Beautiful blues, gorgeous greens, rich chocolates, petal pinks and chicken eggs so speckled they look like wild bird eggs seem to be showing up in everyone’s nest boxes but yours. Let me walk you through breeding colored egg layers using your existing flock plus a couple new birds with stunning genetics so you can have a rainbow egg carton, too! Here is how to breed for chicken egg color:
How to Breed for EVERY chicken Egg Color
Chickens are incredible. The genetics that control their egg colors allow breeders to “paint” by crossing various tones to create a stunning egg carton palette of shades. It may seem complex but we will walk beginners through every step of breeding for each desired egg color.
First, Understand Chicken Egg Color Genetics
It does you no good to begin breeding without understanding a chicken’s egg color genetics. Learning the very basics of egg color gene inheritance now can save you years of expensive trial-and-error breeding work. We will make this quick and painless, I promise!
Each chicken is carrying two egg shell color genes – either dominant blue or recessive white or one of each. Breeds that lay a blue or white egg do NOT carry any tint overlay genes.
How Tint Genes Work in Chicken Eggs
A bird carrying “tint” genes deposits a brown overlay color over the shell of her eggs. Her tint can be very light cream, medium brown, terracotta toned, or dark chocolate if certain genes are present. However, if one parent carries tint overlay genes, ALL the offspring will inherit it in some form, even if lightly.
Let’s Clear Up a Common Misconception
Mating a rooster to a hen does NOT change the egg color that hen lays. When you are mating hens and roosters to produce new colored egg layers, you must hatch the eggs the hen lays and raise those chicks to see what color they lay. The rooster does not deposit pigment into her body when he mates with her. If you mate a Marans rooster who hatched from a dark chocolate egg to a blue laying hen, she will continue to lay blue eggs the rest of her life. The chicks that hatch from her blue eggs will lay olive tones. Many a new chicken keeper mistakenly believes the rooster somehow deposits pigment or color into the hen’s body, which changes her egg color. This is not how nature works. You must hatch her chicks and raise them to laying age to see their inherited genetics at work, as it is each chicken’s genetics that produces the desired egg color.
Know the Difference Between Americana and Ameraucana
There is a purebred breed, called Ameraucana, who carry two copies of the blue egg gene and lay only blue eggs. These purebreds almost always must come from local breeders and they are expensive, around $12-$15 per straight run chick. Purebred Ameraucanas come in one of the recognized feather colors: black, blue, self-blue (lavender), splash, blue wheaten, brown-red, buff, silver, wheaten, and white from breeders who are careful to keep their line pure.
Hybrid chickens who are likely carrying only one blue egg gene, who might lay blue or green eggs, are often called Americanas, spelled with an “i”, which are also nicknamed “Easter Eggers”. Easter Eggers are any chicken that has been bred from colored egg laying ancestry and who can lay blue, green, pink, peach, brown, cream or white colored eggs.
Easter Eggers/Americanas are NOT purebred Ameraucanas. Sadly, hatcheries try to capitalize on the confusion by selling chicks labeled “Ameraucanas” who are actually Easter Eggers and who may lay a green or brown egg. If you are purchasing a chick from a hatchery labeled as an “Ameraucana” and are not paying $15+ per chick, the chick is actually an Easter Egger with unknown genetics. If you want to breed for egg color, you will need to be certain of your rooster’s genetics. Buying a handsome purebred Ameraucana rooster in a feather color you like from a local breeder is a great way to get a boy who is carrying two blue egg genes.
“Ameraucanas” sold at a feed store for $6 each are Easter Eggers, no matter what the tag says.
Click to view a list of Purebred Ameraucana Breeders by US State!
How to Breed for BLUE Eggs
Hens who lay blue eggs are carrying at least one dominant blue egg gene and no tint overlay genes. The most vibrant blue layers are usually carrying two blue egg genes. We are going to focus on breeding homozygous (two blue egg gene) blue egg layers who will lay blindingly blue eggs for you! The easiest way to do this is to purchase Whiting True Blue or Crested Cream Legbar chicks from a hatchery or true Ameraucana chicks from a breeder. You’ll need one male and a couple of hens. This male, with his two blue egg genes, can also be mated to your existing flock to produce Easter Egger chicks who will lay shades of green or powder blue. (Please note that he won’t be able to produce any brown laying offspring.)
