Do you love chickens of all different feather colors but want to be guaranteed a bright blue egg layer that breeds true? Whiting True Blues may be the breed you have been dreaming of! Their spunky personalities, enormous array of feather colors (literally every color is possible) and those super blue eggs are what is making this breed so highly sought after. Here is everything you want to know about Whiting True Blues, including pictures of their incredible eggs!
How the Breed Began
Doctor Tom Whiting was a fly fishing feather tying hobbyist who decided to try his hand at breeding roosters with longer hackle feathers better for fly tying. While he was at it, he also decided to breed a blue laying chicken that came in every feather color pattern possible, including barred with barred beards! His result was the Whiting True Blue breed, which will breed true for the blue egg color but always give a glorious range of feather colors.
Whiting True Blue Ancestry
Whitings began as a cross between heavily laying leghorns and deep blue laying Araucanas. This cross produced a powder blue layer (similar to Prairie Bluebells). From there Doctor Tom bred the hatch mates to each other until all offspring carried two copies of the blue egg gene.
Where to Get Chicks
The only hatchery in the United States authorized to sell Dr. Tom Whiting’s purebred Whiting True Blue chicks is Murray McMurray hatchery. This is where we purchased our first chicks, which arrived in March 2020. (Plan to order chicks as early in the season as possible, around January 1st. This breed sells out every year.)
A Rainbow of Chicks
Chicks hatch out medium sized and vigorous in a dizzying array of colors. Sometimes I have difficulty determining which roo over which hen was able to produce such a unique colored chick. Blue, black, splash and varying shades of chipmunk are the most common colors. Chicks can be clean faced or bearded. Many black chicks actually grow out to be a very dark charcoal; you’ll know them by their dusty black color and barely visible black chipmunk markings. Chipmunk chicks can feather in brown and black, blue and gold, shades of light gray partridge or duck wing. Every once in a while a truly unique beauty will be born.
Blindingly Blue Eggs
The eggs can be so vibrant blue they actually hurt your eyes a little when the shells are viewed in sunny daylight. Many a visitor has gasped when opening an egg carton and exclaimed at how blue the eggs are. The contrast is even more pronounced next to green and dark brown eggs.
Fun, Friendly Personalities
The chicks are inquisitive, cheerful and easily hand tamed. They grow to be intelligent medium bodied birds who get along well with dual purpose breeds. And boy do they ever lay! 280 to 300 eggs per hen per year will fill your nest box to overflowing. Want eggs all the way through the winter months? Purchase Whitings hatched in March or April. They will begin to lay around August or September and not stop. (Our hens that began laying in July and August 2020 are still laying 11 months later in June 2021 and likely won’t stop until the fall molt.)
Fast Maturing
Whiting True Blues are known for coming into lay promptly at 20 to 22 weeks old. The cockerels are even more impressive, beginning to mate hens as early as 8 to 10 weeks old. It may seem impossible but one of my cockerels fertilized a Prairie Bluebell egg when he was 9 weeks old, which hatched out a daughter.
Rapid Reproduction
In March 2020 I purchased my first Whiting chicks, which began laying in late July 2020 at 20 weeks and 2 days old. I incubated the first full size egg laid during the early days of August, which hatched a female in late August. Her parents were just 24 weeks and 4 days old. That female, Caroline, is now grown and laid some of the blue eggs shown in the images here. (Some of the wild type chipmunk chicks in the images above are also hers.)
Regal Roosters
Would you enjoy owning a gentleman rooster who will breed gorgeous babies? Whiting Roos are handsome, well-mannered guardians who grow to be a medium-large size. Their flashy colors and long feathers make them look quite well dressed. Best of all, they will produce an abundance of blue, green and olive laying offspring when crossed with various breeds of hens.
