All About Easter Egger Chickens
If you're looking for a perfect cottagecore basket of fresh eggs you can't go wrong with a flock of Easter Eggers!
Chickens are the gateway drug to country life. And with good reason, they're fairly easy to keep, they lay eggs and they're hilarious. One of my favorite varieties of chicken is the Easter Egger.
What is an Easter Egger Chicken?
They're technically not a breed at all, it's a catch-all term for chickens with a particular set of characteristics. The main breed they are derived from is the Araucana.
Araucanas are a unique breed known for laying blue eggs, exaggerated cheek poufs, and no tails. That's right, if your chicken has tail feathers it's not really an Araucana.
One step away from the Araucana and a little closer to the Easter Egger is the Ameraucana. The Ameraucana is an American breed (bet you saw that coming!).
They were bred in an effort to keep the blue eggs and eliminate a lethal gene common in Araucanas that kills chicks in the shell.
Finally, we get to the Easter Eggers! They are a mix of different breeds that give you chickens laying blue to blue-green to green eggs thanks to that Araucana blue egg gene.
You can breed EE hens and roosters and it's anyone's guess what you'll get. Some of my favorite chickens are barnyard mixes, you can always spot the EE genes with those little poufy cheeks and beards!
As much as I do love my heritage breeds like the extra fancy Appenzellar Spitzhauben or my favorite chickens, the Brahamas, I'm happy with my plain old EE's.
I love them so much I'm going to give you a few reasons I think you should add them to your flock!
Easter Eggers Lay Beautiful Eggs
Chances are you found out about chickens that lay blue eggs and you wanted them! Who wouldn't?
I have a carefully selected (impulsively chosen) flock that lays a mix of blue, green, white, tan, and dark brown eggs.
You will have variations in egg color with your EEs. The colors shift from very pale blue to pastel blue to a slight green tinge and even a slightly purple color.
Fun fact, egg shells are either white or blue! The brown color comes from an 'overspray' of pigment. That's why if you scrub brown eggs the color fades.
Olive eggs and green eggs come from chickens that lay a blue shell with a brown overspray. The darker the brown, the deeper the olive or green color.
My olive egger was a Welsummer-Easter Egger cross. A combo I plan on hatching next year with my EE girls and one of my Wellie roos.
Bottom line, EE's are a great start for collecting your own rainbow of egg colors.
Easter Eggers are Beautiful Birds
Most chickens come in a handful of colors, if you order 12 Light Brahmas, you'll get 12 amazing large fluffy footed white and grey birds.
If you order 12 EEs you'll probably get 12 very different birds. This is pretty cool for a few reasons. One, your flock just looks cooler if you have a mix of colors and patterns.
It's also great if you like to name your chickens, I love my Brahma ladies but I can't tell one from another. Even my 2-year-old can tell the EE's apart.
The main physical characteristic that sets Easter Eggers apart from other birds is the cheek poufs and beards. They're even visible on the chicks!
They make EE chicks extra cute and easily distinguishable from the others in the flock. If you have a mixed box of fluff balls check out my post on how to tell different breeds apart as chicks.
They stand out in the flock for the cheek poufs and the beards. As adults, they look like they have very thick necks, almost like the necks are larger than the heads.
It gives the hens a bit of rooster appearance but they are regular feathers, not the umbrella of hackle feathers roosters poof up when they fight.
EEs are Inexpensive & Easy to Find
They're basically mutts after all. I bought my EE girls from Cackle Hatchery this year, if you get pullets they'll run from ~$3-4 each depending on how many you buy.
That puts them on par with the more common heritage breeds like the silver-laced wyandottes and brown leghorns.
They also run specials all the time so you might get an even better deal. I ended up with 5 lovely ladies that are starting to lay now at about 30 weeks.
Most hatcheries will have EEs for sale, some even have bantam Easter Eggers which are adorable and lay tiny blue eggs. I have two elder bantam EEs and they are still laying little robin eggs that my kids adore.
Easter Eggers are Hardy Birds
Don't let those pretty faces and beautiful patterns fool you! Easter Eggers are hardy birds. They can handle cold winters and also do pretty well in the heat.
They have small combs that make frostbite less likely in the cold. I put lights in my chicken coop and barn in the winter to make up for the 6 hours of sunlight and my EEs lay all winter long that are still reliably laying.
Part of that probably comes from the hybrid vigor from that whole mixed-breed thing.