If you are wanting the maximum number of colored eggs, a homozygous blue gene roo is the way to go. (Breeds are: true Ameraucana, Whiting True Blue and Crested Cream Legbar.) Mating him to purebreds of his same breed will produce blue egg laying purebreds. Mating him to cream, peach and standard brown layers will produce 100% green egg laying Easter Egger offspring. Breeding him to Olive Egger hens will produce spearmint and pistachio laying backcross olive eggers who all lay a shade of green. Mating him to white egg laying hens will produce 100% powder blue laying Easter Eggers. Crossing him to dark chocolate laying Marans or heavily speckled Welsummers will produce F1 Olive Eggers who lay 100% olive eggs. He is very useful for creating a diversified and colorful egg carton!
How to Breed for OLIVE Eggs
Many a backyard keeper is interested in getting those rich, avocado-toned dark olive eggs! The reality is that you generally cannot breed the darkest olive shades in the first generation. The fastest route to dark olive egg layers is to buy hatching eggs from someone who has already done the years of breeding work to produce them. From there you can mate the roos to the hens (cross the hatchmates) and keep going. But I’ll still walk you through the process of breeding olive eggers if you would like to start from scratch:
Olive Eggers are bred by crossing chocolate or dark brown egg layers with blue egg layers. If you have several dark brown laying Marans or Welsummer hens, you need a homozygous blue egg gene rooster. If you have blue egg laying hens, you need a Marans or Welsummer rooster who hatched from a very dark egg. Crossing blue egg layers to dark brown egg layers produces the first generation (called F1) Olive Eggers.
How to Backcross Olive Eggers to Darken The Eggs
Once your F1 Olive Egger hens are laying, you can backcross them (mate them) to a dark layer roo so the resulting offspring lay even richer earth toned brownish-olive eggs. Backcrossing darkens the eggs, but it does NOT make them more green. It tends to produce more muddy brown tones with muted hints of green. It is incorrect to label these chicks as “F2” because they are actually a Back Cross 1, abbreviated BC1.
How to Breed F2 Olive Eggers
Once your F1 Olive Egger hens are laying, you can breed them to an F1 Olive Egger rooster. If you began by using a homozygous blue laying breed, around 75% of the F2 chicks will inherit at least one blue egg gene and should lay a shade of olive. All chicks will inherit tinted overlay genes from each parent, which may darken the overall effect. True F2 Olive Eggers, which are only made by crossing F1 Hens to F1 Roos, are the most likely to lay eggs the color of actual green olives.
Click to View Images of F3 Olive Eggs!
How to Breed Speckled Olive Eggs
This is one of the most popular breeding projects! Breeding for speckled eggs is so complex that it has its own page, which details how to get some of the rarest colors in chickendom. Still, I’ll walk you through the basic recipe here:
What Creates Speckling?
Speckling is caused by the egg turning more slowly in the hen’s shell gland, which deposits uneven, “freckled” color. This slow turning seems to be best inherited from the father and is believed to be strongest if inherited from both the mother and the father. You must cross very heavily speckled brown layers with homozygous blue layers to create speckled olive eggers. Using a rooster you hatched from a heavily speckled egg is a must. If not, use a homozygous blue roo over very heavily speckled Marans or Welsummer laying hens. The chicks will usually inherit a half dose of their mother’s speckling. I have an ongoing breeding project using Welsummers to breed speckled layers.
Once you have speckled olive eggers, you can breed or back-cross them to produce a variety of other speckled colors. (Note that backcrossing to a homozygous blue rooster will typically dilute the speckling or can remove it entirely.) Breeding for multiple generations of heavy speckling before attempting to breed for a lighter background color is how you achieve heavy brown speckling on lighter background eggs. Speckled Olive hatching eggs can be $70+ per dozen but even at that price they are a bargain because they are saving you roughly 2 years minimum of breeding work.
How to Breed Colored Egg Laying Easter Eggers
Easter Eggers are a hybrid mix who generally lay colored eggs. All shades of blue, green, pink, peach, cream, and even white are acceptable because there is no breed standard for Easter Eggers. “Easter Egger” is simply a term that means the individual came from a line with blue or green colored egg layers in their ancestry. Many people prefer bearded (fluffy faced) Easter Eggers but again, there is no breed standard so clean faced colored egg layers are common. Below I will describe how to breed beyond the usual blue/green/peach egg colors you find in hatchery Americanas/Easter Eggers.
