Breeding blue egg laying Olandsk Dwarfs?

[AquaEgger]

Hi all,

So I recently fell in love with Olandsk Dwarfs. They are so pretty, and I just love the mille fleur coloring! They are a pretty scarce breed, so I am considering breeding them to the SOP and selling eggs and chicks. However, I also love colored eggs, and I was thinking of having a separate breeding pen to make blue egg laying Olandsks

Genetics are complicated, so I thought I would ask for some input here. What breeds would you use to cross them with? I would love to keep the mille fleur coloring, but a variety of feather patterns would be acceptable to me as well. Blue eggs are my ideal goal, but I suppose "Easter Egger Olandsks" would sell pretty well too!

Genetics time: So I am thinking I need a homozygous blue egg gene, so Araucana, Ameraucana, and Whiting True Blues are my breed options. There are bantam versions of the Araucana and Ameraucana, but I don't like the rumpless Araucana, so I'm leaning towards using bantam Ameraucanas. How dominant is the gene for muffs and beards? I'm not sure I would like that in the blue egging Olandsks.

I would love to breed them with Whiting True Blues, but since the Blues are a standard sized hen, I'm not sure the Olandsk roo would be able to successfully breed with a larger hen. What do you think? This would be the ideal cross in my opinion.

Thank you, any advice or input is much appreciated!

 

[NatJ]

Both blue eggs and beards/muffs are dominant. If you have f1s that are heterozygous for both, then the next generation will have 1/16 homozygous for both traits.

True, but breeding the F1s to an Olandsk dwarf should give just four classes of chicks:
--blue egg with clean face
--not-blue egg with clean face
--not-blue egg with muffed face
--blue egg with muffed face

Since it is usually easy to recognize the muff/beard faces at hatch, those chicks could be rehomed or culled at an early age, and among the clean faces there should be about 50% that lay blue eggs.

If the goal is to introduce the blue egg gene to Olandsk Dwarf, with as few other genes as possible, backcrossing makes more sense than interbreeding the hybrids. Just keep choosing birds with the blue egg gene, and cross back to Olandsk Dwarfs. Continue until all the other traits are right, then interbreed the blue-layers with their male relatives who have the blue egg gene, and that should give some that have two copies of the blue egg gene and will breed true.

 

[NatJ]

Genetics time: So I am thinking I need a homozygous blue egg gene, so Araucana, Ameraucana, and Whiting True Blues are my breed options. There are bantam versions of the Araucana and Ameraucana, but I don't like the rumpless Araucana, so I'm leaning towards using bantam Ameraucanas. How dominant is the gene for muffs and beards? I'm not sure I would like that in the blue egging Olandsks.

I would love to breed them with Whiting True Blues, but since the Blues are a standard sized hen, I'm not sure the Olandsk roo would be able to successfully breed with a larger hen. What do you think? This would be the ideal cross in my opinion.

Thank you, any advice or input is much appreciated!

If you want the blue egg gene in a small chicken, you could try Easter Egger bantams from one of the major hatcheries. If you order a fairly large number, there is a good chance that you can pick one with no muff/beard that does have the blue egg gene (either 1 or 2 copies. It is possible to work with either.)

There is a test for the blue egg gene:
https://iqbirdtesting.com/blueegg
Testing a rooster will tell you exactly what he has, without the bother of raising a bunch of daughters to find out. Since a hen tells you something by the color of her own eggs, testing hens is mostly useful when you want to know if a particular hen has 1 vs. 2 copies of the blue egg gene. If she lays brown or white eggs, there's no need to waste money on a test for her.

It would be nice to start with a chicken that has 2 copies of the blue egg gene, but it is not essential. You will have to work with 1-copy chickens in the next generation anyway, so it is just a matter of whether that starts 1 generation sooner.

If you want Whiting True Blues, certainly give it a try. Some bantam roosters do manage to mate with full-sized hens. Some of the Whiting True Blues have muff/beard, and some do not.

There is a link between the pea comb gene and the blue egg gene. If you want your blue-laying Olandsk Dwarfs to have a single comb, you should get the blue egg gene from a single-comb chicken that lays blue eggs (Cream Legbars or Whiting True Green are possibilities for this-- but the Whiting True Green may have only one copy of the blue egg gene, so plan accordingly. Some Olive Eggers and some Easter Eggers have this too, if they trace back to Cream Legbar ancestors.)

