Rainbow Egg Genetics 101: Breeding Olive Eggers, Marans & More with Mojo Homestead
n this egg-citing episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast, Carey and Jennifer are joined by Nolie from Mojo Homestead Official to crack open the colorful world of rainbow egg genetics. From breeding true blue egg layers like Ameraucanas to creating Olive Eggers with rich, speckled shells, this episode dives deep into the science, myths, and breeding strategies behind green, pink, mauve, and even “dirty river water” eggs.
Whether you're just starting out or refining a multi-generational olive egger line, you'll learn how pigment layers, homozygous genes, and selective backcrossing play a role in egg color outcomes. Plus, hear real breeder stories, common mistakes to avoid, and how to choose quality stock for your rainbow flock.
Topics Include:
Homozygous blue egg genes explained
F1 Olive Eggers vs. later generations
Speckles, blooms, and egg "toner"
Tips for managing Morans, Ameraucanas, and Olive Eggers
Why breeding olive to olive isn’t as predictable as you think
Real-world lessons from a Florida storm-surviving breeder
Perfect for beginner and advanced poultry breeders looking to master egg color genetics the right way!
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Jennifer: 0:26
Welcome back Poultry Nerds. I'm Jennifer and I am here with
Carey: 0:33
Carey
Jennifer: 0:35
and Nolie from Mojo Homestead. Official because the unofficial isn't official anymore, right?
Nolie: 0:44
It's officially been scammed.
Jennifer: 0:48
It's there, but we don't follow it anymore.
Nolie: 0:50
Welcome, Nolie. How are you? I'm good. I'm doing really good. Thanks for having me.
Jennifer: 0:55
Good. We've been trying to get you on for a while and you just no, I don't think so. And I said, how about rainbow egg colors? And you said, yes. Let's do it. It was like three days ago.
Nolie: 1:09
It did. You just had to pick one of my favorite topics to talk about.
Carey: 1:12
I was gonna say, it is just the topic that's we had to find the right one that fit.
Jennifer: 1:17
So tell all of our listeners who you are and what you do, and where you are and all that good stuff. If they don't know who you are.
Nolie: 1:24
My name is Noli. I raise and breed chickens. I also educate about chicken keeping primarily for beginners, but also for people of any stage. I have a Facebook page called Mojo Homestead Official, where I share all kinds of videos and photos and stories. And it's also recently become like a hub for breeders in general to share a lot of information with each other. Which has been really cool. And that's it. I love chickens. I love rainbow eggs and working with chickens for egg colors. And so here we are. How did you get started
Jennifer: 1:59
in chickens?
Nolie: 2:01
It started with some it started with some distrust of the government and led to me wanting to be more self-sufficient and, 150 chickens later, here we are.
Carey: 2:15
Whoa, you actually know a number.
Nolie: 2:18
Look, I know I threw a number out there. I'm not count. I haven't counted. I don't even know the last time I've actually counted my chickens.
Carey: 2:25
I was fixing to say, oh man, that was gonna be very impressive if you actually knew the number.
Nolie: 2:31
No, but if MBIP asked me, I'd say 150. It's about 150. Yeah.
Jennifer: 2:38
I don't know.
2:38
That's fair.
Jennifer: 2:39
I always say more than a hundred. Yeah. And just leave it at that. Yeah, that sounds about right. It's true. It's just more than a hundred, so you have Moran? And your big boy, what's his name? You always posting pictures of him? That's Don Juan. Don Juan.
Nolie: 3:00
Is he a lover? He is a lover. He's a good I, the way that he got his name was at one point he was fertilizing 17 different hens at one time. He can no longer do that. He's pushing about six years now, so he slowed down on his vigor when it comes to mating. But he still has a breeding, he still in a breeding pen, but he is down to about three girls that he keeps fertilized and I, that's comfortable for him.
Jennifer: 3:25
So you must be really impressed with his egg color genetics then.
Nolie: 3:29
Huh? I when it comes to my, when it comes to my Morans, I am also really focused on standards of perfection. So he encompasses some pretty good characteristics of what I wanna breed towards in my Morans, and he has a nice a color as well. So a color is not my focus with my Morans, but it is something that I'm mindful of because it is part of that standard of perfection when it comes to. Yeah, that's where I'm at with him.
Jennifer: 4:01
Okay. And then before we delve into actually the rainbow genetics, what breed do you use for the blue? I.
Nolie: 4:12
At this point, I use Americana, but when I started chasing the Rainbow, I was breeding leg bars. I did leg bars, cream leg bars, cream and creole leg bars for several years. But honestly, I don't like working with autos, sexing breeds. It's too much of a pain when you're dealing with chicks, because you gotta figure out what to do with all those males that nobody wants anything to do with, and I didn't, I'm not interested in that. And I like the presentation of the Americanos. I like the beards and the moths. I like the PE comb. And that PE is often associated with Blue Egg Genetics, not always. But often, so in those later generations, if you're back crossing Olive Eggers, you can use that p comb as an indication that maybe there's still blue jeans present without, before eggs are laid. Or blue egg, like DNA testing is done.
