Chicken Breeding Recipes {with illustrated recipe cards!}

Our pretty infographics make complex chicken egg color breeding simple to comprehend! Children, teens, and beginners will find introductory genetics easily explained in visual format, which helps breeding projects go exactly as planned. Let’s jump into our beautifully simple chicken breeding recipes:

Chicken Breeding Recipes for Creating Colored Egg Layers

Chicken egg color genetics are complex. This article is meant to serve as a visually simple guide for beginner 4-H, FFA and school age youth who are interested in breeding colored egg layers. The large and simplified infographics below explain basic egg shell color inheritance. The breeding recipe cards that follow help students plan what rooster and hens to cross to get the egg colors they desire.

Understanding Basic Egg Shell Color Genetics

basic chicken egg shell genetics with 1 dominant blue and 1 recessive white egg graphic plus text that reads chicken egg shells can only be 1 of 2 colors

No matter how many colors and shades eggs come in, the underlying shell can only be either blue or white. Every other egg color is made by varying amounts of tint being laid over these two shell colors. Blue is dominant so if a hen inherits a single blue egg gene, she will produce blue egg shells. White is recessive so a hen needs to inherit two copies of recessive white to have white egg shells (both white and all shades of brown laying hens carry two copies of recessive white egg shell genes).

Understanding Tint Overlay

how tint overlay works by showing a blue egg shell graphic, a tint overlay graphic and the two combined to create a green egg graphic

tint overlay on brown eggs illustrated by showing a white egg shell, a tint overlay graphic and the two combined to create a brown egg graphic

Tint Overlay Shades Can Vary

tint shade can vary illustrated by faint tint cream egg graphic, light tint tinted peach egg graphic, medium tint brown egg graphic and dark tint chocolate egg graphic

How Tint Overlays Make Green Eggs

blue shell + tint makes green eggs illustrated by faint tint spearmint egg graphic, light tint sage egg graphic, medium tint green egg graphic and dark tint olive egg graphic

Let’s Begin Breeding Colored Egg Layers!

Now that you understand what egg shell base colors and tint overlay colors combine to make different eggs, let’s follow some breeding recipes to create colored egg laying hens:

The graphics below illustrate what you can expect when using a single rooster to produce offspring from various colored egg laying hens.

How to Breed Guaranteed Blue Egg Layers

chicken breeding recipes for making blue egg laying hens using a homozygous blue egg gene rooster

Easter Eggers are a hybrid, which means they are a mix of different chicken breeds. “Homozygous” means the bird carries two copies of one gene, in this case the blue egg gene. Homozygous blue egg gene roosters are often purebred Whiting True Blue, true Ameraucana (from a specialized breeder) or Crested Cream Legbars. You can mate these purebred roosters to any hen and the offspring will always lay blue or green eggs because chicks will always inherit one copy of the dominant blue egg gene from their father. (Remember, blue egg shells are dominant so if a hen inherits just one copy, she will produce blue egg shells!)

How to Breed Blue & Green Egg Laying Easter Eggers

breeding recipe for blue & green easter eggers illustrated with a blue egg rooster graphic + a pile of 6 different colored eggs graphic = easter eggers illustrated by 4 blue and green eggs

Using the Same Rooster to Breed Olive Eggers

breeding recipe for F1 olive eggers illustrated with a blue egg rooster graphic + a cluster of 4 different shades of dark brown eggs graphic = olive eggers illustrated by 4 green eggs in varying shades of sage and light olive

If you breed the same homozygous blue egg gene rooster to hens who lay darker brown eggs, you’ll get first generation, Filial 1 (F1) Olive Eggers!

Why are Light Olive and Sage Tones Expected? Because your rooster is carrying NO tint genes at all, the chicks only inherit tint genes from the mother. This tends to “lighten” the tints so the offspring lay light olive and sage eggs, not dark olive eggs.

How to Breed Olive Eggers (the most popular way)

alternate breeding recipe for F1 olive eggers illustrated with a dark brown egg rooster graphic + a blue egg graphic = olive eggers illustrated by 2 green eggs in shades of sage and light olive

Most people like to use a dark egg line rooster, such as a Black Copper Marans, bred to blue egg laying hens to produce olive eggers. Why? Because they want to use the same rooster the next year to darken the eggs! Doing this is called back-crossing and it makes olive eggs darker:

How to Back-Cross Olive Eggers

breeding recipe for back cross 1 olive eggers illustrated with a dark brown egg rooster graphic + a olive egg graphic = BC1 olive eggers illustrated by a cluster of 4 eggs in shades of olive drab and medium-dark brown

How to Breed Speckled Olive Eggers

chicken breeding recipes for F1 speckled olive eggers illustrated with a dark brown speckled egg rooster graphic + a blue egg graphic = olive eggers illustrated by 2 green eggs in shades of sage and light olive, one with brown speckles and text that reads speckling possible but not guaranteed

You can attempt to breed speckled olive eggers by using a rooster who comes from a speckled egg line. Many Marans and purebred Welsummers have speckled shells and are good roosters to use for this project. Remember, this is an attempt to breed for speckled olive eggs; speckling is never guaranteed to be present on the offspring’s egg shells.