To Breed Sea Glass & Sea Foam Easter Eggers
What I call Sea Glass is an egg that is one shade off a true blue color. The egg will look blue next to a green egg but look slightly green next to a blue egg. Sea Foam is a slightly more vibrant shade of light aqua or teal that is its own unique color. The “recipe” for breeding these colors is very simple:
Use a homozygous blue gene carrying rooster (Whiting True Blue, purebred Ameraucana, or Crested Cream Legbar) over very, very, light green and extremely light cream laying hens. You are trying to breed a hen who inherits at least one dominant blue egg gene and an extremely light tinted overlay. It is the barely-there cream tinted overlay that gives sea-toned eggs their different colors. If you use a hen who lays a darker green or peach egg, you’ll only get more regular green layers. You must use nearly-white cream layers and exceptionally faint green layers to accomplish this. If you have a hen who already lays sea glass blue, you can also use her, as her offspring will likely lay a similar shade.
How to Breed for Spearmint, Jade and Teal Eggs
Olive Egger hens laying a shade of medium olive green can be back crossed to a homozygous blue rooster to produce some unique tones. This back cross is typically referred to as “Spearmint Layers” but they can lay anything from mint tones to jade, pistachio, pine tree green, turquoise or teal. If you’d like to aim for the most unusual teal shades, opt for an olive egger hen who is laying a darker olive egg with good blue shell coloring visible inside her shell and breed her to a roo known to be carrying very vibrant blue egg genes. The offspring should lay eye-catching shades on the blue-green spectrum that are unlike anything else in your egg basket.
How to Breed for Speckled Sea Foam Eggs
Speckled Sea Foam are one of the rarest colored eggs, right after shades of lavender-gray heavy bloom. Speckled Sea Foam layers are carrying at least one dominant blue egg gene and a very light tint overlay with speckling. Breeding this type of hen is generally more luck than skill. A speckled “olive” egger hen, who already lays a light green egg with brown speckling, is bred to a homozygous blue rooster. A small percent of the female offspring could lay a blueish looking egg with khaki colored speckles. (The rest will usually lay sea-toned Easter Eggs since the cross has typically reduced the speckling.) In order for speckling to appear, the egg must turn slowly in the hen’s shell gland. Since this trait seems to be most strongly inherited from the father, only a few pullets will retain it from her mother. Speckling may not appear on every egg laid.
How to Breed for Heavy Bloom Eggs
Heavy Blooms tend to come through Marans lines (and some Olive Egger lines) where their natural tendency towards having a bloom is deliberately bred for and amplified. It is caused by the hen’s body depositing a thick, foggy bloom over the egg. The bloom should be present in almost every egg laid; it is not simply a heavy calcium deposit from the hen consuming too much oyster shell.
A heavy bloom can change the color of brown eggs to pink, olive eggs to gray and – most elusive of all – maroonish toned Marans eggs to a rare lavender-gray shade. (There is no such thing as a true purple egg laying hen.)
How to Breed for Egg Color: Heavy Blooms
The easiest way to begin is to purchase Heavy Bloom hatching eggs from a breeder. This will save you years upon years of breeding work and is worth the hefty price tag. As you hatch, you must photograph each chick with the egg he or she hatched from, individually leg band them and keep excellent records. As the pullets come into lay, you’ll have a good idea of what genes each cockerel brother is carrying and can begin crossing the hatchmates. (You can cross them for 1 to 2 generations without needing to add in new genetic bloodlines.) It requires a fully dedicated breeding pen and patience to produce the next generation of heavy bloom layers who slowly inch closer to the tones you want.
The rare lavender-gray shades require using Marans lines that have a rich maroon-purple shade to the eggs, as opposed to the more common reddish russet undertones. Again, finding these Marans lines is difficult and typically requires purchasing expensive shipped hatching eggs. You must be passionate about heavy blooms and willing to breed for years to have a chance at achieving the color you are hoping for.
The reason you may only see a picture of one egg in a jaw-dropping color is because the keeper has retrieved an egg from a hen that was over-fed dairy products or oyster shell a couple days before and the heavy bloom plus the calcium deposit has created the shocking color. These eggs can be blown out and kept as a novelty. A true heavy bloom hen will lay eggs that almost all have a bloom and a half dozen of her hatching eggs will look fairly consistent. (Keep in mind that when buying heavy bloom hatching eggs laid by one hen, she needs a full week to lay 5 or 6 so you won’t be able to buy a full dozen at a time.)
Mix, Mix, Mix!
If you are looking for an envy-provoking colored egg basket, I would encourage you to keep a homozygous blue rooster or a dark egg line Marans roo and a Speckled Olive Egger roo who hatched from a unique egg. Using these boys generally allows you to get the widest range of unusual egg colors. (Some of the craziest shades have come from breeding and back crossing olive eggers!) It is the mixing of colored egg genes generation after generation that produces the most interesting results. I hope this page has inspired you and that you refer to it often as you learn how to breed for egg color!
