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I'm getting ready for another year of selection and breeding. My SLW's are laying about 8 eggs per day and should ramp up quite a bit in early February. One desirable trait in SLW is laying even in the coldest weather so long as they have plenty of food. I have a two year old rooster tested...

Several more young hens are now laying. One is laying the prettiest blue eggs yet! There is no tint of tan or brown. The eggs are still small in the 50 gram range typical of a newly laying hen. I'm collecting her eggs and will put them in the incubator in a few days. Young hens just started...

I have at least 2 pullets that have started laying. One of my mature roosters died of unknown causes about 2 weeks ago (age 2.5 years). I did not lose any other birds. On a positive note, there have been no problems with predators since August. There are still plenty of opossums and raccoons...

Culling is what we do to remove unwanted genetics. Unfortunately, I'm culling about 95% of my chicks at this time. Roosters are culled very heavily because they have more influence on offspring that hens. (Roosters mate with multiple hens) It looks like I have 4 roosters that are candidates...

They are pale blue, the smaller egg is close to sky blue. The turkey egg is white with reddish brown speckles. I still have a lot of work to cull the porphyrin producers. All in good time.

A tale of 3 eggs. The large egg is from a turkey hen that started laying at 7 months old and has produced about 50 eggs so far. The large and small blue eggs are from two hens one of which produces eggs from 67 to 72 grams. The small egg is 46 grams. The hen that lays the small eggs is going...

As does #001. I will cull several with too much white and won't let that rooster breed again this year. I also have 2 young roosters that look very good. Between the mature hens of which 5 or 6 are very good and the pullets that are just starting to lay, I should wind up with some decent...

I banded about a dozen young hens this evening. Most are not yet laying. I used yellow bands carefully pulling a hen off the roost and applying a band to her left leg. Why left? Because my standard is that a blue egg layer gets a band on the left and a brown egg layer gets a band on the...

I have not tested any hens yet to verify, however, I can tell color gradients between eggs. I am reasonably certain that heterozygous hens lay lighter blue eggs. When I deliberately hatch the deepest blue eggs, the resulting hens tend to produce deep blue eggs. When I hatch the lighter...

Some of my young hens have started laying. I can tell from the small eggs. Two hens are outside right now cackling at each other as they argue about who gets to use the nest. I set up a few more nests with a couple of eggs to tempt them.

I have plans to backcross to SLW, but it has to be done from a very stable position of having verified homozygous blue egg layers that have excellent phenotype. There is a genetic reason why this has to be done carefully. Wyandottes double down on the brown egg genetics. It will be very...

I checked all of the young birds this evening as they went on the roost. Two males look good enough to get DNA tested. Probability is good that at least one will be homozygous for blue eggs. I have 2 older males that have too much white on the saddle so I want to cull them and replace with...

I just wanted a Silver Laced Wyandotte that lays blue eggs. It would be easy to develop a gold laced line given that I still have three pretty good looking hens that lay blue eggs.

I do not have either the original SLW or the Brown Leghorns from Bramwell. I thought about maintaining the Brown Leghorns but did not have the resources to maintain the breeding effort as well as the brown leghorns. I talk to Jerry Foley from time to time. He still has his SLW's.

Sorry, I had a typo above. I said "can't lay a blue egg" and mean to write "can't lay a green egg". Green eggs only come from chickens that don't have the zinc white gene. Yes, it restricts porphyrin. My current chickens still carry a huge dose of Silver Laced Wyandotte genetics which...

Here are a few more pictures of current birds. The first is a young male that shows three significant flaws, salt & pepper feathers, too much white on his back, and wrong feathers in the tail. But look at the green iridescence in the tail feathers! And here is a 2 year old rooster...

Why were straight comb blue egg layers important as a parent line? Rose comb is from an inversion on chromosome 7 combined with straight comb on chromosome 1. Most easter eggers, araucanas, and ameraucanas have pea comb which is tightly linked with the blue egg gene on chromosome 1. If I...

Chicken chromosome 1 has a cryptic insertion of viral DNA that produces the blue egg trait. If the viral DNA is not present, the eggs are either white or varying shades of brown. With the viral DNA, the egg shell has oocyanin incorporated into the shell as it is formed. Roosters and hens both...

I had my roosters (12 at the time) DNA tested for the blue egg gene last year and culled 9 roosters as a result keeping only the three that are homozygous for blue eggs. Since I only hatch blue eggs, all chicks in the current round were sired by roosters that are homozygous for blue eggs and...

I've been working on these birds since early 2014 so 9 years total. I started with Silver Laced Wyandottes from [Jerry foley](http://www.foleyswaterfowl.com/) and blue egg laying brown leghorns with straight comb from Keith Bramwell at UARK. There were some really big genetic reasons for using...