They are very inquisitive, they're not quite as nuts as my Appenzellars but almost. They're the only other breed of chicken I regularly find in the trees.
Even after I added a new set of three low roosts to the coop I only see the Easter Eggers on the top roosts, they're at least 7 feet off the ground but if they aren't there they're in the rafters in the main part of the barn.
Looking through pictures for this post I noticed I didn't have a lot of in-focus EE pictures. Part of it is I take a lot of pictures of the moms and I've never had a broody EE.
The other part is they are very fast and all over the place. They aren't like my silkies and my garden buddy, a Dominique, that follow me around everywhere.
Easter Eggers are Reliable layers
You won't get quite as many eggs out of an EE as you will with a commercial laying cross but they do a good job filling your belly. They're a medium breed, weighing in around 6-7 pounds and they are a dedicated egg breed.
Most of my birds are larger and considered a dual purpose, they lay eggs but also have enough ahem.. meat on their bones to be used for the dinner table. EEs don't put any extra energy into sustaining a large body so they crank out more eggs.
EE's are good layers, you can expect ~200-280 eggs a year from a hen. It will vary from bird to bird and based on husbandry, including whether or not you light the coop in the winter.
They are some of the best layers I have, I tend to have a lot of green and blue eggs even though I have a lot more chickens that lay brown and white.
They Come in Travel Size!
Ok they aren't really travel size but you can get bantam Easter Eggers. I had a few but I'm down to two now.
I call one my little dove, she's little with a pretty dove grey & cream coloring. She lays the prettiest little blue eggs! The kids really get a kick out of tiny eggs, even more so when they're a fun color.
I haven't ordered chicks in a few years but 2024 might be time for some new blood and I have my eye on a few bantam EEs.
I do have one barnyard cross that's a little too big to be a bantam but not quite full-sized. She's all black with the cheek poufs and hatched out 12 babies last year.
I'm not sure what she is mixed with but she's the only EE I've ever had sit on a nest. Of course, I can't get a cochin to go broody but my super flighty Appenzellar Spitshauben hen can't seem to keep herself off a nest.
Moral of that story, chickens do what they want to. You can read everything there is to know about a particular breed and still end up with a bird that defies all the personality traits you chose it for.
Now that we have the good stuff out of the way I'll break your heart a little.
Easter Egger Roosters are Mean
I'm basing this 100% on personal experience, if you have had other experiences I'd love to hear them so please share in the comments. Every. Single. Easter Egger Rooster I've ever had has been an asshole.
They were mean to the other roosters, mean to the hens, and even picked at me and my kids. I have a no-aggressive rooster policy so they don't last very long around here.
It's really unfortunate because they are stunning birds, especially when they're fully feathered out with their adult saddle and hackle feathers. They're feathered rainbows of anger.
I hope I've inspired you give Easter Eggers another glance next time you're adding to your flock! Don't forget to PIN this to your chicken board for later.
Looking for more information? Check out my Chickens page or start here:
I've had 5 Easter Egger Roosters and every one has gone to freezer camp... Makes me sad because they are really colorful and beautiful but dang they really are mean and fight everyone! I have 6 Roosters now and they are all friendly and none are EE.
I have had 5 or 6 EE roosters. Only one was mean out of the bunch. The rest were very protective of their hens, but very non aggressive with humans. I had one ee rooster that would run back and forth all day long if any of the hens squeaked for any reason. One roo would let me pick him up and pet him. He made all kinds of sweet cooking noises when I did. I guess I have just been lucky!
My Easter Egger Rooster is LOVED by his hen's. No joke. He gets treated like a hero in our coop. NOW, the EE hen is mean. She is smaller than the rest but makes up for it in pure meanness. She has found a secrect way to escape the coop and gives my mom a run for her money everytime it happens. She is just an ass.
I live in an area that doesn’t allow roosters. I 3 incubated EE eggs and believe I have one or two roosters 😞. They are almost 2 months old. How can I find them a good home....they are sweet. Ann
Your best bet is in a local Facebook group for farming or chicken keeping, good luck!
My EE rooster is one of the nicest I've ever had. The meanest with my personal experience is Rhode Island Red roosters, I've had three of them and they were all mean.