NEW! Serious about colored eggs? If you’re interested in learning useful breeding secrets, our Breeding for Colored Egg Layers from the Inside Out has guided content that can help save years of guesswork and breeding mistakes! Check out all our PDF breeding guides where we reveal all our secret recipes and notes from years of breeding colored egg layers!
You Might Also Enjoy Reading:
Breed SPECKLED Olive Eggs Using Welsummers
Chicken Egg Colors By Breed (50+ Labeled Images!)
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I would love to be able to buy fertile eggs or chicks from you if possible
I have followed your site for at least the last year and found your content to be top notch. You have inspired me to start my own breeding program! We invested in 1 WTB rooster and 4 hens last summer. We just hatched out 7 pure WTB as well as 5 that were crossed with a black copper maran hen. Try to get a handle on the genetics for the potential males that come from the WTB / maran cross. Any males would have hatched out of a speckled chocolate egg but will carry a blue gene. Will his offspring be most like your olive egger example up above?
Hi Cat!
I hope you are loving the Whiting True Blues – they are certainly a favorite here! Your WTB roo x Marans hen cross is the inverse of what I bred (Blue Marans Roo x WTB hens) but it is reasonable to expect eggs similar in tone to the center egg in this image labeled Marans x WTB:
https://silverhomestead.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Speckled-Olive-Egg-Row-LABELED.jpg
It is safe to expect the Olive Egger eggs to have a little bit of speckling inherited from mom. All the offspring will be guaranteed Olive Eggers, carrying one blue egg gene and having a pea comb. Whatever the sisters lay, that will give you a good idea as to what genes the brother is carrying. He won’t be able to breed olive layers that are very much darker than the egg he hatched from so if he came from a Marans hen that lays lighter eggs, he will generally produce offspring who lay lighter sage tones. If he came from a Marans hen that laid a darker egg, he will generally produce medium-dark olives, especially when bred to his hatch mate sisters.
If you’d like to follow along with what I’m getting, you can view my 2022 project flock here: https://silverhomestead.com/2022flock/
Hi! I would love some insight. My goal with my hens is egg color. I have quite a few breeds. I have a sage egger pullet and moss egger cockerel from Alchemist farms that I have been raising. I am longing for that very dark Mossy/Olive egg color layer! With my set of birds I’m not sure what would give me the best chances of that. I am open to getting another rooster. For hens I have the following breeds: Whiting true blue, Easter egger, Brown Leghorn, Salmon faverolle, Cuckoo maran, Speckled Sussex, Brahmas, Bielfelder, a Blue Maran pullet, and even a sassy little white silkie hen haha. Is my cockerel going to be useful to my goal? Should I get another one, if so what breed? And what hens of mine will be the best to use as well? Thank you so much for reading. I really enjoy your page and your content. It helps but a little guidance and mentoring to make the best choice would be so appropriated
Hi Brandi!
I know the exact mossy olive green color you’re describing because I am hoping to achieve it as well! My experience has been that you need very rich, vibrant blue egg genes present in the hen to get the moss and avocado tones. If the blue genes are weak, the faint blue shell can be overpowered by the tint overlay, which may produce muddy drab tones that look nearly brown. Worse, the tone we are hoping to achieve is almost never found in a first generation (F1) Olive egger. It seems to be the crossing of Olive Egger roos carrying a good blue egg gene with a darkish overlay mated to Olive Egger hens also carrying rich blue egg genes that will produce the most stunning shades. I also suspect that the very best moss & avocados are coming from the 25% of F2 (and beyond) Olive Egger hens who inherit two blue egg genes – one from each parent – and rich tint genes from both parents. Sometimes this does not happen until the third generation (F3) and it is as much luck as it is breeding.
If this is your breeding goal, the Alchemist farm Moss Egger roo will help you so long as he has a pea comb. (I viewed pictures of this very pretty hybrid on their website and all pea combed birds were shown, which means a pea combed homozygous blue breed was used in the initial cross. A pea comb in your cockerel indicates a 96% chance that he is carrying at least one blue egg gene.) The Sage Egger hen may lay an egg that is too light to further your moss breeding goals but is likely to produce beautiful olive and brown eggs when crossed with the Moss Egger roo. I’m always going to suggest crossing OE hens and roos to get unique colors! 🙂 Your Whitings under the Moss Egger roo may also produce some very pretty layers as 100% of the offspring will lay some shade of green.