Profitable Breed
If you’d like to make a little hobby income, the deepest blue purebred hatching eggs can fetch $2 to $6 each. When crossed with heavily speckled laying Welsummers, Whitings produce guaranteed Speckled Olive Egger offspring whose spotted eggs can command astronomical prices per hatching egg. (They also tend to come into lay at 22-24 weeks old, slightly faster than other olive eggers.)
Whiting True Blues
If you have loved owning Easter Eggers and are ready for cartons full of blue eggs, give Whitings a try! You might have the best luck getting the rarest feather colors by incubating your own eggs since the most beautiful chicks sell astonishingly quickly, if the breeder will even part with them.
Want to See More Chick & Egg Pictures?
Do you guys sell whiting chicks? I’m looking to expand my flock
Hi Jessica! We don’t ship chicks but if you join the “Whiting True Blue” Facebook page, you’ll find a number of NPIP U.S. breeders who can ship chicks and hatching eggs!
Do you sale the blues
Hi Joseph! I do not ship eggs or chicks but you can purchase Whiting True Blues from Murray McMurray Hatchery. The hatchery tends to sell out for the year by Easter, if not Valentine’s Day. The Facebook Group “Whiting True Blues” has a handful of breeders who ship hatching eggs if you contact them directly!
Will save this website!
Hi I was wondering what your experience has been with the Whiting True Blues & their temperament? I’ve ordered some Whiting True Blue hatching eggs (for breeding them with my other breeds for colorful egg layers). They will be with a variety of breeds most of which are docile/gentle breeds (cochins, faverolles, sussex, bielefelders & also some marans & Buff orpingtons). I was just wondering if they will be bullies to the gentler breeds or if they will get along alright? If they are bullies, from your experience, which homozygous blue gene breeds are the most docile? Also how is their ability to breed with bigger breeds (since they’re on the smaller side compared to bielefelders & orpingtons)?
Thanks!
Hi Katrina!
Barred Rock hens have been the biggest bullies in my flock, followed by some of the dual purpose breed girls, who seem to know how to use their weight to their advantage! Whiting True Blues are medium size birds, around 3.5 to 5 pounds for hens – very similar in size to Americana/Easter Eggers and I have not found them to be bullies at all. Whitings are athletic and subject to flightiness if they are not handled and hand fed some treats as chicks, which is a common complaint among those who want to keep lots of hens but don’t interact with them much when young. Most backyard keepers find Whitings to be friendly and delightful. My WTB hens are some of the sweetest girls and eagerly run to my hands to investigate everything I bring them! My Marans and Buff Orpingtons are always higher in the pecking order than my Whitings. I’ve owned Crested Cream Legbars, which were all sweethearts, but I found them to have too many green-tinted layers in the line and did not end up breeding with them.
When it comes to breeding, the Whiting hens handle mounting from dual purpose breed roosters just fine and Whiting roos are very similar in size to dual purpose breed boys. If there is feather loss, I put hen saddles/aprons on any hen needing them. (Whitings, Prairie Bluebells, Orpingtons, Rhode Island Red and Olive Egger individuals have all needed feather protection in the past. Whiting hens have needed the saddles the least.) I hope this helps!
Thanks! That’s really helpful! With them being a somewhat newer breed I couldn’t find alot of info & wanted to make sure they’d fit in well with the other breeds:)
Hello again! I realized I have more questions about this breed that I have not been able to find anywhere. When crossing the Whiting True Blues with your brown layers to create Easter Eggers/olive Eggers is the offspring as prolific of layers as the Whiting true blue parent or does their egg productivity end up being somewhat of an average of what both parents’ egg productivity genetics are? Also same with the offspring’s size, do they take after the bigger or smaller parent or do they land somewhere in the middle of the two? Thanks!:)
Hey Katrina!
