F3 Olive Egger Eggs {egg pics + breeding recipes}

We’ll share how to correctly breed F3 Olive Eggers and show pictures of the gorgeous dark moss shades our F3 hens lay! Plus we’ll share the specific breeding recipe we used to get the egg colors shown. Here is everything you want to know – and see – about F3 Olive Egger Eggs:

12 dark F3 olive egger eggs in a rainbow of earthy hues including moss, avocado, slate green, drab, dark earth and speckled olive are shown on a white surface with purple and white fresh flowers behind them

F3 Olive Eggers

The F in F3 stands for Filial. This Latin word means “of a son or daughter”. While many people believe the F represents “generation”, it kind of does…but that doesn’t capture the whole truth. The F represents how long a breeding line has been going in one direction, without back-crossing, by breeding offspring together to “set” the desired genes.

Breeding F3 Olive Eggers

To get to Filial 3, you must begin with a Filial 1. This is where you cross a dark egg laying chicken to a blue egg laying chicken. (Our article on breeding Olive Eggers easily walks you through this process!) Once you have the F1 generation, mating the males you hatched to their hatchmate sisters creates a Filial 2 generation. Mating these F2 hatchmates together creates the Filial 3 generation, or F3 for short. This is considered line breeding. It is only inbreeding if the male and female are full brothers and sisters or when breeding a parent to their offspring, which is fine because chickens can handle up to 3 generations of inbreeding and a dozen generations of line breeding.

But What About Back Crossing?

If at any time you breed Olive Egger hens to a dark brown egg gene breed to darken the olive tones or a blue egg gene breed to get spearmint shades, this is called back-crossing. It creates a Back-Cross 1 (BC1) generation. When you mate BC1 males to their hatchmate sisters, this creates a Filial 2 (F2) generation. Every time you back-cross, you should label the offspring as a back-cross and then the next generation is an F2. Even if you back-cross using F6 Olive Egger hens, the offspring is Back-Cross 1 and the next generation is F2.

F3 Olive Egger Egg Pics

Enough talking, let’s show you the F3 olive egger eggs!

Breeding Recipe for Our F3 Olive Eggers

If you have my Breeding for Rich Olive Eggs breeding guide, you are viewing the results! My F3 hens are the product of creating an F1 generation using mostly Whiting True blues, Back-Crossing to Black Copper Marans to create a BC1 generation, crossing the BC1 offspring together to create an F2 generation, and then breeding the F2 generation together to create these F3 laying hens. (If this is confusing, the breeding guide has helpful visuals!)

a dozen F3 dark and speckled olive eggs are shown in a white wood egg holder

Different Shades of Olive

I love the range of Spanish olive, moss, and avocado tones these hens are laying! Even though I used the same rooster to father these hens, the range of tones is what we expect several generations into breeding Olive Eggers when the best hens are selectively bred to the rooster(s) who hatch from the darkest eggs.

a top down view of a dozen dark F3 speckled olive eggs in moss, drab, and avocado tones

F3 Olive Eggers: A Popular Internet Search

Thanks to pics of dark olive eggs tagged #F3 on social media, people are specifically looking for F3 Olive Eggers. Why? It is in the F3 generation that you begin to get a very pretty range of shades. Some dark, some mossy, potentially a few speckled, and some can be shockingly teal colored.

Splash Feathered F3 Olive Eggers

Another reason F3 Olive Eggers may be so popular is that in this third generation, splash colored chicks begin to appear. This must be bred for by mating blue feathered roosters and hens. Breeding for dark olive eggs and feather color can be tricky but it is most often the F3 generation when those eye-catching splashed beauties appear. If you’re interested in breeding for this feather color, our article on Splash Olive Eggers and our Splash Feathered Speckled Olive Egger breeding guide can walk you through how to select for the genes you need!

a visual breeding chart of the blue dilution gene genetic inheritance showing what different colored feathered offspring will hatch from mating various black, blue and splash feathered roosters and hens together — This chart shows which pairings will produce splash feathered offspring.

Pricing for F3 Olive Egger Hatching Eggs & Chicks

F3’s generally represent a minimum of 3 years of breeding work. The eggs shown here took us 5 years of breeding work. The prettiest and/or darkest hatching eggs from an F3 flock are going to be premium priced. The breeder is saving you at least $500 per year in feed and maintenance to raise a small breeding flock so the higher priced F3 eggs are fair. From those F3 eggs you’ll hatch an F4 generation and can keep breeding for ever darker and more stunning earth tone shades. If you find true F3 eggs in a nice shade for less than $50 per dozen, make sure you carefully check what rooster has fertilized them. (An F3 rooster is expected or they may be back-crossed to a Marans, which is fine if you want even darker umber eggs.)

We do not sell eggs or chicks but you can find links on our Buy Eggs page to breeders who do!

10 dark colored F3 olive egger eggs in a row in a white dough bowl, some eggs have speckling

Want to Breed Your Own and Need Help?

Our Rich Olive Eggs and our Dark Olive Eggs breeding guide can walk you through all the steps of creating your own olive egger breeding project if you’d like to begin totally from scratch like we did!