Jennifer: 5:07
I have never heard that before. Yep. How interesting. Okay, so with the Americana, how certain do you have to be that he's homozygous for blue? Is that.
Nolie: 5:23
True Americana. Not, the Americana Easter Eggers that you see at hatcheries, true Americana. It is a breed characteristic that they are homozygous blue layers. So if they are not ho, ho, so if somebody listening doesn't know that homozygous means that they're carrying two copies of a blue egg gene. So each parent, a bird has two parents and each parent is gonna pass down one. One egg gene, and when both parents pass down a blue egg gene, then the offspring is carrying two copies of that blue egg gene. They're homozygous for blue eggs, so real Americana are always homozygous, they're true blue layers.
Jennifer: 6:07
Okay. How can, is there a way to test, to make sure.
Nolie: 6:11
Yeah, there is a company, what are, I think they're called, like IQ bird testing or something, but you can mail off samples to that company and they can tell you how many Blue Egg genes a bird is carrying. A lot of the Silver Reds breeders will do this because the serious silver reds breeders are breeding towards homozygous blue layers, or, roosters don't lay eggs, but homozygous blue egg gene roosters, is it a blood test? I don't know. I think it's just feathers. I think it's a feather test.
Jennifer: 6:45
Huh, interesting.
Nolie: 6:46
Yeah. We'll have to look up after and I'll send you a link if you, if there's co like notes or somewhere in the video you can post it in the notes.
Jennifer: 6:53
Okay, gotcha. I know that there's another group discussing the fibro test and we're getting, we're going down a rabbit hole. If you didn't know, we'd do rabbit holes, but testing for the fibro, they don't seem overly. Enthused about it. Like trustworthy of it? Yeah.
Nolie: 7:11
Yeah. I don't know. That's
Jennifer: 7:12
above my pay grade. My bro's. Above my pay grade. Okay. So before we get into the actual rainbow genetics, then, so you have to make sure that you start with a true Moran, not like a Mystic Moran or a. Moran Cross or a Moran, it has to be true.
Nolie: 7:33
I would say that the true blue layer, the homozygous blue egg genes are probably more important, but the brown genetics that you incorporate are going to make a big difference in the color of the offspring. They're going to contribute the depth, the darkness of the green egg that you're trying to produce. So in my olive programs, I absolutely use Morans and Americana, but you could use, summers, I'm actually working now on a silver olive egg program and I'm using silver summers and silver Americana to do that. And the well summers are a little lighter length, but it's just gonna have to do with that saturation of. Green and that F1, the first generation olive crossing. So paired a Americana paired with a well summer, those offspring are probably gonna lay a little bit of a lighter green than paired with a Morans. Like your Easter Eggers, for example, are a probably a home. They have a blue egg gene from one parent, and the other parent is probably just a lighter brown or cream colored even. That's why you have those really light greens.
Jennifer: 8:41
Do the speckles from the will summer, do those get passed down through the olive tube?
Nolie: 8:45
They should. Yep. Speckle, I mean like genetics, it is not always 100%. But in general, both speckles and your heavy blooms tend to be passed down genetically. So if one of the parents or the mother, we know what the mother's eggs look like is carrying the speckled. Speckled genetics and probably will carrying it too. But here's the thing, interesting. A lot of hens who lay speckled eggs won't necessarily lay speckled every day. Sometimes they're just not there. It just has to do with the deposit of color on that egg before it comes out. And so if I have a hen who lay speckled eggs. Even though she lays an egg one day that doesn't have those speckles, but I hatch from that egg is still carrying all the genetic material for speckled offspring because it's the hen's genetic material, not necessarily the presentation of that particular egg, like this time in the season. Pigment is running out. So if you are raising Morans, you'll notice that they're, the saturation of brown is a little lighter. And it happens with blue eggs too, though the pigment will lighten throughout the laying season, but that's not indicative of what color eggs the offspring are gonna have to potential to lay because the offspring are gonna receive just the genetics of that bird, which is important for people to know at this point in the season, if they're hatch, receiving hatching eggs or hatching.
Jennifer: 10:11
Okay, so I guess I was wrong. So you have to start with a true blue bird. Yeah. But you can use any brown bird. It doesn't really have to be a Moran or summer. We could use an Orpington if we really wanted to.
