We often get asked about rainbow eggs, what breeds they include, and also what breed is an olive egger or an easter egger. Let’s try to answer some of these questions here.

The majority of purebreeds lay the usual cream or light brown coloured eggs. These include the well known Sussex, the Brahma, the Australorp and other breeds. Some Australorp hens and some Light Sussex hens can lay light pink eggs or even add speckles on their eggs, and that is something we often offer here at Agia Skepi.

White eggs are not so common and are typically laid by the Leghorn (such as our gorgeous Exchequer Leghorn) or Ancona and a select few other breeds.

The Welsummers and the Barnevelders usually lay usually brown eggs, often with speckles, and that is one trait we love in these breeds! Egg speckling can add a special touch to every egg and is sought after.

Very few purebreeds lay coloured eggs. These include the Marans, which lay chocolate or dark brown eggs. It is noteworthy that this is not something that can be 100% standardised and every now and then you can get a hen that lays lighter brown eggs or even pink or purple! That’s actually a bonus, isn’t!

Blue? Araucana and Cream Legbar are the true-to-blue breeds we have available in Australia. Their blue eggs are different though. The Cream Legbar blue is a sky blue versus the Araucana blue, which is more of a turquoise deeper blue and sometimes even a minty blue. Another important note here is that the Cream Legbar is still a project breed in Australia, with both type of birds and egg colour a work in progress. Importantly, some birds may not carry two blue genes, which can result in some of their progeny laying cream eggs. There is a genetic test that has recently become available which can shed some light into this. We have some beautiful cream legbars here at Agia Skepi, all laying beautiful sky blue eggs. We have not yet done any genetic testing as all their progeny so far lay blue eggs, but it is something we may consider down the track.

Green eggs: Olive eggers are not a breed. There isn’t any breed currently available in Australia that lays olive eggs. So, the only way to get olive eggers is by crossing a brown egger with a blue egger. There’s a few possibilities to achieve this and depending on which two breeds are crossed you can get different shades of green! This is something we love doing here at Agia Skepi, and we call it genetic egg painting! You literally paint your own eggs genetically! How cool is that!!

Easter eggers: Again, not a breed. Easter eggers are crosses of any two or more breeds and they can lay any colour of the palette. The most cool easter eggers are those that lay pink, purple, plum, grey, teal, mint and other amazing rare colours, and although most people offering easter eggers just keep a mixed flock of laying hens, here at Agia Skepi we do targeted breeding for our easter eggers to achieve the rarer egg colours mentioned above.

We therefore offer various rainbow arrangements, specifying what each one includes on our website. We can also do custom rainbows or custom purebred dozens from the purebreds we have available at any one time.

With love,
Agia Skepi