The pea comb/blue egg gene linkage can happen in any combination:
pea comb / blue egg (examples: Ameraucana, Whiting True Blue)
pea comb / not-blue egg (examples: Brahma, Buckeye)
not-pea comb / blue egg (examples: Cream Legbar, Whiting True Green)
not-pea comb / not-blue egg (examples: Olandsk Dwarfs, also most other chicken breeds-- any that lay white or brown eggs and have single combs, V combs, or rose combs.)

Whichever way those two genes are linked, the linkage will be the same in most chicks. I have read that there is about a 5% rate of crossovers (causing them to be linked the other direction), but it's far easier to just start with the pairing you want.

 

[UncleChuck]

Both blue eggs and beards/muffs are dominant. If you have f1s that are heterozygous for both, then the next generation will have 1/16 homozygous for both traits.

 

[AquaEgger]

@UncleChuck @NatJ Thank you guys so much for your input!

If you want your blue-laying Olandsk Dwarfs to have a single comb, you should get the blue egg gene from a single-comb chicken that lays blue eggs

Oh gosh, I totally forgot to consider the comb! I suppose if I wanted to stay true to the breed, the single comb would be best. I am honestly interested in seeing how all the pairings would work out! Cream Legbars and Whiting True Greens are great recommendations, thank you.

I feel like with Cream Legbars, their feather pattern would be hard to breed out, but I could be wrong about that? I know their crests are able to be bred out in two generations (just like the muffs/beards). On a side note, I have considered breeding Cream Legbars to the SOP as well, so that could be a good route for me. The mass produced hatchery Cream Legbars just look terrible imo. Dark hackles with no cream, and no preference for green or blue layers. (I actually had a Cream Legbar that laid green eggs, so hopefully I can get some blue layers if I try the breed again.)

but the Whiting True Green may have only one copy of the blue egg gene, so plan accordingly.

I assume I would just keep selecting for the blue eggers and cull/re-home the greens, correct?

If you want the blue egg gene in a small chicken, you could try Easter Egger bantams from one of the major hatcheries.

I think this is one of the crosses I will definitely try out! I could select for blue eggs, but I actually think it would be fun to have one less strict breeding pen with "Easter Egger Olandsks" and see what feather patterns I could get from the cross. If I could breed Splash into this line, that would be great!

So my ultimate goals are:

1. Olandsks dwarfs that look just like Olandsk dwarfs but lay blue eggs and breed true. I would call them "True Blue Olandsks Dwarfs" or something like that.

2. Easter Egger Olandsks with a variety of egg colors and feather patterns, including splash. Possibly select specifically for blue eggs and/or no muffs to help them be more distinct from EE bantams. Pea comb okay.

Thanks again, hopefully I will be selling eggs and chicks in a couple years!

 

[AquaEgger]

There is a test for the blue egg gene:
https://iqbirdtesting.com/blueegg
Testing a rooster will tell you exactly what he has, without the bother of raising a bunch of daughters to find out. Since a hen tells you something by the color of her own eggs, testing hens is mostly useful when you want to know if a particular hen has 1 vs. 2 copies of the blue egg gene. If she lays brown or white eggs, there's no need to waste money on a test for her.

Also thank you for telling me about the test! I'm sure I will use that when I get to F4 to check which roosters and hens are homozygous for the blue egg gene.

 

[AquaEgger]

Thanks for taking the time to type out the gene info for the Cream Legbar! It would have taken me a couple hours to research what you wrote in a few minutes.

What color eggs do the Olandsk Dwarfs lay now? If they lay white eggs, they are a good base for breeding blue eggers.

Luckily they do lay white eggs, but some of them look more tinted than others. Hopefully by selecting the whiter eggs I can get nice blue eggs from the cross. If not, I'd still be happy with green eggers!

Although I think your "Easter Egger Olandsks" will just be called "Easter Eggers" by most people

I think you are totally right on that. After doing some further research I realized they wouldn't really be all that special so I will focus on the blue-egging Olandsk Dwarfs.

