Ameracaunas from Ideal Poultry

[carikermoon]

My EE's came yesterday all doing good they all have beards and pea combs except for one without a beard.

I picked up three Ameraucanas chicks from the feed store which gets their supply from Ideal Poultry. One is yellowish, one brownish, and the other a reddish brown. I am curious to get an idea of what they will look like as adults. Does anyone have chicks from there? Does anyone have adults from chicks of these colors?

 

[MonTXChickens]

I picked up three Ameraucanas chicks from the feed store which gets their supply from Ideal Poultry. One is yellowish, one brownish, and the other a reddish brown. I am curious to get an idea of what they will look like as adults. Does anyone have chicks from there? Does anyone have adults from chicks of these colors?

I have a white with a little light brown mixed in adult ameraucana that started out as a bright yellow chick.

 

[carikermoon]

Edited to delete multiples of same quote... Sorry!

I have a white with a little light brown mixed in adult ameraucana that started out as a bright yellow chick.

It would be really cool if she turned it to be white...but her markings at awfully dark. This is a pic at about 1 week old:

Is that what your white with brown markings adult looked liked as a chick? Or was yours more solid yellow?

 

[pshay4]

A white chicken will be light yellow at hatching. I've had birds look white, then with the second set of feathers, have some tinting show up.

 

[MonTXChickens]

Edited to dele multiples of same quote... Sorry!
It womineuld be really cool if she turned it to be white...but her markings at awfully dark. This is a pic at about 1 week old:

Is that what your white with brown markings adult looked liked as a chick? Or was yours more solid yellow?

Mine was almost exclusively yellow. Yours seems to have fat more coloring at that stage than mine did. I bet yours is light but I doubt white. Mine that is white didn't have any chipmunk stripes

 

[CrazyTalk]

Just because they claim that they are purebred does not mean they actually are. The way you could tell is breed some of them together. EE will be heterozygous for blue eggs and heterozygous for brown. That is why the hatchery Ameracauna lay a light olive or green colored egg. So when you breed two heterozygous birds some of their offspring will lay brown eggs. Purebred Ameracauna will never lay brown or olive eggs.

The terms "mutt" and "purebred" have no meaning in poultry.


If it meets the breed specification, it is the breed. If it lays olive eggs, it doesn't meet the breed specification. The ameracauna and aracauna specifications also allow for the bird only producing 50% of offspring that meet the specification - so a heterozygous bird that meets the specification IS the breed.

 

[carikermoon]

The terms "mutt" and "purebred" have no meaning in poultry.



If it meets the breed specification, it is the breed. If it lays olive eggs, it doesn't meet the breed specification. The ameracauna and aracauna specifications also allow for the bird only producing 50% of offspring that meet the specification - so a heterozygous bird that meets the specification IS the breed. 

So in simple biology terms, phenotype determines breed, not genotype (although genotype is helpful in breeding successive generations with the standard breed phenotype). Right?

 

[CrazyTalk]

Yes.


You can absolutely put two birds of different breeds or colors together, and show the resulting bird as whatever it is closest to - you're not likely to do well in the first generation (unless you're just changing colors), but its not uncommon at all to see very good show birds who have grandparents of a different breed. Dual purpose breeds will often have a grandparent or two that is a meat breed to improve size and shape.

Some Aracauna breeders keep two separate flocks of birds - tuftless and tufted - the tufted gene is fatal when homozygous - so they breed a bird from the tufltess flock with a bird from the tufted flock and get 50/50 mix (instead of keeping a fully tufted flock and getting 25% dead, 50% tufted, 25% untufted) - many of the untufted birds get sold as easter eggers. (some just keep one flock and deal with dead chicks).

 

[AZChiknGoddess]

The terms "mutt" and "purebred" have no meaning in poultry.



If it meets the breed specification, it is the breed. If it lays olive eggs, it doesn't meet the breed specification. The ameracauna and aracauna specifications also allow for the bird only producing 50% of offspring that meet the specification - so a heterozygous bird that meets the specification IS the breed. 

You are correct that there are no bloodline requirements for chickens. The Standard of Perfection lists characteristics that a bird of a certain breed must have. They further break them down to color variations for varieties of the breed. I have never seen a hatchery Ameracauna that met breed standards for color except for black or white.

 

[MonTXChickens]

For the typical easter egger, what type of comb should I expect? My easter egger male has a very large single comb. It is flopped over to the side and kind of looks like he's "emo". Looks like a lot of angst. Just wondering if there is a comb to be expected...