If you’re wanting to add birds, I would try to purchase the richest blue hatching eggs you can find as well as some olive hatching eggs that have rich blue interiors. It will take more than one breeding season and a great deal of patience to achieve the moss colors but they do come once rich blue egg genes are mixed into your olive egger flock! At the moment I have a couple of F3 hens who came from an F2 OE mother believed to be homozygous for a rich blue egg gene and I’m waiting for her F3 daughters to begin laying. She had the richest blue shell interior and I crossed her with the darkest Speckled Olive Egger roo I had in the hopes I would get really nice avocado eggs. You can follow along with the progress on my 2023 breeding page here, where I’ll post egg pictures once they begin laying later this fall: https://silverhomestead.com/2023flock/
Thanks for the great info! How do you keep multiple roos together? I thought you need a large number of hens per rooster or else the roosters will get too rough with each other and the hens.
Hi Alicia!
I raise my own roos and the males I’m intending to keep are raised and hand-fed together. Since hatch mates work out their pecking order while still chicks, there are no serious issues when they are older. I’ve also found that if you add a young cockerel (less than 12 weeks old) in with an adult roo, the adult roo seems to believe it is one of his chicks. He may run the cockerel off from mounting hens and kind of scold the youngster but I haven’t had any issues with this method. I prefer to NOT add adult roos into a flock with existing adult roos.
Each roo needs a minimum of 6 hens – and 8 to 10 is better – if you want to avoid bare backs on the hens. So minimum 12 hens in a pen with two roos. I very much prefer to raise roosters together if I want them in the same pen or have a father raise a cockerel chick. This is how I have my olive egger pen – the father roo met his chicks when they were around 10 weeks old and he raised his own sons. It helps when you have generations of hand-fed birds and you have kept only docile boys!
I have been searching for someone to help break down the process! I’m new to breeding as I’ve always just had layers for eating eggs not fertilizing. Because of your break down I just ordered a true Ameraucana Roo and a Black Copper Maran roo for my girls. I will continue to follow along and read your many great articles!! thank you!!
I just have to thank you for all the information you put on this site. Incredibly helpful. I am about to start my own chicken journey and am so excited to find your wealth of advice and techniques.
You wrote in the paragraph about speckled seafoam eggs “A small percent of the female offspring could lay a blueish looking egg with khaki colored speckles. ” Approximately what percentage have you seen that do have bluish speckled eggs?
Hi Mallory!
The percentage of speckled seafoam layers is very low, perhaps as low as one out of every ten hens deliberately breed for this shade. Even then, the hen will lay some eggs without speckling and her sisters will probably lay various bluey-green, teal or light green/olive shades. Speckled seafoam (appears blueish) is difficult to breed for and comes down to luck. Crossing speckled Olive Egger hens with speckled Olive Egger roos is where I’ve seen the best chance of producing blue speckled eggs; especially when crossing F1 SOE hens with F1 SOE roos. I highly suspect the speckled seafoam layer hen needs to inherit 2 blue egg genes (one from each parent) AND speckling (slow egg turning in her shell gland) plus a very light tinted overlay that allows the blue undertones to show through under the speckling. The lighter tint colors present in F1 SOE’s are generally a help in achieving this. I also believe that Marans speckling carries forward to offspring better and tends to show up (the slow egg turning tendency can remain) while tint genes are permitted to lighten in the offspring. And remember, your speckled olive egger hen and roo will both need to be carrying one blue egg gene each and only 25% of the offspring will inherit two blue egg genes and only half of these are expected to be female. So from F1 SOE x F1 SOE there is a 12.5% chance of producing a female who will carry 2 blue egg genes only; speckling and/or a light tint overlay is not guaranteed. However, speckled seafoam eggs do exist and they are possible to breed for, it just takes a lot of crossing with speckled olive eggers, a lot of growing out chicks you hatch and some good old-fashioned luck!
There is a “shortcut” way you can get speckled seafoam eggs which is to have an OE hen who lays speckled light green/olive eggs and just wait! As the laying season progresses, her tint may lighten to where the eggs appear more blueish instead of light green while the speckling is still present, but is also lightening a bit itself. I have an SOE hen who lays eggs like this. They start off a very nice speckled light olive shade and lighten as the weather warms. A few of her late spring or early summer eggs do appear bluey with brown speckles. She’s an F2 Olive Egger and you can see her speckled green eggs in this article. I would use her under a speckled OE roo carrying a blue egg gene who came from Marans parentage if I wanted to deliberately breed for speckled seafoam.