Silver Homestead

A One Acre Farmhouse

2023 Flock

A few of the egg shells our newest 2023 flock members hatched from.

We are three years into breeding Speckled Olive Eggers and this year I’m hoping to show the chicken world the incredible colors you can obtain by using Olive Egger roosters in your breeding program. In 2022 I focused on increasing the speckling on my egg shells by using an F5 Speckled Olive Egger rooster hatched from Sky Girl Farm eggs and a Black Copper Marans roo from Clucks & Waddles Homestead over F1 and F2 hens. I also hatched eggs from my heavy bloom Welsummer hen under my Whiting True Blue rooster in the hopes that her offspring would lay interesting olive eggs. 2023 Update: The F5 Roo from Sky Girl Farm did NOT pass on much speckling – but some of his daughters are laying interesting bloomed eggs!

The grayish green egg in this image has our F5 roo as a father. This is an example of the egg colors you can get when crossing Olive Egger hens to Olive Egger roos! (You tend to get more unique green, drab and speckled seafoam tones.)

This year our olive egger hens are being bred to various F2 and F3 Olive Egger roosters and a unique Heavy Bloom Back Cross 1 Roo, all of which are the offspring of my 2022 flock. My goal is to produce a huge variety of speckled olive, freckled cocoa, funky teals and spunky spearmint shades laid by the chicks we will hatch in 2023 for the 2024 laying season.

Our 2023 flock of Speckled Olive Egger hens hatched from these egg shells in May of 2022. The various speckled brown eggs, including the heavy bloom brown in the back, were laid by Welsummers purchased from Hoover’s Hatchery. The dark Marans eggs were laid by a pullet purchased from Clucks and Waddles Homestead in Montgomery, Texas.
Speckled eggs collected the last week of April 2023.
Here is what the hens who hatched from the shells above are laying! A purebred Whiting True Blue egg is peeking out from under the pile to illustrate the vast range of greens we’re getting. The large egg with the speckling AND a thick overlay is a Back Cross 2, made by crossing a Black Copper Marans roo with a Back Cross 1 OE Hen.
The two speckled brown eggs in the left row of this carton are from brown laying olive eggers. They inherited speckling from their Marans father but not the blue egg gene from their OE mothers. The darkest egg in the top left corner is a purebred Marans egg for reference.
Eggs collected the second week of July 2023. The extreme heat has lightened some of the shades but the F2 and F3 hens continue to produce rich colors. The Whiting True Blue eggs have lightened to powder blue shades in the heat (two are shown here).
Meet “Thunder” our blue F2 Speckled Olive Egger roo, hatched May 2022.
“Thunder” our F2 SOE roo in back with “Diesel” our F3 SOE roo in front, pasture ranging with their hatchmates. These birds were all hatched May 2022.
“Thunder” showing off his hefty size. He’s an F2 Speckled Olive Egger roo.
Meet “Rupert” our F2 Fibro Speckled Khaki Egger roo. He’s got a straight comb, bearded face and blue feathers with a silver dilute gene. He hatched from an olive egg fertilized by our F5 SOE roo and is the only Khaki Egger roo we had hatch.
How the adults above looked as chicks (hatched May 2022).

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