Olive Eggers: Which Chickens Lay Green Eggs?

Olive egger chickens aren’t a breed. They’re a cross between a blue egg breed and a brown egg breed. The hens lay green eggs in shades from soft sage to deep olive, depending on how dark the brown parent’s eggs are.

You can buy olive egger chicks from several hatcheries, or you can make your own with the right rooster and hens. The cross can even happen by accident in a mixed backyard flock.

The trick is that a green egg is really two colors. It’s a blue egg with a brown coating on top, so you need both parents to get it.

Easter Eggers lay green eggs, too, and so does a purebred breed from Sweden. The parents you pick decide how dark the olive is.

If you’re building a rainbow basket, my guide to chicken egg colors covers every shade. Olive eggers start with chickens that lay blue eggs and chickens that lay dark brown eggs, so those two guides go hand in hand with this one.

How Green Eggs Get Their Color

A blue egg gets its color from a pigment called biliverdin, which goes into the shell while the shell is forming. The color runs all the way through, so a blue egg is blue inside and out.

A brown egg gets its color from a different pigment, protoporphyrin, which the hen adds mostly in the last few hours before she lays it. That color sits on the outside of the shell.

An olive egger hen does both. She builds a blue shell and then coats it in brown, and blue plus brown looks green.

That’s why the inside of a green eggshell is blue. More brown on top gives you a darker olive, and less brown gives you a soft sage or minty green.

How to Make Olive Egger Chickens

To make olive eggers, cross a chicken from a blue egg breed with a chicken from a dark brown egg breed. It doesn’t matter which one is the rooster, because the blue egg gene isn’t sex-linked.

You can use a dark brown egg rooster over blue egg hens or the other way around. Cackle Hatchery, for example, uses a Cream Legbar rooster over Welsummer hens.

The darker the brown parent’s eggs, the darker the green. So for a deep olive, pick a rooster or hens from a line known for very dark eggs.

Blue Egg Parents

The blue egg parent needs to carry the blue egg gene, ideally two copies of it. Purebred blue egg breeds are the safest choice.

We chose Ameraucanas for our flock, and these three breeds are the ones to look for.

• Ameraucana: An American breed that lays pale blue eggs, often with a hint of green. My Ameraucana breed guide covers the breed.
• Araucana: A rare, rumpless breed from Chile that lays blue eggs.
• Cream Legbar: An English breed that lays sky blue to light green eggs.

Easter Eggers can work, but they’re a gamble. Some carry only one copy of the blue egg gene, and a one-copy hen passes it to only about half her chicks.

Brown Egg Parents

For the brown side, the darker the egg, the better. These breeds lay very dark eggs, so they make deep olive eggers.

Egg color varies a lot from line to line in all of them, so ask a breeder what their hens actually lay.

• Marans: Some of the darkest brown eggs you can get, a deep reddish chocolate. My Marans breed guide has more.
• Welsummer: A dark, terracotta egg, often with darker speckles. My Welsummer breed guide covers the breed.
• Barnevelder: Dark brown eggs in a good line, though many lines now lay lighter. See my Barnevelder breed guide.
• Penedesenca: A very dark reddish brown egg from a rare Spanish breed.

Lighter brown layers make a lighter green. Bielefelders lay a light brown egg, often with pink undertones, so a Bielefelder cross gives you a softer green than a Marans cross does.

Light brown and tinted layers, like Orpingtons and Faverolles, give paler greens, too. A Faverolles and Ameraucana cross even has its own name, the Favaucana, and the hens lay sage green eggs.

My Bielefelder breed guide and Salmon Faverolles breed guide cover those two breeds in more detail.

What Color Eggs Will Olive Eggers Lay?

The blue egg gene is dominant, so one copy is enough for a blue shell. What you get depends on how many copies the blue parent carries.

It’s the daughters that count here, since roosters carry the gene but don’t lay.