Nolie: 10:26
It's too light. The color is too light of that egg. If you were to breed to an orpington, I would consider that offspring Easter egg. You wanna go? There, see, here's the thing, like an olive egg is really a mutt breed. There's no standard, for Olive Eggers. But you wanna, I would, if I were making, if I were to write a standard, I would say that you need to start with a brown layer, with a big shade of at least five. Whatever, whatever breed it is really doesn't matter, but you wanna start with as dark of a brown as you can get.
Carey: 10:58
That makes sense.
Nolie: 11:00
If I were teaching somebody, I would say absolutely start with Morans or your darkest Lang. Summers, but in my own programs, if I had a back crossed olive and she's laying a dark brown. I would Absolutely and there's something about her eggs that she was speckled or heavy bloomed. I would definitely breed her back to a true blue layer to see what those offspring produced, even if she wasn't morans, so it's not about the breed, it's about the egg shade. The egg color. Gotcha. Okay.
Jennifer: 11:31
So any dark brown plus blue, essentially. Yeah.
Nolie: 11:35
But officially we would say Morans at America. But for the sake of the conversation, it doesn't really have to be.
Jennifer: 11:42
No, that's fine. That's why we're just having a conversation. Okay. So now we've laid the groundwork. Is there anything else that we need to know for the groundwork?
Nolie: 11:51
I think the groundwork simply is that to create an olive egg and that first generation, we're taking a true blue bird, a bird that has homozygous blue egg gene, and we're breeding to a dark brown layer, and the first generation olive egg is the only generation of olive egg that is going to guarantee green eggs 100% of the time. I think that's important to know.
Jennifer: 12:15
Does it matter which way you go? Can it be a. Blue boy over brown girls. Or does it,
Nolie: 12:22
yeah, it doesn't make any difference, but there is some talk in the community that the roosters have more opportunity to like deposit browns. So there's some talk that the rooster has more to do with the depth of Brown in the offspring and morans and, olives in general. Gotcha.
Jennifer: 12:44
Okay. So if I were to order from you an F1 olive egg, then the eggs that you shipped me would either be brown or blue, right? Correct. Yep. And I'm sure that shocks a few people, right?
Nolie: 13:00
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I do a lot of education with people buying olives for the first time so that they can understand what they're looking at when they receive hatching eggs, for sure. I think the other thing that might be foundational when it comes to a color genetics is that truly there are only two egg colors there, and if you crack eggs open brown eggs, green eggs, if you were to crack them all open, you would see that they're either white or they are blue. And when it comes to these greens and these browns and pinks and gray, like all these colors that we see that is all pigment, that is deposited on top of that white or blue eggshell. It's actually one of the last things that happens before. And same with the blooms and the speckles before the eggs come out, and so all of your olive Eggers are on a blue base. All of your brown eggs creamed are on a white egg base.
Carey: 13:58
So it just matters what kind of printers they're using when they go through.
Nolie: 14:01
Yeah. Yep. Exactly. That's, we all joke at this point in the season that the chickens are, they're just running out of toner.
Carey: 14:09
Yep. They need different ink.
Nolie: 14:10
It really is that way though.
Jennifer: 14:14
Okay. So you've shipped out, we're talking about the F1 generation now, so we are, we're putting either blue eggs or brown eggs in the incubator. And so those girls, that hatch will be your F1 cross, right? Okay. And they will lay olive eggs?
Nolie: 14:35
Yes. They're going to lay green eggs. The variance of the color of olive is gonna have to do with the genetics, really? Of the brown Lang brown genetic parent.
Jennifer: 14:48
Okay. Are those F1 boys good for anything?
Nolie: 14:54
I, and look, this is probably gonna be different depending on what olive egg or breeder you talk to. I think that the first generation olives are the only useful ones unless you do some genetic testing. Because here's what's happening. We talked about how each chicken has two genes, one gene from each parent, and we under, oh. I lost my train of thought. Okay. And in the beginning that with that first generation, you had your true blue parent with two blue egg genes, who's definitely gonna pass down a blue egg gene. And then you have your brown laying, brown bruise. You have the brown genetics. That are coming into play. So that's where that the brown coloring is coming in. So you have that blue egg with the brown pigment over it, which is what's giving you green. Okay? But those offspring are only gonna be carrying one of each of those genes. So there's only one blue gene. And the other is for those brown genetics. So that chicken only has a 50% potential to pass on more blue egg genes to the next generation, which is. You stop, you come here. She's I'm so sorry. I can't. Okay. So anyways, so that first one generation only has a 50% chance to pass on those blue egg genes to the following generation, that's when things get a little tricky. So if you're this, we need a punt square. We need to draw out a punt square to see the rest. Because what's happening is each of those parents only have a 50% chance to pass on a blue egg gene, which is, when you're breeding olive of acres, there's a good potential for that. There's a good potential for the offspring to end up with one of those genes, at least from one of the parents.
