Get a Marans or an Araucana rooster for Olive layers?

[PhoenixManz]

Hi all!
I want to breed my own olive layers. I currently have 2 Araucanas, 1 Easter egger that lays turquoise eggs and 2 Marans hens.

What would be the best cross to achieve olive eggs? Cross a Marans rooster with the Araucanas and Easter egger, or an Araucana rooster with the Marans?

Thanks in advance for your input

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Marans rooster to blue-layer hen should give you slightly better results for egg color in such a cross. This is because the brown shell coating is polygenic, that is it's controlled by multiple genes, and at least one of those genes is sexlinked. A sexlinked gene cannot be passed from mother to daughter, so a Marans hen would effectively be giving fewer brown egg coating genes to her female offspring and theoretically thus her olive-egging daughters would not have as much depth of color in their shells. A Marans rooster, on the other hand, can pass all the genes he has for brown shell coating to all of his offspring.

However, the color difference most likely would be fairly minimal, and either cross should work to produce olive-eggers.

 

[PhoenixManz]

Marans rooster to blue-layer hen should give you slightly better results for egg color in such a cross. This is because the brown shell coating is polygenic, that is it's controlled by multiple genes, and at least one of those genes is sexlinked. A sexlinked gene cannot be passed from mother to daughter, so a Marans hen would effectively be giving fewer brown egg coating genes to her offspring and theoretically thus her olive-egging daughters would not have as much depth of color in their shells. A Marans rooster, on the other hand, can pass all the genes he has for brown shell coating to all of his offspring.

However, the color difference most likely would be fairly minimal, and either cross should work to produce olive-eggers.

Thank you! That makes the choice of rooster much easier! I can actually get this handsome boy from my BIL for free

 

[Buckeye Amy]

For your consideration, I offer the following:
My F1 olive egger, Sidney. She is the result of a EE cock (from a blue egg) over a FBCM hen who laid a very dark brown egg, around a 6 on the Marans egg color chart.

Sidney lays the dark green eggs in this picture:

The blue eggs in the carton are laid by her EE aunts.

When I hatched eggs from Sidney's mother I held my breath knowing that I could end up with a brown egg layer or another blue egg layer. I was delighted when she laid her first olive green egg. I got lucky (and so did that really fast EE cock)!

 

[The Moonshiner]

Marans rooster to blue-layer hen should give you slightly better results for egg color in such a cross. This is because the brown shell coating is polygenic, that is it's controlled by multiple genes, and at least one of those genes is sexlinked. A sexlinked gene cannot be passed from mother to daughter, so a Marans hen would effectively be giving fewer brown egg coating genes to her female offspring and theoretically thus her olive-egging daughters would not have as much depth of color in their shells. A Marans rooster, on the other hand, can pass all the genes he has for brown shell coating to all of his offspring.

However, the color difference most likely would be fairly minimal, and either cross should work to produce olive-eggers.

This is true but on the other hand it'd be nice to go with the hens being Marans so you can see how dark their eggs are.
I'm a fan of OEs actually laying DARK green eggs instead of just green. Since the cross will cause some lose of the brown genes it's important to start with the darkest possible. That's pretty hard to know from a rooster unless you know what his sisters lay.