• Blue parent with two copies: Every chick gets the blue egg gene, so nearly all the daughters lay green. Cackle Hatchery reports that about 97 percent of its first generation hens lay olive eggs.
• Blue parent with one copy: About half the daughters lay green, and the rest lay brown or tinted eggs.

Breeding a second generation from your olive eggers scatters the colors more. Here’s roughly what to expect.

• Olive egger bred to olive egger: About three quarters of the daughters lay green or blue eggs, and about a quarter lay brown or tan.
• Olive egger hen bred back to a dark brown rooster: About half the daughters lay olive, often darker, and the rest lay brown.
• Olive egger hen bred back to a purebred blue egg rooster: All the daughters lay blue-based eggs, mostly in paler greens.

Hatcheries sometimes call that second round of crosses F2 olive eggers. Hatcheries don’t all use the term the same way, so ask which parents a hatchery used.

Egg shades scatter more with every generation, too. My guide to hatching chicken eggs walks through hatching your own.

How to Tell Which Chicks Will Lay Green Eggs

You can’t tell for sure until a pullet lays her first egg. Hens usually start between 18 and 23 weeks, according to Meyer Hatchery.

There is one clue in later generations, when the blue egg side of the family has a pea comb and the brown side has a single comb. The blue egg gene sits close to the pea comb gene, so a pea-combed chick is more likely to carry it.

That isn’t a guarantee, since the two genes can separate, and it doesn’t help with Cream Legbar crosses, since Legbars have single combs. A genetic test can confirm whether a bird carries the blue egg gene if you need to know for breeding.

Olive Egger Roosters

Olive egger roosters don’t lay eggs, but they do carry egg color genes. A first generation olive egger rooster from a purebred blue parent carries one copy of the blue egg gene.

Over brown egg hens, about half his daughters will lay green eggs. Over purebred blue egg hens, all his daughters will get the blue egg gene, and most will lay blue or pale green eggs.

Olive Egger Temperament and Laying

Olive eggers take after their parents, so temperament varies a lot from one cross to the next. Meyer Hatchery describes its olive eggers as friendly and calm, and some will go broody.

Expect about 150 to 200 large eggs a year, though hatchery estimates run higher for some crosses. Meyer Hatchery describes its olive egger eggs as large to extra large.

Most olive eggers handle cold well, especially the pea-combed ones. My list of cold hardy chicken breeds covers more birds for a northern flock.

Other Chickens That Lay Green Eggs

Easter Eggers lay green eggs, too, in shades from olive to turquoise. Others lay blue, and now and then one lays a rose or brown egg, but each hen lays one color for life.

Silverudd’s Blue is a purebred breed developed to lay green eggs. Martin Silverudd worked on it in Sweden for decades, and it was still unfinished when he died in 1986. Hatcheries in the United States often sell it as the Isbar.

Its eggs range from light moss green to deep olive, sometimes with brown speckles, about 200 to 250 a year. They’re cold hardy, forage well, and lay through the winter. My Isbar breed guide has the rest.

McMurray Hatchery also sells a hybrid called the Whiting True Green, a sister line to its Whiting True Blue.

Why Green Eggs Change Shade

The brown coating on a green egg fades. Brown eggs get lighter as the laying season goes on and as a hen ages, so green eggs can look bluer by late summer.

Stress, illness, and some medications can lighten them, too. The color usually comes back darker after a molt or a break from laying.

Olive Egger FAQs

Here are quick answers to the questions people ask most about olive eggers and green eggs.

More Egg Color Guides

More ways to fill your basket with color.

Which Chickens Lay Blue Eggs?

Which Chickens Lay Dark Brown Eggs? (Chocolate Eggers)

Chicken Egg Colors: Which Breeds Lay Which Color?

Raising Chickens

More ideas for raising a healthy backyard flock.

How to Make Eggshell Powder (& 10+ Ways to Use It)

Bielefelder Chickens Breed Guide

Ameraucana Chicken Breed Guide