Carey: 17:01
I was gonna say for that, you're gonna have to wait until. For the mail birds, that could be a fun science project. Take a long time. Yep. More
Nolie: 17:13
coops. Yep.
Carey: 17:15
That's a good excuse. For more coops,
Nolie: 17:17
I have olives set up in four or five different pens because I can just throw in, I can throw an olive in my, I can do olives in my morans pens. I can do olives in the Americana pens. But I also have, like we're talking about a later generation olive apen where I have F1 first generation roosters under various generations. Of green laying olive aaba hens, and those offspring do have the potential to lay brown eggs as well, but there's a lot of color potential in there because all of those Olive Aaba parents are carrying the potential for blue egg jeans, different brown shades. There's a lot that can happen color-wise in those offspring. I think it's ex, I like the variation of it, the potential. I think it's exciting.
Jennifer: 18:06
Okay, so let's leave the boys, the F1 boys alone for just a minute. So we have the F1 girls and they are gonna lay green eggs. So you can't what would happen, you're gonna have two scenarios, basically. One where you breed back to either blue or brown, right? Or one where you breed to other F1 boys, right? Okay. So to get the depth of color, those nice, rich olive colors, are you going back to a Moran?
Nolie: 18:40
Yes, definitely. You're going back to as dark of a brown as you can breed to. Okay,
Carey: 18:48
so you really need like a Moran with a, that produces a egg color of seven, eight. If you can find it, the deeper, the better on the brown.
Jennifer: 18:58
Definitely. So how many generations have, have you done and have other people done going back and like, how deep can you get that green?
Nolie: 19:08
Man, I don't even know the deepest that mine go right now. I have some f. F what I'm calling F four crosses. But basically those are second generation back cross, hence, which is, so I would've had my F1 generation, which was back cross to a Morans, which was back cross to Morans again. And now I'm breeding to an a first generation olba. So their their offspring would, I'm considering fourth generation, but you can go as, as, as long as you want. Really just breeding and the appeal of, okay, both breeding back to an Americana and back to a Morans are both considered back crosses. Which is, which is important too.'cause I think when most people hear back cross, they just assume back cross to Morans because that's, most people are trying to get those darker greens. I have one pen set up. With some green laying hands back crossed to Americana because that Americana parent is for sure gonna be giving blue egg genes to the offspring. So it's a good way to make sure that you're reintroducing those blue egg genetics. So it's almost like that next offspring. It's not a first generation, but they're going to have the Blue Egg genes and some of those olive brown genetics as well. It's a good way to reintroduce, make sure the blue egg genetics are reintroduced. And that's how people like you see people who are labeling their eggs like Spearmint Eggers and Moss Eggers, and all these fancy things. Like they're probably just back crossed to an Americana, or to some bird where they can guarantee that they're, maybe you can't, that there's more Blue egg genetics being reintroduced to get those different kind of shades of teal, lighter greens and whatnot.
Jennifer: 20:58
Okay, so let's go sideways for a minute. Okay. How do you go from back crossing all the Eggers to the Easter acre to get those colors? Or is it totally different? My
Nolie: 21:12
line between all of Eggers and Easter Eggers. Okay. And my theory is that with all of Eggers, the, at first of all, it has to do with the saturations of the brown genetics that you're using. I personally feel like it also has to do with knowing the lineage. You know that when you just get into like Barnard mixes of all just breed this bird with this bird and see what colors come out. I now you're stepping into Easter anger territory. But if you wanted to lighten your eggs. From a dark olive, then you would breed that hand to a lighter a white, a lake horn or brass, or some bird from lighter egg color genetics, cogens, that would lighten up the eggs in the next generation for sure. But who would even wanna do that? Why would you even do that? Do.
Carey: 21:58
How do you, that was a noli that said that. So feel free if direct those comments there because that
Nolie: 22:08
there's a woman. There's a woman on my Facebook page. Oh my goodness. Vera, come here, you stop that. Hugs anyways, there's a woman, I have a running joke with a woman on my Facebook page because she messaged me. Most people when they message about olive bakers, they want your darkest eggs. Can I only have BC two crosses or can I have your speck? Like they want these really dark, speckled, heavy bloom eggs. And this bone woman went, woman messaged me and she actually preferred the like re nights when I was like. I've never heard of, I've never had anybody ask me. So now we have a running joke, in our conversations or posts on Facebook. It's really funny. She's sweet.
Jennifer: 22:47
So you have nicknamed your line, the Dirty River Eggs, right?
Nolie: 22:52
I didn't do it. Somebody on Facebook one time was, I had posted a picture of some eggs a couple years ago, and in her defense they were like, like these moav like pinkish looking. They, the offspring would've been first generation olives. They were like brown eggs and like green eggs. But anyways, she messaged me, I listed them on my Facebook page and she messaged me and she was like, I don't mean to be rude. But do people really buy these because they just look like Dirty River water to me.
