Deerhen Project

[E flowers]

Those do sound promising!

Muff/beard is a dominant gene, so once it is out of the flock, it will stay gone.

Regarding combs, there is a linkage between the pea comb gene and the blue egg gene. So if you want to keep the blue egg gene, you will have to keep the pea comb as well. Crossing with any kind of Leghorn may increase the comb size (some pea combs are larger than others.) Or if you wanted single combs and blue eggs, you would want to introduce something like Cream Legbar that has the linkage of blue egg with not-pea comb.


I would look for chicks that show shades of brown (not grays or white, and not large amounts of black).

Chicks that are an even shade of buff or red all over, will more often grow up to have a fairly solid color at maturity (like Buff Orpingtons and Rhode Island Reds.)

Chicks that hatch with stripes like a chipmunk are more likely to grow up with the kind of patterning I see in the pictures of the EE hens. This is a common coloring in Easter Eggers, so you probably won't have much trouble finding chicks like that.
Brown Leghorn chicks are a good example of this color pattern.
Example from McMurray Hatchery:
https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/single_comb_brown_leghorns.html

The same pattern can also exist in silver (gold tones are replaced with white/gray tones.) McMurray's Silver Phoenix are an example of this color:
https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/phoenix.html
If you end up with some silver ones by mistake, just use them with a gold rooster and their daughters will have gold, so it won't really set your program back.

I ended up butchering her mother because I managed to find her body after a fox or raccon attack. She wasn't in bad condition and she was still fresh. She ended up having real dark meat and wasn't very meaty either. We used her for chicken and rice. I thought she may have been darker because she wasn't bled properly but I'm not sure.

Are Easter Eggers usually darker fleshed? She was almost a bluish/grey.

I considered maybe breeding them with jersey giants to make them bigger bodied or maybe even Dark cornish to make them meatier.

 

[NatJ]

I ended up butchering her mother because I managed to find her body after a fox or raccon attack. She wasn't in bad condition and she was still fresh. She ended up having real dark meat and wasn't very meaty either. We used her for chicken and rice. I thought she may have been darker because she wasn't bled properly but I'm not sure.

I'm not sure either, whether the meat was darker because she wasn't bled properly.

Chickens that get more exercise will typically have darker meat than chickens that stay in small pens with little exercise, so a home-raised chicken might have darker meat than a store-bought meat chicken. But that would not account for her meat being darker than the meat from other chickens that you have raised in the same conditions, which is what I assume you meant.

Are Easter Eggers usually darker fleshed? She was almost a bluish/grey.

The meat can be a slightly different color in chickens with different skin colors.
Assuming the age and living conditions are the same:
Chickens with white skin (white feet) will typically have the lightest meat
Chickens with yellow skin (yellow feet) will have meat that is slightly yellow, but that is usually not obvious unless you put it next to the meat from a white-skinned chicken.
Chickens with blue or green feet will have meat that is a little bit darker than either of the others. Ones with blue feet in particular can have meat that looks a little bit gray-ish compared to the others.
Silkies and Ayam Cemanis have meat that ranges between dark gray and actual black.

I considered maybe breeding them with jersey giants to make them bigger bodied or maybe even Dark cornish to make them meatier.

Jersey Giants grow & mature slowly. If you are willing to wait longer for each hen to start laying eggs, and also wait longer to butcher each male, that is not a problem. But if you want chickens that mature quickly, it might not be the best choice.

Dark Cornish also grow & mature somewhat slowly, although I think not as slowly as Jersey Giants.

You have mentioned that you want them to be good at foraging for their own food. One problem with any of the large or meaty chicken breeds: it takes more food to get them that way. Compared with small-bodied chickens, they need to forage more total food per bird, or else they need more supplemental feed.

As a thought experiment: two small chickens may need the same amount of food in a day as one big chicken, but the two small chickens have twice as many feet and mouths to forage for that food. (I copied that idea from an author named David Mackenzie, who was actually writing about goats, but it applies to any situation of small vs. big animals foraging for their own food.)

I can't say what traits are good or bad for your project, just mentioning some details that you might not have thought of.

 

[E flowers]

Looking at the average weight for Brown Leghorns vs Easter Eggers.
BL: Rooster 5.3 - 7.5lbs Hen 4.4 - 5.5lbs

EE: Rooster 5 - 6lbs Hen 4 - 5lbs

Average small table bird carcass = 3.75 - 4.49lbs

Average medium table bird carcass = 4 - 7lbs

Huh surprisingly small for the medium. I would've thought 5 - 7lbs not 4 - 7lbs. I think my ideal weight would be 6 - 8lbs

Cookie hardly weighs anything for her size. I'd estimate she's 3-4lbs.

 

[E flowers]

Australorp's and Rhode Island Reds are around that 6-8lbs weight.

 

[NagemTX]

I ended up butchering her mother because I managed to find her body after a fox or raccon attack. She wasn't in bad condition and she was still fresh. She ended up having real dark meat and wasn't very meaty either. We used her for chicken and rice. I thought she may have been darker because she wasn't bled properly but I'm not sure.

Are Easter Eggers usually darker fleshed? She was almost a bluish/grey.

I considered maybe breeding them with jersey giants to make them bigger bodied or maybe even Dark cornish to make them meatier.

EE and Ameraucana tend to have darker meat.

 

[E flowers]

I noticed the black chick has both middle toes half white. I've never seen something like that before.

 

[E flowers]

The chicks have officially graduated to the roost! Unfortunately my phone is out of storage again so I couldn't take a pic last night.