Want a backyard chicken that free ranges so well they practically feed themselves for free and lay heaps of colored eggs while tending to be fairly quiet? Consider the beautiful, versatile, clever and robust Easter Eggers! These beauties have fast become my favorite hybrid/breed of chicken. They are friendly, healthy, and seem to be less affected by heat and cold that slows egg production in other breeds. Read on to learn why the easiest chicken breed is Easter Eggers and why my flock will never be without this hybrid:
Easter Eggers are an Easy Backyard Bird
When I placed our first order of chicks, my son asked if we could get Easter Eggers to lay colored eggs. He had always enjoyed the blue eggs that came from a friend’s farm so at the last minute, I added three Americanas to my cart. At the time I thought green eggs looked unappealing and that olive eggs were perfectly ugly. I could not believe people actually wanted eggs the color of moss and algae. All that changed the morning we opened the coop to find the first tiny, sea glass blue egg!
The First Blue Egg Changed My Mind
Something clicked as I held that little blue egg. I realized how much fun it had been to watch my different shades of chipmunk-striped chicks grow into gorgeous adults with widely varying feather colors and patterns. While we waited for our very first eggs to appear, we could not stop talking about how excited we were to see what color eggs the Easter Eggers would lay. When our hen, Miss Gorgeous, laid that first blue egg I fell in love!
Endless Egg Colors
Our first three Easter Eggers ended up laying a blue, green and peach colored egg. I’ll admit I was disappointed that my pretty gray-feathered girl laid a peachy toned egg. It was then that I knew I would be breeding blue egg layers. A basket full of different colored eggs is so beautiful, so alluring, so earthy and captivating that I wanted to have a variety of color forever after. Even better, some Easter Eggers produce beautiful bluey-green, spearmint or teal colored eggs! You never know what you are going to get (but I kind of want to try them all!)
Ameraucana, Americana or Easter Egger?
Easter Eggers are a mixed breed of chicken with distant Araucana parentage that results in the majority of birds still carrying one copy of the dominant blue egg gene. They are often mis-labeled as being Ameraucanas, which is a purebred breed that lays only blue eggs, has muffs and a beard and conforms to one of eight recognized feather colors. Purebred Ameraucanas are rare, expensive and must come from dedicated breeders. The “Americana” chicks you order from a hatchery each are Easter Eggers, which can lay a blue, green, olive, pink, peach, brown, or rarely, a cream or white egg. They are bred by pairing blue and green egg laying hens with blue egg gene-carrying roosters to produce offspring that has a 75-95% chance of laying a blue or green egg. There may be up to a 25% chance you end up with a hen that lays a peach or brown shade of egg.
Easter Eggers: Not a Breed But a Hybrid
Technically Easter Eggers are not a breed but a hybrid. The majority of Easter Egger chicks are expected to carry a blue egg gene, have a pea comb and they frequently have slate blue or greenish gray legs. (The leg color is not a requirement; you can have Easter Eggers with any leg color and feather color!) If the chick is a mix of different brown egg laying breeds, they are affectionately called a barnyard mix, not an Easter Egger.
Hidden Genetic Benefits of Easter Eggers
Because Easter Eggers are a mixed breed, they enjoy something called Hybrid Vigor. Their gene pool is so diverse that the chicks tend to be born strong and healthy. My Easter Eggers are always the last to catch any sort of chicken cold or illness (if they get it at all) and they recover the fastest. They tend to be clever, hunter-like free rangers and their unique, highly varied feather patterning provides ideal camouflage. This is one of the biggest reasons why Easter Eggers are a wonderful backyard bird: they survive, limiting the heartache and inconvenience of lost chickens.
Good Egg Production
Easter Egger hens lay regularly and reliably all year long, despite hundred degree summer temperatures that slow my other hens to a few eggs per week. The Easter Eggers hardly slow down, filling the nest box with a steady supply of eggs. While most hatcheries say Americana/Easter Eggers lay 240-260 eggs per year, I have found them to be closer to the 260 range.
Easter Egger Personalities
I have multiple Easter Eggers and Prairie Bluebell Eggers (which are blue egg laying Araucana crosses). All of them are incredibly sweet, relaxed birds. Hand-raised Easter Eggers are my most “pet-able” chickens, running up to me when they see me and not leaping away from a gentle touch. I also appreciate that the EE’s tend to have the most mild egg songs, often laying their egg without a peep and rushing back out to keep scratching and pecking for bugs. My quietest birds are my two smallest, four-pound Easter Egger hens who also happen to be my most reliable daily layers. They are so soft spoken and easy to keep, I wish I could have hid a couple in our old suburban back yard. (Since chickens were forbidden in our suburban subdivision, I really wish I had kept quail!)
Incredibly Kid Friendly Hens
The Easter Eggers were the first to associate our hands with food as three day old chicks. They would come running to us, accepting any sort of handling, eating heartily, and they grew quickly. As adults, Easter Eggers remain calm around visiting children who cannot help but chase the chickens they so badly want to pet. They are typically easy to catch and hand off for a cuddle.
Clever Birds
The Easter Egger’s mixed ancestry also tends to produce intelligent birds who are likely to be the first to figure out how nipple waterers work and that the sudden appearance of “new” dogs are a reason to run and hide. I have also found that they – and especially the roosters – are adept at spotting hawks and snakes and alerting the rest of the flock. At seven weeks old, our Prairie Bluebell Egger cockerel cornered a coral snake and kept his female hatch mates safely away from it with warning chirps. Sometimes they are too intelligent, like Pecan Pie (below) who noticed a large rat snake in one nest box at dusk and spent the next two months refusing to lay her eggs in any nest box at all. Not every Easter Egger will be intelligent, as evidenced by humorous stories online about a few dingbat birds, but my general experience has been that they are sharp-eyed and clever.