Another Speckled Olive Egger Recipe

alternative breeding recipe for F1 speckled olive eggers illustrated with a blue egg rooster graphic + a cluster of 4 different shades of speckled dark brown eggs graphic = olive eggers illustrated by 4 green eggs in varying shades of sage and light olive, two of which have brown speckling

You can attempt to breed speckled olive eggers using a homozygous blue egg gene rooster and speckled brown laying hens. Only hatch from the most heavily speckled eggs for the best chance of offspring who lays eggs with speckling!

Breeding Classic Easter Eggers

chicken breeding recipes for classic easter eggers illustrated with a heterozygous blue egg rooster graphic + a cluster of 6 different shades of blue, aqua, green, spearmint and peach easter eggs graphic = Easter eggers illustrated by 6 eggs in varying shades of blue, mint, green and peach

This is how hatcheries breed their popular Americana/Easter Egger chicks! If you want to be able to produce blue, green, and peach egg layers using only one rooster, he needs to be heterozygous for the blue egg gene. This means he carries one dominant blue egg gene and one recessive white egg gene.

How Do I get a Heterozygous Blue Roo? You can guarantee you get a heterozygous blue rooster if he hatches from a white egg fertilized by a homozygous blue egg rooster.

Breeding Blue & White Egg Layers Only

chicken breeding recipes for making blue and white egg laying hens using a heterozygous blue egg gene rooster

What if I Just Use an Easter Egger Roo I Already Have?

This can be a lot of fun and a great way for everyone to learn about chicken genetics. You won’t know what egg color genes your rooster carries until his daughters begin laying, and then you can make an educated guess! Here are some breeding recipes to help you know what to expect:

chicken breeding recipes using a green easter egger rooster

chicken breeding recipe using a blue easter egger rooster

What if I Use a Different Rooster I Already Own?

Take a peek at these breeding recipes by egg color to get an idea of what you can expect:

breeding with a white egg breed rooster barnyard mix outcome

breeding with a cream egg breed rooster barnyard mix outcome

breeding with a brown egg breed rooster barnyard mix outcome

breeding with a dark brown chocolate egg breed rooster barnyard mix outcome

Buy The Printable Version!

If you love the chicken breeding recipes shown here, you can buy a high resolution, printable version of these recipe cards which you can print, cut, and slip into a 4×6 photo album or profolio. (Afflinks)

Purchase includes recipe cards for MORE egg colors and breeding combinations than shown here!

Free Printables for Breeders & Students:

Free Printable Egg Laying Tracker

Incubator Hatch Record + Chick Tracking Sheet

Breeding Pen Organizer Pages

Need More Help?

Our website is full of in-depth articles on breeding for egg color! We also offer step-by-step breeding eBooks in our website shop to help you get the blue, green, dark olive, heavy bloom and pink eggs you want! (Note that breeding for Pink Eggers is an advanced breeding project.)

colorful chicken eggs in a row, labeled by the breed of hen who laid each one — Click the image above to see pictures of eggs labeled by breed!

You Might Also Enjoy Reading:

Basic Chicken Egg Shell Genetics

How to Breed Colored Egg Layers

Hatcheries that Sell the Best Colored Egg Layer Chicks

Breeding Olive Eggers + Breeding Speckled Olive Eggers

Pin for Later:

colorful blue green peach and speckled brown hen eggs in a white egg carton and white round dish with a whisk utensil and text that reads chicken breeding recipe cards

Comments

Kaitlyn S. says

May 24, 2024 at 4:55 pm

Oh my. I LOVE these — they’re SO helpful! Thanks in part to this site, I’ve realized that selling hatching eggs and getting beautiful chicken eggs to bring to market *isn’t* such a far fetched notion I’ve dreamed of! Thank you for all the time you’ve put into all of this! It’s been EXTREMELY helpful to me . . . and my family and I’ve been keeping chickens for nearly 18 years, now!