Input regarding breed selection with a hobby production layer flock

I am well aware that I have a great many "wants" here, but I think it's possible to make those work for me.  We have a small farm that I'm working on getting off the ground.  Part of that is a small egg-laying operation, both because I love chickens, and because I want to add fertility to our soil.  The chickens will be moved around our pasture in a trailer-based coop, enclosed in electric netting.  I'm pretty serious about building a flock around having a colorful and beautiful egg basket (in addition to making my heart happy, I believe that it may give me an edge over anyone else in the area selling organically fed, pastured eggs).  I also would like to have roosters in the flock for various reasons, including the ability to hatch out chicks, which helps me maintain numbers in my flock as well as sell chicks.  Of course, to most folks there's far less value in straight run birds, so my thought was to kill several birds with one stone, and raise cream legbars.  If I ensure that all of my roosters in the flock are cream legbars, and I keep those as my only blue-egg laying breed, I will know that any blue eggs that are hatched out are purebred cream legbar, and they'll autosex (and if I keep only one breed of each egg color, I'll know what the crosses are).  I believe my chances of selling cockerels is higher with this breed as they're still pretty rare in the area, and they all carry the blue egg genes.  Does this make sense to anyone?

Other breed selection (this is almost entirely because I like most of the breeds, and most of them are dual purpose -
Brown/Plum eggs - Langshan
Plain Brown - Speckled sussex
Dark Brown eggs - Black Copper Marans or welsummer
Blue - Cream legbar
White - Spitzhauben or rose comb leghorn

I figure in year 2, I can easily hatch out a handful of brown and dark brown eggs to get some olive eggers in the mix.

Laurel said, "I'm pretty serious about building a flock around having a colorful and beautiful egg basket (in addition to making my heart happy, I believe that it may give me an edge over anyone else in the area selling organically fed, pastured eggs).

Every time I read this thread, I think of our daughter.

This was her plan, too.

Her eggs are mostly blue, brown, and white.

Laurel said, "I figure in year 2, I can easily hatch out a handful of brown and dark brown eggs to get some olive eggers in the mix.

Olive eggs are the exact color she developed.

Best wishes for achieving those olive-colored eggs.

Anne Miller wrote:

Laurel said, "I'm pretty serious about building a flock around having a colorful and beautiful egg basket (in addition to making my heart happy, I believe that it may give me an edge over anyone else in the area selling organically fed, pastured eggs).

Every time I read this thread, I think of our daughter.

This was her plan, too.

Her eggs are mostly blue, brown, and white.

Laurel said, "I figure in year 2, I can easily hatch out a handful of brown and dark brown eggs to get some olive eggers in the mix.

Olive eggs are the exact color she developed.

Best wishes for achieving those olive-colored eggs.

Olive eggs are pretty straightforward, you breed a blue egg layer with a brown egg layer.  Chocolate brown will give you deep olive, light brown will give you green.

I started with kind of the same idea.  I have had so many breeds I lost count, but I notice that I always seem to have favorites, and to this point, they have all been either "Easter Eggers" or Naked Necks, or crosses of those breeds.  I love the Easter Eggers.  They are quiet, gentle birds, and I find them the most beautiful.  They remind me of hawks.  They are a little more timid and low on the pecking order in my flocks, but I love them.  The Naked Necks appearance is, shall we say, an acquired taste.  I love them for their friendly personalities.  They are very hardy, tough birds, but extremely friendly and not as timid as the Easter Eggers.  Neither breed are bullies is my experience.

My mixed breed flock is all old now, so they are just pets, and if I see an egg, it's rare.  This year my plan is to get Easter Egger, Naked Neck, and Copper Marans. I haven't tried Marans yet, but they have really pretty eggs, so I'll give them a shot.  I'll probably just get 6 of each and add a few of my own breeding each year.  I was working on my own landrace chickens, but other projects got my attention, and my bird are old now, so I'll need to start again.

I'm trying to get my new Woods Open Air Coop finished before I get more birds, but I need to get young ones sooner than later so they are old enough to handle next winter.