pullets (the crested one and the not-crested ones), the simplest explanation is that Hoovers sent you some Olive Eggers, either instead of...

I was going to say the same thing about the crested one. And I agree that there could be others. With those egg numbers, I am starting to wonder if there are any actual Barred Rocks, or if they are all Olive Eggers. When they are all laying, you can count how many olive eggs you get in a day--...

Either they got it wrong, or they sent you an extra chick that is a different kind. I know some hatcheries will send one free chick, but I don't remember whether Hoovers does that.

You have an Easter Egger or maybe an Olive Egger. Some Olive Eggers look a lot like Barred Rocks, and Easter Eggers can look like anything.