Green Egg Laying White Leghorns

[AndersonFamillyFarm]

Hello,

I sell my eggs at my family’s farm stand and white eggs from white leghorns don’t sell well yet green eggs that I don’t have a lot of sell great! So I had been thinking what if I cross my white leghorns with blue isbars (they lay a most with my White Leghorns. My goal was to end up with a pure white leghorn that lays green eggs. I bred a blue isbar (splash) with 2 white leghorns.
The offspring came out with some of the chickens being pure white and some being white with black specs. I culled the ones that had specking but kept the pure white ones. The cockerels had pure yellow legs but the pullets had blue legs with a little bit of yellow. When the hens started to lay they layed beautiful mint green eggs. So first generation is sex linked!!!

Generation 2

We bred the crosses with the crosses.

We ended up with about 75% being pure white and 25% having black specs. We culled the speckled ones. The leg colors held true. They are about 4 months old I’ll update when they leg eggs to see if the egg color holds true.

Next I will breed white leghorn cockerels on blue isbar hens (splashed) and I will update on what happens.

If anyone has suggestions on different ways to get a crossbreed that looks exactly like a white leghorn but lays green eggs let me know!!

Also should I just focus on selling sex linked chickens that lay green eggs or a pure white leghorn looking chicken that lays green eggs that’s. It sex linked??

Thanks, -Ryan

 

[R2elk]

We bred the crosses with the crosses.

We ended up with about 75% being pure white and 25% having black specs. We culled the speckled ones. The leg colors held true. They are about 4 months old I’ll update when they leg eggs to see if the egg color holds true.

In the first generation all received a single blue egg gene from the father. This is why all produced blue eggs. If the eggs are green then they also received at least one brown egg gene.

Breeding the crosses to each other should produce 25% that have two blue egg genes, 50% that have one blue egg gene and 25% that have no blue egg gene. The only way to make sure that all lay blue or green eggs, you have to breed so that each chicken has at least one blue egg gene and preferably two blue egg genes.

If you had bred the crosses back to the father then all of their offspring would have at least one blue egg gene. Every time that you breed the leghorn back in you will be adding the white egg gene (lack of any other egg color gene).

 

[nicalandia]

Hello,

I sell my eggs at my family’s farm stand and white eggs from white leghorns don’t sell well yet green eggs that I don’t have a lot of sell great! So I had been thinking what if I cross my white leghorns with blue isbars (they lay a most with my White Leghorns. My goal was to end up with a pure white leghorn that lays green eggs. I bred a blue isbar (splash) with 2 white leghorns.
The offspring came out with some of the chickens being pure white and some being white with black specs. I culled the ones that had specking but kept the pure white ones. The cockerels had pure yellow legs but the pullets had blue legs with a little bit of yellow. When the hens started to lay they layed beautiful mint green eggs. So first generation is sex linked!!!

Generation 2

We bred the crosses with the crosses.

We ended up with about 75% being pure white and 25% having black specs. We culled the speckled ones. The leg colors held true. They are about 4 months old I’ll update when they leg eggs to see if the egg color holds true.

Next I will breed white leghorn cockerels on blue isbar hens (splashed) and I will update on what happens.

If anyone has suggestions on different ways to get a crossbreed that looks exactly like a white leghorn but lays green eggs let me know!!

Also should I just focus on selling sex linked chickens that lay green eggs or a pure white leghorn looking chicken that lays green eggs that’s. It sex linked??

Thanks, -Ryan

If I were you I would have started with a a few proven green egger hens(pea combed), perhaps take a look on Olive Eggers project hens, that way the "Brown/Green" will not be diluted that much when you cross back to pure white leghorns.

The reason you had sex links is because of the id+ vs Id sex linked cross you made, you see blue isbars are id+(dark shanks) and white leghorns are Id(clear shanks), the pullets will only inherit their sire id+ gene and cockerels will inherit Id from mother, they will be Id/id+(clear shanks) and pullets will be id+/-

when breeding for the blue egg shell gene I strongly advise against using the single comb breed(Isbars, Cream Legbars) to obtain the blue egg shell gene, that is because their blue egg shell gene is linked to the single comb gene by 4 cM(centimorgans=Map Units) and while all of the F1 will lay blue/green eggs as soon as you cross back to Leghorns or F1xF1 you will not know which hen lay blue or white eggs, for example the first cross of Isbar x Leghorn 100% of all of the hens will lay blue/green eggs, and the cockerels too have inherited one copy of the blue egg shell, but if you take the F1s and cross them back to Leghorns only 50% of the pullets will inherit the blue egg shell gene and how are you going to know which pullet to keep? They will all be single combed, so the only way to know is to keep every single pullet until they start to lay.

Using the Pea combed green eggers you will have about 96% chance of chance of getting green/blue eggers even if you cross them back to Leghorns time and time again just keep the pea combed pullets, personally I will not breed back to Leghorn more than once as that will dilute the brown genes alot and the hens will start laying blue eggs instead of green.

I had a similar project years ago, I focused on two lines, the Blue Eggers and the Green Eggers, used the same Ameraucana rooster on one line of production type White Leghorns and a line of Isa Brown layers, My plan was to sell Blue eggs and Green eggs with high productivity in mind, then let people decide which color they like best, I was keeping the best pea combed pullets, I had 100% success rate on blue/green eggs with that

 

[aliciaplus3]

Wow so much to think about!
I had been reading about the sapphires that lay large blue eggs, I am guessing this is simular? I personally enjoy having every egg color so I already have many EE. This could be fun to keep up with

 

[R2elk]

Wow so much to think about!
I had been reading about the sapphires that lay large blue eggs, I am guessing this is simular? I personally enjoy having every egg color so I already have many EE. This could be fun to keep up with

The thing to remember about Sapphires is that they are an F1 hybrid that will never breed true. They are easy to make by keeping a Cream Legbar rooster and some White Leghorn hens.

 

[nicalandia]

The thing to remember about Sapphires is that they are an F1 hybrid that will never breed true. They are easy to make by keeping a Cream Legbar rooster and some White Leghorn hens.

True, breeding sapphires to each other will yield blue eggers, light blue eggers and white egg laying hens but you can't tell them by just looking at them you will have wait and see what color the hens lay