Carey: 23:23
I love that. It's like setting it up. I don't mean to be rude, but I.
Nolie: 23:29
I was like, not even offended. It was so funny, that I wasn't even offended. It was just clear to me that she, didn't have experience with these A colors and that was fine. But I had made a post. I kept her anonymous, but I made a post about it on Facebook just'cause it was so funny to me. And of course, everybody who read it was hysterical and it just cut from then on, it was like, okay, these are dirty river water eggs and I love it. Thank you. So if she's out there and she, if she even remembers, then thank you for the tagline, it was the best marketing tool that I've ever come across. Wow.
Jennifer: 24:03
Okay. So how
Nolie: 24:04
do you get those mov and those pink eggs? It's a, it's an elusive thing. Really mob and pink is not an egg color. Like we talked about, you get blue and you get white eggs. Even the browns over the browns greens, that all has to do with pigment that's deposited over the egg. And it's the same with pinks. Pinks typically come from heavy bloomed cream eggs, or morans, but usually the really heavy bloomed morans eggs tend to look more purple, or like deep rosy, which is pretty, but like I have some wine dots right now who lay really light pink colored eggs, but it all has to do with the deposit of the bloom that's on there. Gotcha. It's the same too, when you see gray looking olive eggs, it's all, it has to do with the bloom that's on the egg. Those eggs look really beautiful and they are really beautiful, but they're hard to hatch. That heavy bloom makes that egg less porous and can, they can be really difficult to hatch.
Jennifer: 25:09
Okay. Alright, now rabbit hole time. I'm just forewarning now. Okay. So I did Morans. For one hot, one hot minute. And I learned really quickly while I was trying to buy my foundational stock that. People do not keep their brooders straight. So when I bought Moran eggs or chicks in one instance, I got a lot of olive acres. Because the guy did not keep his, it was a man did not keep his brooders straight.
25:47
And he could
Jennifer: 25:48
not tell. So I saw that a lot in the groups people sharing that with me, that pet peeve, did you buy chicks or hatching eggs? Let's see. Those were chicks.
Nolie: 26:02
Yeah.
Jennifer: 26:04
Yeah. Yeah. So how do you keep your straight Morans and your olives? I
Nolie: 26:08
have learned that I can't house them together, period. I don't hatch them together. I don't brood them together. I don't house them together. Hang on. I'm gonna put this dog and this. She doesn't know how to behave. Fear. You lost your chance to be in this room.
Jennifer: 26:24
I don't house them together
Nolie: 26:26
at all.
Jennifer: 26:27
And then you band them or tag them somehow later?
Nolie: 26:30
Nope. I just don't ever house them together. Oh.'cause honestly, like with the back crosses, once you're back crossing all of bakers tumor, they can look very similar, and the only way to tell them apart would be genetic testing. And I would hate that to accidentally put an Oli Baker Rooster over Morans and then not find out for another year and be selling all those hatchings. That would be terrible. I have sold somebody olive of acres as Morans. I have done that before
Carey: 26:58
and it, and that is a really good excuse to have a lot of brooders.
Nolie: 27:02
Yeah. But this woman, she really wanted Morans, and I, she didn't know that she had olive acres until seventh months later she sent me some pictures and was like, Hey, can you gimme some feedback on these Morans? And I was like. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. That is clearly an olive baker rooster. Fortunately, she's local and very kind, and we worked it out over the next two years, but I've done it too. It happens what I'm sharing. But that's why now I just don't even house'em together,
Jennifer: 27:31
so it doesn't, it is not even a possibility.
Nolie: 27:33
I think in her situation I might have mixed up eggs is what happened. It may not have even been the housing. It may have just been my clerical error. I.
Jennifer: 27:42
You know what? That's how I got my first coaching. I brought my eggs. Yep. And then this buddy popped out and I was like, what is that? Because that is not white trauma.
Nolie: 27:50
Did you get more, I noticed you said my first coaching.
Jennifer: 27:54
Oh yeah. I ended up like going the whole way with coaching, so that's a whole nother story. Yeah. Got rid of all the bras and went to coaching. So how would somebody choose a reputable breeder then, who has both Morans and all the VAs? Would you have any advice for them?
Nolie: 28:16
I would say first of all, that, everybody makes mistakes. Things happen, and genetics is not an exact science, but I don't know. I feel like by looking through somebody's. Facebook page and their posts and the types of things that they're sharing and their, website. I, I don't know. I think that there's a way to discern who's serious, and who's just throwing birds together. You can look and I would say look at the egg colors, and look at multiple different, what they're showing you.