I loved this post! It was cute and humorous. I, too, have "carefully selected" a variety of egg layers :'D. I'll just say this, I currently have three adult egg laying hens when have laid plenty for my family, so it was totally unnecessary for me to buy seven more chicks. My current flock consists of 2 buff bahamas, 2 black cochins (one is the roo, Rooster Cogburn), 1 blue ameraucana, 1 welsummer (Kellog's chicken!), 1 partridge penedesenca, 1 plymouth barred rock, 1 exchequer leghorn, and 2 easter eggers. I will say this, one of my easter eggers and the barred rock are the sweetest birds. Out of necessity the wulsummer has been in our bathroom now for a month and while she loves napping on my shoulder she still freaks when you try to pick her up. I really hope at least one of the easter eggers will lay noticeably green eggs! I wanted an olive egger but the hatchery was out. They've been such a fun and entertaining adventure. Best of luck chickening!
I got some EE chicks from a hatchery and I ended up with possibly 2 out of 3 cockerels when I ordered hens 😢. I’m going to try and find them a good home when they are older and a confirmed rooster!
I got 6 bantam EEs and half are roosters. They're beautiful but they have such nasty attitudes!
All of the EEs I've had with red on the wings have been roosters, that's something to look for if you're still not sure. They also get saddle feathers in fairly early, check this post out for a few pictures: https://chickenscratchny.com/3-fool-proof-ways-to-tell-roosters-from-hens/
I wonder if the bantams were developed using game chickens? I know they can be aggressive.
I ended up with one EE rooster and he was an asshole to me and the hens. Absolutely nasty. He didn't last long. I could tell he was a rooster by the red coming in on the wings and he developed feathers slowly compared to the pullets. The pullets are sweet birds! One will jump right in your lap. I love my Easter Eggers.
Guess we've had good luck with our EE Roosters. We've not had a mean one yet. We also subscribe to no mean Roosters allowed here policy! 😂
Currently, our EE Rooster runs from our Japanese Rooster.. a funny site to behold since he's twice (almost 3x bigger), but Chen is the elder statesmen and he runs the show! If Pretty Boi decides he may want to get fresh with Chens little (Bantam hens...most Japanese) he finds himself in a pickle really quick. Chen (who is 3 years old now) is a great Rooster. He's steady teaching the EE Rooster & the Cochin Rooster how to care for their ladies and be good roosters. It's really been entertaining to watch. But if Chen corrects the EE, the EE takes off running to pounce on the Cochin (who's twice his size, but a big ole baby). Poor Blu just gets the smack down when all he wants to do is take care of his hens and be a lover, not a fighter. He takes direction from Chen well and has learned how to find treats for his hens and keep an eye to the sky while they forage. Pretty Boi is to busy trying to s what he may be missing out on, but he's getting better as he gets older. As long as he's not an ass to Humans not the other chickens he's a keeper!
I love your articles and find them both amusing and informative. I just got my chickens last year and lucked out on my EE’s as I got 4 hens and 1 rooster. I have a very sweet EE rooster who gets bossed around by my silkie roo. He actually will come up to me when I’m tossing bread treats and will wait right beside me for his and he takes very gently. He even comes to his name. He does a great job watching over the hens and is very gental manly when it comes to the girls. He’s a keeper and I love this boy! He’s kind of funny because he is a year old now and just started crowing and he doesn’t do it very often.
I had an Easter Egger Roo and he was amazing. I raised him from when he was a baby and he was so smart. He knew his name and figured out pretty quickly how to communicate what he wanted. He loved cuddling and would purr when I pet him. He was definitely aggressive, but not to humans. He would chase turkeys out of the yard and even one time chased a large dog! Unfortunately he was taken by a hawk one morning. He was such an amazing bird. I would highly recommend raising an EE Roo as long as theyre by themselves they will bond with you!
We have 2 hens and one Easter Egger rooster. He's very aggressive but he's actually all bark and no bite. He will do his aggressive looking rooster dance at me where he puffs up and puts one wing down and stomps over at me. I just walk towards him or pick him up and he instantly is nice again. We carry him around and pet him. It's like he is very protective of his hens, but he's actually a nice guy. He's young though - 7 months old - so I'm not sure if he will change and get more aggressive or less. We really want to keep him though. My question is, will he grow spurs or no? I'm hoping not.
I've never a rooster without spurs, they usually grow in around 7-8 months and they do start pretty small. Attitude can change when the hormones settle down but I'd keep an eye on him and be careful with him around kids. I have had roosters that wouldn't dream of going after me but chased my kids mercilessly
@Carrie Talus, only roosters I've ever had not develope spurs is ssilkies. Only well breed ones at that. If they had reddish combs they normally got spurs too.
