Olive Eggs, from Olive Eggers, at Long Last!

It is with IMMENSE pleasure that I show off my lovely Ophelia's first 15 eggs (in just 18 days!).  She began laying on Dec 18, almost exactly 5 months old, and has laid almost every day since.  The variety in her eggs is fascinating to me.  I have included a couple of white Leghorn eggs for comparison--they are as pure white as you can get.

It's hard to believe I am worked this long on the Olive Egger project, only to end up with just ONE actual OE hen--the others in Minerva's hatch (see last post) were boys.  But with this deep, dark, rich color, how can I complain?

Ophelia is the product of roo Jules (a French Coppered Black Maran or FCBM) and Ruth, a lovely and prodigious-layer of an Easter Egger with a nice deep blue-green egg.  (I'm sad to note that Ruth died, seemingly of heat exhaustion, not long after we moved--we had weks over over 100 degree weather, and she keeled over during the worst of it.  I am so glad I have Ophelia to carry on her legacy!) The look of these stunning eggs, and especially the responses I am getting from those who see them in person makes me excited to hatch more Olive Eggers. (they have goldish glow that doesn't translate well in pics, but this one was as close as I could get).

Tomorrow I pick up this beautiful boy.  He's a TRUE Ameracauna (meaning, he was hatched by a breeder and conforms to the breed standards, and is NOT a Easter Egger) and should impart a blue, blue egg to my breeding program.  This means I'll be able to breed him to my Easter Eggers and get bluer-egged offspring, but also that I can breed him to my FCBM chocolate-brown egg laying girls to get even greener Olive Eggs.  And bred to Ophelia, I should get pullets with an amazing deep olive green, with the gold glow I love so much.  Blue, as I think we will call him, is the product of Blue/Black/Splash breeding--bred with a black bird, he will have all black babies, but bred to a Blue (like one of my EEs), he should produce 50% black and 50% blue chicks.  I like silvery-gray birds (called blue in the trade) better than any other kind, so I'm excited about that too.  Thank you, Craigslist!