Jennifer: 28:45
Yes. And realize that you can't just look at a chick and tell what color egg it's gonna. But
Nolie: 28:52
absolutely not. And when it comes to olive Eggers and egg color genetics, you, this is another huge thing, is you can't even look at the egg color of the egg. You're hatching, and predict. What the offspring is. As a breeder I can say I'm gonna take this really beautiful, heavy bloom, speckle, olive egg, and I'm gonna breed the hen who lays it back to a morans. And my hope is that the offspring lays a darker, deeper green with the heavy blooms and speckles. But I. It's not an exact science. I mean there is something like 13 different genes involved with brown pigmentation. There is a lot happening there. So as olive ager breeders, we are just pairing up the best matches that we can, with the colors and genetics that we know of and hoping that. Nature does the best, from there. But in those back crosses to Morans there, it's really important that people know that those offspring could also lay brown eggs. But I've had some back crosses who laid brown instead of green and laid like really cool blooms and I ended up using those Hess somewhere, with true blue layers or somewhere else in a program.
Jennifer: 30:00
So there is a possibility that an olive egger would lay a brown egg,
Nolie: 30:06
a later generation olive egger or back crossed olive egg. Yes. It needs to be an expectation that it could happen at least 50% of the time, like prob proba, probability wise. It may or may not, but probability wise, there is a 50% chance.
Carey: 30:24
I think that should be like a risk that somebody understands going into it.
Nolie: 30:29
Agree.
Carey: 30:30
Especially when you're dealing with shipped eggs. You're gonna have hatchability issues like what you talked about earlier, and they're olive acres.
30:42
Yeah.
Carey: 30:43
You past F1, you don't know what you're gonna get.
Nolie: 30:48
That is true. It's all
Jennifer: 30:49
predictions.
Carey: 30:50
It's the chicken box of chocolates.
Jennifer: 30:52
Yes. It is not a breed. It is essentially just a ba barnyard mix. It's a mu Yep. A very specific barnyard mix. Correct. For a purpose okay. All right. I think that I better understand genetics.
Carey: 31:12
It's a really cool science experiment.
Nolie: 31:14
It's really fun. I love Olive Bakers. Olive Bakers are one of my favorite passion projects, and like I said, I have multiple di different pens set up with my, I have a, the olives to olives, the olives back cross to Morans olives, back cross to Americana's. I am particularly excited about some projects that I'm working on for next year. One of the things that. I like least about olive egg is that there's no kind of standard for them. You know what I mean? They all look different, be depending on the different breeding pairs that we're doing. And so I'm really excited that I'm working on the silver olive Eggers, and I'm working on wheat and olive egg too, to create a. There are other people doing this already. I think Holly Oaks up in Maine is already doing the wheat and olive bakers, for example. But I'm excited to be working with that. A variety, of olive bakers, just as opposed to, we'll see what pops up, which I like. It's, it's, I like the variety, but I'm excited to have the standard Silver and Wheaten presentation form.
Jennifer: 32:14
Okay. One thing I forgot to ask you, so for somebody who's just starting out with these rainbow egg genetics you can you, what expectation would you have breeding olive to olive? Just of any color.
Nolie: 32:30
Let me say that I, if anybody watching follows me on Facebook, I have a pinned post to the top of my, and on Facebook, I'm Mojo Homestead FL Official, and there is a pinned post at the top of my page that has some reference charts like using actual eggs that might like saying, I bred this hand to a rooster from this, with the egg colors and then a couple eggs showing some potential. That the offspring could lay as well. But breeding F1 to F1, I would expect any variation of greens, darker greens, browns, maybe some kind of like spear colors in there. Just some variation of color. I wouldn't necessarily expect darker greens, but I don't, they could surprise you, I don't know.
Jennifer: 33:15
But if you started getting down to F two, F three, F four, and just trying to breed those together.
Nolie: 33:20
You're gonna get
Jennifer: 33:21
more brown eggs, just normal brown eggs.
Nolie: 33:25
Yeah, it would depend on what you know about the rooster. Obviously you would always wanna start with a green laying hen and if you, I. Once you start to get into those F two and F three roosters, without some kind of either breeding and testing or genetic testing, you can't know for sure if that rooster is carrying blue egg genes, so it's hard to know if he has the potential to pass that down.
Jennifer: 33:53
Gotcha.
Nolie: 33:54
Which would just mean that there's more probability for brown eggs than if you were carrying at least one copy of a Blue egg gene.
Jennifer: 34:02
So reasonable expectation if somebody said, Hey, I just threw my olive egg in a pen together, you could literally get anything from light brown to olive.
