Olive Eggers
Olive Eggers are a fun and EGGciting hybrid breed to have in your flock! Olive Egger Hens lay several shades of green/olive tones, hence, their name. They are bred by crossing a DARK brown egg laying breed with a blue egg laying breed. In our case, we are cross-breeding our very own Black Copper Marans and our Cream Legbars together for this cross. This is also a sex-linked cross meaning we can tell males from females at the time of hatch!! All chicks hatch out black, but the males have a white dot on their heads.
Females as adults will be either solid black with a crest or black with bronze in their hackle feathers and sport a crest as well. Crest could be absent due to cross-breeding.
Males should sport barring, crest may or may not be absent as well.
Just a side note…. Olive Eggers are similar to Easter Eggers, however they are two very different crosses. The difference is that Easter Eggers are bred using a light-medium brown egg laying breed and then crossed with a blue egg laying breed, which in turn does produce a green egg. However, the Easter Eggers green egg is a slightly tinted green vs. the Olive Eggers egg displaying much deeper tones of green. If you’re looking to add color to your egg basket, then look no further!
In rare cases when crossing breeding, specifically Olive Eggers, some of the offspring may lay a brown egg instead of a green or olive tone. There is no way to tell what color the bird will lay until it does. The specific cross is a proven Olive Egger cross (Black Copper Marans x Ameracaunas), but as with any cross, you will always have a small percentage of the offspring that doesn’t “take,” and this is to be expected.