Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

OK so got to thinking. Don't know if I got this right. 2 colours of eggs white and blue. Brown is a wash over the white and green is brown over blue? Now if white egg layers have white earlobes and ameraucanas have pink earlobes, brown egg layers have pink earlobes how is the earlobe colour linked in. What are the exceptions to this Please make it simple I don't want my head to hurt.

Earlobe colour is not related in any way (that i am aware of) to egg shell colour.....
Penedesencas have white earlobes and lay dark brown....
EEs have red and lay blue or green or pink or anything other than white or brown...
Silkies have blue earlobes i believe and lay a light coloured egg almost white...if i remember correctly.

I have some green eggers, If I breed them back to a green egger roo.... will the offspring still be green egg laying or do I have to breed brown over blue? Also have 2 blue laying americaunas in with a crested cream legbar roo.... hoping for blue eggs or do I need to find an americauna roo?

Thanks. I was always told that red/pink earlobe = brown egg. So it really is breed specific!

Hayladee-it depends on the parents of the birds you want to breed. I assume your legbar is pure...but by americaunan do you mean easter egger? Or pure ameraucana? If the ee/ameraucana carries only 1 blue gene you should get blue back. But if it carries a brown gene you might get green....depends....
so if you know what the parents are....

Green x green will not give you back the same shade of green. Green can be lots of combinations-again need to know parents....

I have no idea about the green eggers, bought them as chicks last summer, one lays a kind of purple/brown egg, just started....a tiny one the other day and one the same shade yesterday...nice average size. The ameraucanas are pure, bought them as starting to lay pullets from a breeder I found in the Ameraucana breeders registry two weeks ago, don't have a roo but would like to keep the blue eggs blue. Legbar is pure too. Bought him and his gal last fall as "teenagers" from a purebred breeder ...also bought 2 Swedish flower pullets from same breeder...too pretty to pass up, anxious to see what color chickens they produce with my handsome greenegger roo. Will be interesting to see what hatches from my motley crew, this chicken stuff is addicting!

Okay, so your pure ameraucanas x legbar should give you blue eggs back, because they all should carry blue and only blue and ALL blue.

The purply/brown ee egg layer sounds like it carries brown at least, and maybe no blue. and probably won't change to lay green, the colour they start is the colour they should stay (although they can get lighter and darker but the base colour generally stays roughly the same).

If the other is a green layer, with brown and blue: if that one is brown/brown blue/blue and you put with blue/blue (like your legbar) you will get blue-green, because the one brown passed from the ee will turn the blue to a green in the offspring.
if it is brown/0 blue/blue you could get blue or green (because you may or may not donate the brown, but will donate blue)
if it is brown/brown blue/0 you should get only green (because 1 brown gets donated)
if it's brown/O blue/O you would get blue or green.... (you may or may not donated the brown or the blue, or both, or neither)

if you take a green layer, and breed to brown egg line rooster you get darker green (more olive, but not quite olive). if you take green and breed to blue then you get lighter green-more to the blue-green side.
if you take blue and breed to brown (assuming they have 2 copies of the genes) you get green.
If you take blue and breed to DARK DARK brown (like a marans) you get more olive.
if you take a green and add more brown it gets more green.....oh, i said that already.....but taking a green to a green will not give you the same shade of green because the green is really a blue painted over by brown, and there isn't just one brown gene, there's lots, so it might not be the same gene, so you may end up painting more brown over the blue....

I get it, Marans "paint" brown over their eggs thus the olive. What about an americauna roo over a flower hen? ....they have light beige eggs, blue and beige =??? This is fun stuff!

Blue + light beige = bluish green egg....the light beige is "very thin brown" lol. So blue shell with very thin brown over the top = barely green (more on the blue side of blue green) lol

cool, thanks!