Nolie: 34:15
When you put it that way. Yes. Yes. Like when I, I offer my dirty river water. Eggs are multi-generational dozens. So when I sell people all of egg or dozens, I'm selling them or I'm shipping them 14 eggs that are gonna contain the, as much potential as possible for like cool and green eggs, they're gonna be eggs from each of my olive pens. Including first generation, including bread bact to Americana to give them hopefully the best start they can with like a. Cool colored green, teal egg, heavy bloom, speckled basket, and that's if people are serious about wanting olive eggs and darker eggs. My suggestion with, and I don't mean to be rude, we were talking about earlier, is do it yourself, and again, I really don't mean that to be rude, I mean that, because that way you will know what you're working with and you will know the genetics, so you have a better idea of. The potential and what's happening in those lines?
Jennifer: 35:15
My, my thought behind my question was more like somebody, a post you might see on Facebook that says, oh, I bought these olive acres five years ago, and they've been in a pen all by themselves for five years. Then, you realistically, you're gonna get pretty much any color,
Nolie: 35:35
so long as the hens are laying green, they are carrying at least one blue white gene. So there's always gonna be at least 50% chance of some variation of some shade of green. At the very least.
Jennifer: 35:50
Okay, I understand now. Gotcha. Okay. Can, where can people order eggs from you? Do you have a website or anything? I.
Nolie: 36:00
I do have a website it's mojo homestead fl.com, but I use my website primarily to showcase my birth. There's where you can find all my pictures and pricing and information on shipped eggs and whatever else I get going on over there. But I handle all of my orders directly through Facebook and Facebook Messenger. I like to talk to people directly and I like to have a space where I can communicate with them easily about shipping or. Anything that comes up. So if you wanted to order eggs directly from me, then the thing to do would be to find me on Facebook and shoot me a message. But this summer, I'm, I am one woman and a pretty small breed. So availability is touch and go, and especially coming into summer olives are, I usually can come up with availability pretty quickly just because I work them into so many different places. I have a good number of them, but availability is touch and go throughout the summer, for sure. Spring is the time I'd say people are really serious about hashing eggs. Starts in January, which is crazy because you'd think it'd be a couple months later, but it's not. It's January.
Jennifer: 37:07
Yeah. If you're serious about Nain, and this goes for pretty much any species of poultry, you orders start in November on its, and if you're waiting until April, you're really, might be outta luck almost. Yeah. I
Carey: 37:25
would be surprised if you wait till April and you're not outta luck.
Nolie: 37:30
It doesn't depend. Like I, this year chose not, I'm not doing a, I didn't do a wait list this year. I didn't do any wait list. I didn't do any contact lists because I can't handle the stress of it. I can't handle the stress of keeping people waiting and people checking back in and what are my eggs. And so this year I said, I'm just gonna try to do it all on a first come first serve. Basis. And what's happened is I'd list one dozen, say I have a dozen olive of eggs available, and they'll be gone quickly, but then two or three more people will come behind them and I'll take payments out so far as two to three weeks. That seems to be a good time period to predict what the flock is doing, and serve those orders. And then, so I can. Keep up with that, with everything without getting overwhelmed by the orders and without people waiting so long, that they become restless. Like I've seen ha I see it happen a lot, I've had it happen a lot and I, this year I was like, I need to protect my peace somehow.
Jennifer: 38:26
What else do you have going on at your little farm down there? You're in Florida in case people didn't pick up. Yeah. Part?
Nolie: 38:35
Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. It's been a tough year. Honestly. I've had a lot of losses to predators this year. I've had some kind of new predator in my chicken yard, which I still haven't identified. My solution has been just to. Fortify the coops where I'm putting the smaller birds, which is what had, was being taken. So that's, remedied for now. And then I had a really serious bout with Cox City this year, which was terrible. So I'm really, it's been a tough year over here with grow outs and predators and coccidia in particular. And hurricanes. Oh my God. Don't even, thanks for reminding me.
Jennifer: 39:17
So a
Nolie: 39:17
breeder
Jennifer: 39:19
world kind of starts after the molt in the fall. Like we start pulling our birds and mentally start putting them together. And then we may even start making, pairings what, in November, December? Sometimes. Yeah. Depending on your weather. Yeah. So you're, you were trying to mentally prepare for this year when hurricanes decided to go through. Absolutely.
Nolie: 39:42
Yeah. Last year was very tough with the hurricanes and hurricane season starts, actually, it's June 1st through like October, and it is hot. Who knows. We'll hope for the
Jennifer: 39:53
best this year. Yeah, I think they extended it, didn't they? Did they? They were talking about extending hurricane season. All the good news.
Carey: 40:04
This is the south. Okay. So if you don't like the weather, just wait about half hour. It'll change. Yeah. Yeah. And they can say it's gonna do one thing tomorrow, but it's probably not. It's gonna do something else.
Nolie: 40:16
Yeah. I think for us, where I'm located, I'm in like the armpit of Florida. I think that there was something about, has been something about the jet stream over the last couple years and it was just like funneling all the storms up through and we saw these historic storms last year that were like, this area's never seen any. There was, it wasn't like there was just one or two we're talking like there was three major storms in the span of a year that it was wild.