The Stunning Eggs!
Easter Eggers are predictable layers, typically producing eggs at 20-22 weeks old and laying five to six eggs per week. Mine all seemed to begin laying at 21 weeks – a mere five months after hatching. There really is nothing more exciting than waiting to see what egg color you are going to get! I love the Easter Egger mystery of never knowing what feather and egg color will come from each cute, fluffy chick. It really does make the waiting for eggs more fun!
Peach (Brown) Laying Easter Eggers
Even if I am disappointed by a brown layer, their eggs are still unique. They can be a gorgeous peachy cream color, pinky-brown tinted, faint orange, pumpkin spice shades and sometimes even lightly speckled. They do not match the standard brown shade of eggs laid by my Orpingtons, Barred Rocks or Wyandottes. Even more surprising is that a chicken’s egg color can become slightly lighter colored during the hottest summer months and a bit darker when they first begin laying after winter. This makes the Easter Eggs all the more interesting and adds further variety to the egg basket.
Egg Sale Booster
There is a growing desire for free range eggs laid by hens that are eating mostly grass, seeds and bugs. Colored eggs are eye-catching and since most commercial laying operations have yet to add Easter Eggers, those pastel shells are a dead giveaway that the eggs were most likely laid by backyard hens with access to grass. You can learn more about how profitable selling rainbow colored eating eggs really is!
2024 Update On Easter Egger Egg Pricing:
How to Show Off Those Colored Eggs:
Using clear egg cartons is a great way to show off those gorgeous colors! (Afflink) Easter Eggers tend to not be at the top of the flock pecking order among dominant hens, who gobble up all the best treats first, which means the EE hens must forage for themselves. This is why pasture raised Easter Egger yolks are often the darkest orange of the entire flock – she is eating her greens!
Happy Easter Egger Hens
No matter what breed or hybrid you select, keeping chickens is a fun and rewarding hobby. But if you find yourself wanting to add a little splash of color to your egg cartons, consider the beautiful, versatile and vigorous Easter Egger!
Click to learn how to breed beautiful blue, green and aqua colored laying Easter Eggers!
Brenda Sabov says
We are wanting to get a flock of Easter Eggers and have so many questions! We enjoyed your information and want yo know how many chicks you recommend getting for a first try at this. We just want them around the yard and for eggs. Do we need a rooster or more than one? Also, do you sell chicks or could you please tell us where you would recommend we purchase them from? Thanks a bunch!
Tay Silver says
Hi Brenda!
I would suggest calculating how many full size chickens your coop can hold and purchasing that number (or less) of chicks. To do this, measure all the roosting bar space and then divide by a minimum of 8 inches per bird. That will tell you how many chickens your coop can sleep. If your coop is large and you want to begin with a smaller number of birds, I would plan on having 6 to 8 hens with one rooster so no one is over-mated. (He can reliably fertilize up to 10 hens.)
You do not need a rooster in order for the hens to lay eggs. However, if you would like to have a self-sufficient flock and breed your own Easter Eggers, a rooster will be necessary. If it were me, I would purchase Easter Egger pullets from a hatchery and then hatch my own Easter Egger rooster from blue hatching eggs purchased from a local breeder. That way you know he is carrying at least one blue egg gene. (Hatchery Easter Egger roosters may be “peach layers” who are carrying no blue egg genes at all.) If you’d prefer to start with a known homozygous (two) blue egg gene carrying roo, I highly suggest a Whiting True Blue male from Murray McMurray hatchery. Whitings often look like Easter Eggers but they carry two blue egg genes. I personally favor the big bodied Americanas (Easter Eggers) Hoover’s hatchery sells. Hoover’s supplies Tractor Supply with their chicks so the large, fluffy-faced Americanas/Easter Eggers at your local TSC are theirs. My first 3 EEs were from Hoover’s and each laid a different color egg: seaglass blue, green, and peach. I liked that several of the girls were nearly dual purpose sized (5 pounds) but laid a LOT of eggs (around 280 USDA large eggs per year – more than the 240 medium size eggs Hoover’s lists on their site as a minimum.)
I hope this helps!
Jenny says
Hi, I have read through your site and continue to reread as I’m preparing to expand my egg “rainbow”. I have just purchased a Copper Maran Rooster and was wondering if you have a graphic showing CMR bred to Easter eggers and or legbars. I have peach, green, and blue EE and legbars I’m wondering what the possibilities will be. Thank you so much for all your info you are a wealth of knowledge and I plan to purchase from you when I need to get more supplies!
Tay Silver says
Hi Jenny!
On my Genetics page I show what a dark layer roo (like a Marans) creates when crossed with Blue, Green & Brown/Peach laying hens (like Easter Eggers) and homozygous blue hens (like Cream Legbars). Egg colors are not exact but you’re always going to get shades of green from the Legbar hen’s offspring and green, olive or brown from the Easter Eggers!
K says
Hi! I saw your set up for the brooder in the bathtub. How long do you keep them in there since they do start flying a bit? And what are you using on the bottom? I wished I thought of the bathtub idea!
Tay Silver says
Lol! I showed a picture of chicks in my bath tub as an illustration of what NOT to do! The chicks were able to jump out of the tub by 7 days old and were completely uncontained, running all over my bathroom by 9 days old. A neighbor took pity on me and let me borrow her brooder. I never brooded chicks in the bath tub again after that experience! I use pelleted pine litter from Tractor Supply (sold as horse stall bedding) in the bottom of my brooders.