Chicken Scratch Poultry: F2 Olive Egger

A couple of years ago we decided to go the next step with our Olive eggers and produce the F2 Olive. Waaaaay back 13 or 14 years ago we produced the first Olive eggers way before the big hatcheries ever dreamed of producing a green egg. We began selling Olive Eggers from our website and at that time we told our breeding strategies. Now fast forward to 2021 and every hatchery big and small in the US has now copied our recipe. We have always produced the 1st generation due to barn space and to be honest I was always really satisfied with the 1st generation so I went no further. A couple of years ago I decided to give it a try and started off small with a couple of well-chosen hens.

The cross doesn't always produce wonderful puffy cheeks but when it does it makes me happy. what I have also discovered is that not all of the F2 will lay the green, some do revert back to the brown egg. I've not yet figured out the percent that will lay the green egg. So when purchasing the F2 Olive it might be best to purchase a good amount of the chicks so that you have a better chance of getting that nice bronzy green egg.

Some of the F2 Olive eggs are a wonderful grey tone but under that wonderful grey bloom is an amazing Army drab green. You military folks will know the color I'm talking about.

By choosing my darkest green egg layers and those with the certain characteristics that I like to see in an Olive Egger Hen, sacrificing the barn space has paid off. It can take a good couple of years to know if you're heading in the right direction. Probably one of the biggest problems that I have is, I don't hold back enough of the stock that I produced to see what the majority of the egg production will look like.

Although what I've seen I like! And I like it a lot!!

Check out that chocolate chip coating. Is that not lovely? Chickens can create some amazing shells with their coloring capabilities.

The photos here in the snow are F1 Olives in the front and F2 Olives in the back. No enhancements or filters on any of myphotos. Did you know that you can't trust anyone's photos anymore? It seems no one can share a true un enhanced photo. If they're product must be enhanced is truly worth having? I honestly can not say that every chicken is going to produce exactly what we want, we're manipulating and crossing them in hopes of getting something wonderful.