Anyone have F3 olive Eggers laying and egg color???

moving coops

Songster
6 Years
Jan 5, 2017
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Okay so to get f1 olive Eggers we breed copper Maran to Ameracuana hens.

You then take those f1 chicks(who lay deep olive eggs)and breed them back to a copper Maran again for even darker olive! This gets you f2 chicks. (Basically 3/4 Maran)

Has anyone taken these f2 chicks and breed to copper Maran again for f3 chicks. So my question really is though I don't think these f3 will lay much darker olive when point of lay. I would guess way higher percentage of chocolate eggs again?

Does anyone breed to get f3 chicks and seen them lay and what color percentage eggs?
 
Hi,
Well thos F3 birds would be 7/8 Marns so thinking by then the olive would look really brownish and probably get a good percentage that were just brown egg layers. How about breeding the F2 back to the blue egg layer?
Or breed the F2 to another olive egger? That might do it.
Best,
Karen
 
Reason for asking is I have a lady that I great eggs from. Love her eggs. She is breeding her f1 and f2 back to copper Marans which will give f2 and f3 chicks. But I am thinking the f3 will be mostly brown layers and not so much dark olive! Which like you said I guess if I see brown I can go back to blue and that should take them back quickly since blue should be still in there! But will have to keep them leg banned to not mix up with my Marans!
 
Reason for asking is I have a lady that I great eggs from. Love her eggs. She is breeding her f1 and f2 back to copper Marans which will give f2 and f3 chicks. But I am thinking the f3 will be mostly brown layers and not so much dark olive! Which like you said I guess if I see brown I can go back to blue and that should take them back quickly since blue should be still in there! But will have to keep them leg banned to not mix up with my Marans!

Sounds like a plan!
 
But you do think the f3 generation chicks will grow and end up laying mostly brown eggs again? Correct? Would not be able to tell from just plain Maran eggs!
 
But you do think the f3 generation chicks will grow and end up laying mostly brown eggs again? Correct? Would not be able to tell from just plain Maran eggs!
This assumption is not accurate, if the F2 is a proven hen that lays dark olive eggs and is bred back to Maran rooster, 50% of the Pullets will lay darker Olive eggs, but that percentage is only true if you breed large numbers, say 20 hatching ess, because on small numbers, you may end up with only one Olive egger hen, but how can you spot the Olive egger even if you only hatch one? That is Simple, Marans are single combed, but Ameraucanas are pea combed and the pea comb gene is linked to the Blue egg shell gene(that gives the olive color to the eggs) by 4 centimorgans, and while from time to time you may end up with recombinant mutant(recombination of single comb and blue egg shell), the percentage of recombinants is only 4% and very seldom happens.
 
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Moving Coops, thank you for posting this. It prompted me look up the proper term for what you are doing, which is something that I have been wondering about for a long time.

In genetics, the parental generation, assuming that it breeds true, is termed P1. If two distinctively different P1 animals are bred, the resulting generation is termed F1. The F1 generation may have all similar visible characteristics within the group. If two F1s are bred together those offspring are F2s. Because the F1 parents were hybrids containing the genetic influence of distinctly different P1s, the resulting F2s will show many different visible outcomes for the same characteristic, even though the F1 parents all looked similar. Usually a single characteristic can have a predicted outcome in the F2s, such as 25% a particular color, or 50% with a certain color egg, or whatever individual characteristic you're interested in. However, you cannot predict how all the hundreds of different visible characteristics will combine. If two F2s are bred together, those offspring are called F3s, etc., and the ability to predict characteristics becomes more complicated.

However, that is not what you're doing. You're not breeding F1 to F1. You're breeding F1 to P1, which is a whole different thing, and does not produce an F2 offspring. I went searching for the proper terminology, and found that it is called a Backcrossing (not the same as the term "crossing back"). Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"Backcrossing is a crossing of a hybrid with one of its parents or an individual genetically similar to its parent, in order to achieve offspring with a genetic identity which is closer to that of the parent. It is used in horticulture, animal breeding and in production of gene knockout organisms.
Backcrossed hybrids are sometimes described with acronym "BC", for example, an F1 hybrid crossed with one of its parents (or a genetically similar individual) can be termed a BC1 hybrid, and a further cross of the BC1 hybrid to the same parent (or a genetically similar individual) produces a BC2 hybrid."
 
Okay got to read this more clearly but making sense! I am not actually referring to it this way just going from where I am getting eggs and what she explains and is doing! She is a great lady and has awesome eggs but I got confused with her explanation on this and thinking if I buy a bunch of hatching eggs from this pen I am going to end up with a lot of back to brown layers!
 
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I can see why she got the terminology honestly as look at this chart. They are calling it f2 when back to chocolate parent again so obviously if she goes by this chart then yes f2 back to choc again would be f3. So she came to it honestly from chart!
 

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