I now have 4 EE hens, and for about 9 months 2 little guys on their way to becoming roosters, What they became were little assholes! They would double tag the younger hens. One would catch and hold while the other tried to perform the cloacal kiss. My older and very sweet Welsummer roo, JarJar Binks, did his best to protect them all, but 22 hens was too much. So the little jerks got rehomed. They went to a home with much older hens so hopefully they will be taught how to behave. I've crossed my original EE hen with the Welsummer and have 2 girls who are just starting to lay and one has olive eggs and the other is a darker army green. I have several "breeds" of chickens but I love crossing them to see what I get!! I have only had chickens for 2 yrs but I can't imagine life without them!! I genuinely love my feathered babies.....
We have a large, very showy EE Roo. He was raised by a family with kids. At this point, with hens at my place, he is only concerned when we go to pick up a hen and she squawks. He is just protective, and will peck at the rubber boots, but not attack. He sees the hens are settled in our arms, and that is that. I saw him fly up into the air one day when a Cooper's Hawk was soaring down to grab a hen. He plucked that hawk right out of its flight path and brought him to the ground, ready to dismantle him. I watched him give him one opening out of there and the hawk took it, flying away quickly. Amazing. Very protective attitude, I think that is a quality when you let them free range in a mixed open, forested area that is fenced from dogs and coyotes.
I only have one Easter Egger rooster and he is the SWEETEST chicken we own. More personable and friendly than ANY of our chickens, hen or roo. We can put him into trances and if you pick him up, he starts falling asleep - no need to pet him! If he pecks at our clothes too much, we just say, "Unh Unh Unh, Delilah" and he walks away. Not an exaggeration. He is incredible.
He is very passive (with humans... he has balded his hens from his drive) and I actually felt bad for him when I recently tried to incorporate our BCM - she scared the shit out of him and he didn't know what to do with himself. We have two Silkie roos and I fear if they ever all got out together, the two Silkies would gang up on our sweet Delilah. Those two were hatched and raised together and get along flawlessly, but they are assholes. They would probably tag team Delilah and injure him. ☹️
We recently hatched 11 of his eggs. Every single one was fertilized (we had 12, but one stopped developing around 16 days or so). I am so hopeful that any roos will be friendly like him, but I'm not counting on it. He is so amazing, I just can't imagine EVER having another rooster like him. He's that great!
That being said, he could be an anomaly. The breeder of a Legbar rooster that we had that we ended up culling seemed absolutely shocked. Apparently all her roosters are great, but this one was awful.
Delilah is truly my favorite chicken we own (don't tell the others). I was prepared for having to give him away or cooking him for dinner when he was a cockerel, but he is such a sweetie, it's not necessary.
My EE Roo was super snuggly/cuddly. He would fly to the hammock to snuggle if I was outside and even sneak under the blanket for a quick nap!
We have one EE rooster, still named Candice…
(Clearly, Candice was meant to be a girl). However, Candice allows us to pick her up, flip him on his back, and carry him all over the yard. He’s only 5 months old, so I guess this could change, but for now we are still loving him.
@Angela, I had one named Annie because I thought I had a reddish colored hen for a while and then once I realized he was a he it was too late. He turned out to be a terrible rooster right about the time I’d had him a little over a year. All of a sudden he started attacking me constantly where I had to carry a stick around to defend myself if need be. I’m thinking they don’t like the girly names we’re giving them and showing us. Lol
I have 4 Eastee egger Roosters and all 4 of mine leave me an the kids alone. Of course, my kids love to catch the rooster we call Moses. Even my 3 yr old son can handle him fairly easily. I guess it just depends on how often the kids terrorize them 🤣. However, mine steer clear of us when we are outside
I have my baby EE Bonnie that turned out to be a Rooster. Sweetest Love Bug in the world! She “He” was very timid at first- but I told everyone she “he” was misunderstood. Now Bonnie takes care of the babes like a sweet mamma. Only crows when food or water is getting low and eggs to be grabbed. Bon Bon comes in every night because clearly “doodling”’in the am but LOVES night cuddles. ☺️❤️✨ I’m fortunate to have such a lovey
Love this article! I have some EE/OEs in my flock. My roster is the only one with 8 females and he is so mean. Always trying to get me even though I raised him. Hopefully he breeds well, he’s one pretty boy!