 

[SourRoses]

From what I have read, he did a fair bit of work himself too. So the birds with his name are not exactly the same as the ones he started with. Of course he had to start somewhere, but that doesn't tell how much of the work was his and how much was not.

Someone posted a link just recently to an article talking about them, but now I can't find it. I think it said that some of the Genetic Hackle fowl were producing blue eggs, so Tom Whiting used them plus Leghorns to produce good layers of blue eggs.

I understand. But the nuances of credit have been bugging me for a while with the GHF side, I probably sound like a broken record. The 5-6 guys who developed them worked much of their lives on GHF. I can't imagine putting in so much effort to just have someone come along and slap their name on the birds. The creators are barely a footnote.

It's an old myth that spread pretty far that GHF were used for True Blues. In one of Whitings youtube videos he said they are not related.
The (still available) lines of GHF remaining lay a light tan egg. And the ones I had were good producers, surprisingly.

 

[NatJ]

From what I have read, he did a fair bit of work himself too. So the birds with his name are not exactly the same as the ones he started with. Of course he had to start somewhere, but that doesn't tell how much of the work was his and how much was not.

Someone posted a link just recently to an article talking about them, but now I can't find it. I think it said that some of the Genetic Hackle fowl were producing blue eggs, so Tom Whiting used them plus Leghorns to produce good layers of blue eggs.

Correction to that. I found the article I was thinking about. It was actually a post on this site, not a link to anywhere else. It says it is from a Q&A with Tom Whiting, originally posted on a facebook page.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/hatchery-whiting-true-blues.1608138/page-3#post-27442926

Partial quote:

1. The original intent, of what you now know as the Whiting Blue, was to provide a high production and high egg quality line of blue egg layers. This is what a fellow named David Caveny intended and did for maybe 10 years. Dave is a close friend from our days at Colorado State University in the late 1970s, where he was getting his Masters degree, and I my B.S. degree in Avian Sciences. Starting with just Ideal Poultry "ameraucanas," Dave crossed them twice with what were then the top commercial White Leghorn production strains available. Dave sent me some, and I so liked them, he basically said “Fine. Then I will send them to you and you do something with them.” This was in the late 1990s. I have continued to do this basic theme, and have further out crossed them with 3 or 4 of the more recent top Leghorn lines. Then I intercross them to get the dominant white gene out so they will have colored plumage, and similarly strive to tame the single comb enlarged pea comb. All while selecting for blueness of eggs. So really the Whiting Blue is a high production commercial White Leghorn, that happens to lay blue eggs, and has colorful plumage and a pea comb. As a side note, to make sure you know the distinction, these layer and meat lines I work on are NOT part on my fly tying feather breeding and production program and company. They are something I do in concert with the fly tying feather business, but more because I just enjoy it and believe there is worth in doing it.

So that says they are not, and never were, part of the genetic hackle flytying line. But it also does say where they did originate (not the University of Arkansas program, not anything terribly complicated either: just commercially available Easter Eggers from a particular hatchery, bred to Leghorns, with selective breeding and some additional backcrosses to Leghorns.)

 

[DarJones]

For breeding objectives, here are a few things that can help.

1. Blue egg is dominant but a single copy of the gene usually produces lighter blue eggs than 2 copies. With practice, you can select homozygous hens based on eggs they produce.

2. Any trace of porphyrin (brown eggs) in your starting birds will take generations to remove. Carefully select starting birds. Cream Legbars have genes for porphyrin.

3. Zinc white is a modifier gene present in leghorns and most birds derived from them. Whiting True Blues iirc are derived from leghorns and will carry zinc white. Use this to your advantage if breeding with these birds. Zinc white can accelerate your breeding work quite a bit because pure blue eggs are produced by early generation birds.

4. Cream Legbars have a background gene that can reduce egg production substantially. If you use them, be very careful about breeding from hens that lay low numbers of eggs. It is not present in all lines of Cream Legbars.

5. Breeding bantam roosters with medium size hens can be done reasonably well. Whiting True Blues would be a good choice if you go this route.

6. Any breed which has multiple feather colors will introduce a lot of variation which is extremely hard to breed out later. For this reason, I suggest not using easter eggers. Ameraucanas of some specific colors are a better choice. Black would be my first choice if going the Ameraucana route.