Very interesting comments! Thought I\'d throw my two-cents into the mix.
Over the years, I have kept detailed records on my various birds. Each bird is toe-punched at birth according to the Pen # from which it came. Each pen consists of a specific male over a female (or females if they are full-blooded sisters).
In doing so I have been able to backtrack the results of some traits. One of those has been the elimination of brown in most of my eggs. I am now only getting a greenish tinted egg from one pullet - I think. However, this year I have two pullets giving me a totally white egg. But, on the other hand, I have a few pullets that I think are giving me a bluer egg than I\'ve ever had.
I think (as I have not caught the culprit on the nest yet) that the two white egg layers are probably from my #10 hens. I had two #10 hens, one of which gave me a white egg, and the other an almost white with very light blue hue to it.
I bred them though to my rooster that I think is carrying my best blue egg genes and I did so because I was having terrible productivity problems. I had 6-8 birds that hadn\'t given me an egg in over 6 months. My #10\'s would give me 4-5 eggs each per week. So my thought was, \"I\'ll get the productivity up and then weed out the white gene in subsequent generations.\"
This may be obvious but my point is that I can rarely afford to focus on just one trait. It always seems to be a matter of priorities for me. My hope is that with time and continued good record keeping, thru the process of elimination and repeating successes while not repeating mistakes, I can get to where I want to be.
Lastly, I thought I\'d mention something - again that may go without saying but will perhaps be of benefit to someone - with regard to the test mating. Mike\'s idea of test mating is an excellent idea. But just remember that if you do it, you\'ve got to hatch a whole lot of birds so that if the recessive gene is there, it will show up in the percentages.
At least if I understand the process that is correct. If I have a rooster carrying Oo and mate it to a hen that is oo, then I still have a 75% chance of blue eggs. Right? So I would have to hatch a lot of chicks to get the pullet that lays the white egg in order for me to know that I\'ve got a rooster with the recessive white. If I only hatch a handful of chicks, I might not get the white egg and would mistakenly assume that I had a rooster that was OO.
God Bless,