Whiting True Blue crosses tend to inherit some of the best Whiting qualities: unique down & feather colors and faster maturing. I have found Olive Eggers with WTB parentage do tend to come into lay faster than the usual 6-7 months olive eggers need, and are closer to the 24 week (6 month) mark when they start laying. They also tend to have OE offspring that seem to lay just a little bit more, as in 260 eggs per year compared to most olive eggers who clock in around 220-240 eggs per year. I have one WTB x Welsummer F1 OE hen who is a prolific layer so it probably depends on the individual hen but I suspect the WTB genetics help because my Welsummer hens have always been rather lazy layers. When WTBs are crossed with Marans, I feel like everything slows down to the average for those OE offspring. They take 6-7 months to come into lay, give about 240 eggs per year and not all of them will be speckled. I’m in my third year of breeding olive eggers with WTB ancestry and while crossing them with Welsummers gives awesome polka dot speckles, the best and longest-lasting speckles in my flock have come from Marans roos. You don’t need the darkest shelled lines either, you want a Marans rooster from a line with very heavy speckling visible all over the shell.
Offspring size varies and can be influenced a little by feed. I don’t like to feed less than 20% protein chick starter. Olive Eggers with WTB parentage (F1) in my experience tend to be medium to medium-large sized birds; they are not small girls at all and are similar in size to my Rhode Island Red. Crossing with Marans generally helps increase size and the OE hens will be in the 5 pound range. “Middle of the two breeds being crossed” seems to be what I’ve found to be true.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on WTB crosses!
Do WTBs do well in small yards or enclosed runs without a lot of fuss?
Hi Mallory!
Whitings can be flighty if not hand raised and are prone to being a bit loud and flapping about if un-handled birds are enclosed and you enter their space. I very strongly suggest hand raising your WTB chicks if you need quieter birds. Mine have been hand raised and are in an enclosed run with 2×4 inch no-climb wire fencing for a roof. I have found them to be calm, friendly and less prone to loud egg song than dual purpose hens & olive eggers. They run TO me when I enter the pen, hoping for treats. My WTB flock is small, always less than 6 adults, which means they have plenty of space. They can very easily clear my 6.5 foot garden fencing, especially if startled while pasture ranging, so it is a good idea to clip (trim) their wing feathers if they will be in a residential back yard and must not go over the fence into a dog’s territory. They are a medium bodied bird and I have found that they do quite well if they need to be kept in an airy run where they have 8-10+ square feet per bird for most of the day until they can have supervised pasture ranging in the afternoon/evening. (I generally need to do this when the hawks are nesting and hunting mere yards away in the horse farm pasture that adjoins our back fence.) Right now the hawk pressure is high so the girls are enclosed and are being given hand-picked weeds and garden greens in addition to their feed, scratch and usual kitchen scraps. They handle it very well!
Hello again! I have 3 Whiting true blue roosters & I’m trying to decide which one (maybe 2) to keep for breeding, but I’m having a hard time deciding. My main goals for their offspring are to have bright blue eggs, beautiful variety of feather color & to have fluffy cheeks. I would’ve gotten rid of our black one because his coloring isn’t anything special but he’s our only rooster with fluffy cheeks. One rooster is gorgeous, he almost looks like a blue laced red Wyandotte except reverse- he’s blue with red tips (not really lacing). Our third rooster is pretty too with wild type feathering, he’s hard to explain- his body is black with gold saddle feathers, red & “turkey pattern” looking feathers on his wings & gold & brown striped hackle feathers. As for our hens, we have black, blue, splash, & a blue with red tips similar to our rooster. In your experience with offspring from your Whiting true blues which rooster would give us the most color variety of offspring? I don’t want to end up just having black, blue or splash chicks. Especially since our hens are already those colors would we be better off keeping the wild type rooster? Do you think the blue with red tips rooster would produce alot of blue offspring? Thanks!
Hi Katrina!
