[May 2025+] Backcrossed Olive Egger Chick

Description

Backcrossed Olive Egger Pairings (Backcrossed, not Outcrossed!)

Our olive egger pens are under constant rotation. For Spring 2025, we’ve put all of our olive eggers back under our heavy bloom Black Copper Marans males— our Purple Coppers— in a breeding strategy called “backcrossing”.

Backcrossing is a strategy that condenses traits in one genetic line of birds. You are backcrossing an olive egger if you place a daughter hen back under her father, or a mother hen under her son. You are not back crossing an olive egger if you take one breeder’s olive egger and put it under another breeder’s Black Copper Marans.

Why? Because the latter is a first generation outcross, a new pairing that mixes the genetics of two separate lines. Outcrosses are gambles, you’ve poured two soups into one big pot and all the flavors will be competing. You may get lucky and see the features of both lines have mixed in a dynamic way towards what you aimed for (a good stew), or you may get unlucky and realize you’ve undone the work of the breeders before you and are starting from square one again (a mush pot of indistinct flavors resulting in basic brown).

Backcrossing is a breeding strategy that does the opposite of outcrossing– it forces out the hidden (recessive) features that one line carries (allowing you to suss them out select away from them) , while condensing or strengthening the traits you are selecting for— in our case dark pigment deposit!

To be very specific, this offering is a backcross to the pigment depositing breed of our olive egger project, for darker olives to bark colors. That means our olive egger hens who carry blue egg shell genes from their Legbar or Ameraucana lineage *and* have pigment depositing abilities because of their Marans lineage are crossed back under their father Marans (our Purple Coppers) to further condense their pigment depositing genetics. This darkens their olive color along the spectrum and sometimes results in speckled eggs and heavy bloom eggs that look gray.

(Note: You can also take a very dark olive egger or brown bark layer and backcross them to their blue egg shell genetic parentage, retaining their pigment depositing genetics while regenerating the blue egg shell underneath that ensures an olive egg. Hens can carry one or two blue egg shell genes and by the fourth generation or so the blue egg shell will disappear after backcrossing to white shell genetics (i.e. Marans) too many times— making a lovely bark to coffee egger. See our new listing for Backcrossed to Blue olive eggers here. )

Egg Color Tendencies

Crosshatch Farm Backcrossed Olives tend to deepen the olive egg color to a rich olive to bark pigmentation, or can sometimes result in a mauve, gray or even a rare mustard egger if under a heavy bloom.

Plumage

Backcrossed olive eggers can look very similar to their pure-bred Black Copper Marans lineage, especially by their third or fourth iteration, so you’ll want to be careful to not mix them up.

Plumage is often predominately black with copper features— copper necks to full copper pencilling across the breast. Occasionally they can be blue-based, with blue bodies and copper features. We experimented with some Paint colorings in 2024, but these will mainly be going forward with our backcrossed to blue offering.

Birds displaying muffs and beards show their Ameraucana lineage. Birds displaying crests show their Legbar heritage. Some backcrossed olive eggers will have both!