Did you know that chickens can lay all sorts of interesting colors of eggs? A chicken’s ability to lay colored eggs extends far beyond the white and tan eggs most of us have seen in the grocery store! Today we’ll cover a specific type, Olive Egger.
From dark chocolate brown colored, to blues, speckles, and perhaps the most captivating of all – green or olive egger!
The phrase “Olive Egger” refers to a chicken that lays green colored eggs. This can be achieved by combining two breeds of chickens, one that carries a blue egg laying gene, and another that carries a brown egg laying gene. Put those two together and ta da you have beautiful green eggs! This first generation of a blue gene and a brown egg gene put together is called a first generation Olive Egger or F1.
Now here comes the interesting part, say you ordered a box of olive egger chicks, some turned out to be females and some turned out to be males and you think “hey I want more of this color of egg in my life!” So you put a male and female together and raise up their chicks. You will be surprised when the females from that cross are only laying green eggs 50% of the time. This is because the green egg gene is not stabilized.
It takes years of selective breeding to be able to stabilize that beautiful green color and expand upon it. Here at Alchemist Farm, we have created the beautiful Moss Eggers. We’ve been working on these birds for the past 10 years and they are a F16 if you can believe it! Each year we select the most interesting colored green eggs to hatch for future generations and stabilize that lovely green color that we all look for in our daily egg collecting baskets. The result of our careful selection has yielded birds that are laying green eggs with all sorts of interesting patterns on top, these patterns can be speckled and sometimes an interesting bloom. What is a bloom? A bloom is the protective coating a hen puts over her egg as it is in the final stage of being laid, this protects the eggs from bacteria entering. Sometimes this bloom can be very thick and in the case of our Moss Eggers, creates the illusion of eggs looking silver. Some of our hens lay multi-colored eggs where there is both green, blue and silver on a single laid egg. Nature is incredible!
If interesting egg colors are something you’re interested in bringing to your life, we are your people! We focus on gorgeous egg colors, strong egg laying ability, climate resilience to withstand strong heat and cold, sweet temperament, and we are the only humane chicken hatchery in the United States.
Purchasing chicks from us not only beautifies your daily egg collecting basket, your purchase goes towards shifting the way the hatching industry is run.
From the 100% compostable packaging of all of our chick shipments, to the massive solar array we erected to run our hatchery. From every single bird being free to roam on their own pastures to the thousands of male chicks who are not killed upon hatch here. From being single use plastic free on our farm to our zero waste practices. We are making ecological waves in all the right ways and your support makes it possible. We offer chicks for sale from February – September of each year, our lovely Moss Eggers are available along with 12 other unique and interesting breeds. We believe there is a chicken breed for everyone, come and see our offerings!
Want to see images of our beautiful birds and eggs in action? Checkout our Instagram page.
After hatching the chicks stay in the incubator to dry out and “fluff up” while other chicks hatch out of their eggs.
Once all of the chicks have hatched they are placed in a brooder under a heat lamp and given access to chick crumble and fresh clean water.
Stay tuned for reviews on different incubators and brooding techniques. Happy hatching everyone!