Without seeing pictures it is hard to help you choose but I’ll do my best! My experience is that black WTB roos are often carrying a recessive wild type gene. (This is also true of the black and blue hens – almost all are carrying a recessive wild type gene.) Your black roo with the fluffy face could be paired with the splash and blue hens to give you the absolute lowest chance of black with a greater chance of blue and wild type and fluffy faces. (Hopefully some of these hens are bearded.) Your red-tipped-blue roo would be awesome to pair with the “matching” hen to see if you can breed for more of the same color, which sounds like a mahogany leakage over blue. That roo is carrying one splash gene, so that pairing could also produce a splash with mahogany leakage, which I believe are the yellow chicks with gray chipmunk striping.
In short, you really cannot go wrong using all the boys you have to create the most genetic diversity within your flock for this breeding season. From your black bearded roo, keep all bearded offspring who are not black, favoring wild type if you prefer that patterning. That should give you better roo options for next season’s breeding. I hope this helps!
Bill, I have a whiting true blue rooster and two hens, I think they our sister, another sister die with a cross beak. Not sure if I should have chicks with the whiting hens. I would like to cross whiting rooster with prairie bluebell hens. Would I always get blue eggs?
Yes! If you cross a purebred Whiting True Blue rooster (who is carrying 2 blue egg genes) with Prairie Bluebell Egger hens, you will get 100% blue egg laying offspring! Powder blue shades will be expected but around 50% of the offspring will inherit two blue egg genes and may lay slightly blue-er looking eggs.
Hi Tay,
I have a blue egg genetic question.
I purchased WTB chicks last year.
I have one hen that lays a white egg, the inside of the eggshell is white also. My other two hens lay a blue egg.
I bred my Ayam Cemani with my WTB rooster that came from the same batch as my other WTB hens. I hatched out a female from their offspring expecting for her to lay a light green egg. I was surprised when she layed a cream coloured egg similar to the Cemani egg colour.
Now I’m concerned he doesn’t have a blue egg gene.
I know they are purebreds.
Should I be replacing him? I feel like all my breeding plans just went down the drain.
Oh, Donna, I am so sorry! It does sound like your flock has recessive white egg genes mixed in that should not be there. I know that in 2019, Murray McMurray hatchery had customers leaving reviews that their WTB hens were laying eggs so pale blue they looked white…or were white…and some were laying brown or green. These issues were mostly resolved by 2020. If you purchased from the hatchery or a breeder who had WTB stock originating from MMcM in 2019, this could explain the issues you’re having.
Do all of your WTB birds have pea combs?
My guess is that your Whitings may be carrying one blue egg gene and one recessive white egg gene. This would explain why two of the hens lay blue (they are likely heterozygous) and one of the hens lays white (she is the product of heterozygous birds being bred to each other; 25% chance of a white layer). She’s technically a white laying Easter Egger. Your rooster could be either heterozygous (1 blue, 1 white egg gene) and his daughter happened to inherit the white egg gene from him OR he is homozygous recessive white. Either way, this line of Whitings has been adulterated and yes, they need to be replaced with purebred Whiting True Blues carrying two copies of the blue egg gene.
I know this is so disappointing to hear because so much time and feed has already gone into these birds. The hens who lay blue eggs can still be used for olive egger breeding if you’d like but it is best to assume they are Easter Eggers carrying 1 blue & 1 white egg gene. Prairie Bluebell Eggers (from Hoover’s Hatchery) are expected to have similar heterozygous genes as what you are describing so if there are breeding recipes that call for Blue Laying EEs or Prairie Bluebells, you can also use your birds to still produce some lovely colored egg laying offspring. (If you want to keep your rooster, he will need to be test-bred again to see if he produces any blue or green egg laying daughters. Since he is probably nearing the end of his 1.5 year fertility peak, it is probably best to just replace him.)
Hi, yes that all have peacombs and he was just hatched a year ago this month. So still pretty young.
I think I will replace them with my local hatchery birds instead. I seem to have better luck with the hatchery.
I’m in Ontario Canada so the birds didn’t come from McMurray hatchery.
I just believe this person breeds for quantity. It’s disappointing that there is no pride and quality put into what this person does.
Thank you Tay