Carey: 40:43
That's crazy.
Jennifer: 40:44
What other breeds are you working with that we didn't mention?
Nolie: 40:48
My bread and butter are morans and wine dots. Blue laced red wine dots black la blue laced, red wine dots, and black copper Morans. Those are the breeds that I have been working with the longest and that I am the most focused on when it comes to standards of perfection. Not that I don't know that I'll ever actually be there, but the, I try to stay focused. But I also work with Americana. I work with Silver, Americana, Isabelle, Americana, wheat and and Wheat and Americana and Isabelle Wheat and splits. I also have lavender Americana, but I. I am considering that I may not continue with them moving forward. I'm not. We'll see, once fall comes what I wanna do. And then of course there's the Olive Eggers and I also do summers, silver, summers in particular, and Silkies. But I have a silky fun pen. You like silky? So is that what the fa You love silky, huh?
Jennifer: 41:49
No. Off the air. We are
Nolie: 41:51
yeah, we, yeah, we make, they're
Carey: 41:53
her favorite.
Nolie: 41:54
It's fine. I, listen, I said I would never, ever have silkies and then I accidentally got some silkies and then I said I would never, ever have showgirls, and now they're my favorite.
Carey: 42:06
So like for me it's being at a show and seeing the silky people some of the things that some of them do is a lot,
Jennifer: 42:17
yeah. So I went to a show, I don't know, probably close to a month ago now, and we were milling around talking, waiting for them to count points and do awards and stuff, and, this, I was talking to this lady and she was holding a silky, and it was white, and she just sat down on the curb and put the silky down on the ground. And I just looked at her and I was like, will it just stay there? And she goes, oh, it won't move at all. Like it's there it will stay there all day. And I was thinking my chickens, my giant chickens run across the field like puppies for sure.
Nolie: 42:53
Yeah. They're more prone to parasites in my opinion, because they're less prone to pre, they have more vitamin deficiency issues and other breeds. And honestly, my silkies are an abomination to the silky world. Like it's a fun pen, with different colors, feather types. Satins, which apparently are their own breed. Satins are no longer silkies, or maybe they never were silkies. I don't know. It's a whole thing. Depending on who you talk to, you feel really strongly about it. But, so I have satin but anyways, it's fun and here's the thing about breeding chickens. I don't ever have any plans to show chickens. I guess maybe like I didn't ever have any plans to be on this podcast, but I don't have any plans to do that at this point. I breed for like with the Morans and the wine dots and. The Americana, I'm mindful of the standards because I want to be mindful of what I'm putting out in the community, but in general, most people don't care. Like in general, most people don't care about the standards of perfection unless they're showing, they just want. Nice, pretty healthy chickens, or in my case, chickens that lay certain colored eggs, so with the people who buy silkies from me they're buying pets for their kids and their house chicken, or whatever, they're cute little silky showgirl chickens. I will say that my silkies are my most reliable hatching eggs. They're always fertilized. They do great shifts. So they're just a staple over here.
Jennifer: 44:25
One of my biggest sellers, and I haven't done it in a few years, but I took a Coachin mail and put over a Buff Orpington. And the offspring were, they were black, they orpingtons with feathers down to their. Toes.
44:44
But
Jennifer: 44:44
not heavily like a coachin. But then the feathers, they picked up a gold fleck, almost like a Colombian. Really? Yes. And they were super, super cool looking, and I couldn't hatch enough of those things.
Nolie: 45:00
Did they breed True? Did you? To each other? Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer: 45:04
No, they looked terrible. The second generation was terrible. Yeah. But the first generation was freaking awesome and they picked up all the best qualities, the broodiness of the Coachin. The great Mama of the Orpington. Just the friendliness. And they were great. Yeah.
Carey: 45:22
People love that stuff.
Jennifer: 45:23
Yeah. Yeah. That's. I called them black gold because, they were gold and black and yeah. Yeah. That's neat. But yeah, they were just, but I just didn't do it again. I did it two years and I just didn't do it again, we run out of Penn space. You, you do this and you run outta pen space. I
Nolie: 45:39
understand. Hence, my, my, maybe make a decision about the lavender, Americana. I'm not sure yet. Yeah, I understand.
Carey: 45:47
Probably depends on what the grow out pin looks like come November.
Nolie: 45:51
Yeah. Yeah. Depends on how coccidia serves me for the rest of the summer.
Jennifer: 45:58
We appreciate you coming on and so maybe you come back one day, maybe take a good
Nolie: 46:05
topic and we'll see.
Jennifer: 46:07
Come on. Okay. We'll find some wrap. I'll invite you on, I'll tease you and then we'll do rabbit holes. Okay? Yes, I like those. Alright, talk to you later. Alright, bye.