Arkansas Blue egg layers

[1muttsfan]

There are so few of these guys that every one without significant faults is going to be important. They must be one of the smallest breeding pools around. Thanks to the original breeder I am sure they are amazingly free of faults.

 

[Manningjw]

Here is my young U of A blue cockerel at about 2 months old.

He was the only U of A blue chick to hatch, the rest of my hatch was Ameraucana/White Leghorn crosses and Olive Eggers (the brown/tan pullets/cockerel).

 

[Metella]

Manningjw - you are going to love his coloring when he gets full roo feathers ....

Now you'll need some hens ......

 

[Manningjw]

Manningjw - you are going to love his coloring when he gets full roo feathers ....

I am sure I will! I have been itching to add blue back to my flock so long now!

Quote: To offer pure bred U of A blues I certainly would need some hens. I likely will stick with 'SBEL' type of bird which the U of A's will help me to add the blue diluting feather gene to return to BBS.

I am about 5 generations into selecting my cross breed of Ameraucana/White Leghorn, more if you count the crosses that led to my first chickens. I started the project before I knew of the existence of U of A line over 2 years ago. I would hate to give up the birds I have spent over two years breeding, I love my birds so far and I have so much fun selecting for specific traits that it would be hard for me to have someone do it entirely for me if you know what I mean? Perhaps I will try again on my next hatch to have some U of A blues so I can offer 'pure' bred U of A blues.

My own birds I have a preference for White earlobes, blue or black feathering without leakage(this needs improvement in my flock with boys), black/slate legs (obviously lighter in birds with blue or barring due to dilution), and of course homozygous OO genes linked to pea combs. Luckily the U of A line matches that pretty much perfectly with only slight variation where the ear lobes and shank colors aren't 100% selected for yet as far as I know.

 

[Manningjw]

My young cockerel is growing up now! He is a little over 20 weeks old, hoping to see some fertile eggs soon. You guys were right, they are very quiet compared to my other roosters in the past in terms of volume of his crow. He also doesn't crow as often yet. He is considerably smaller than the cockerels I have kept in the past which is likely why he is so quiet. Looking forward to seeing the 50% blue chicks of the next generation I hatch with him as the rooster.







His personality reminds me a lot of White Leghorns.

 

[Manningjw]

woops accidental double post.

 

[1muttsfan]

He is a handsome little guy.

All my 4 of my roos hatched out splash, one to keep and three that are going to have to go soon - no one local seems interested in them unfortunately. And my AB and AB-CL mix pullets are laying well, nice color on the eggs too. It was great to not have as many extra roosters around! Hopefully next year I can add to my AB's a little (Thanks John for making that happen for me this year)

 

[Manningjw]

He is a handsome little guy.

All my 4 of my roos hatched out splash, one to keep and three that are going to have to go soon - no one local seems interested in them unfortunately. And my AB and AB-CL mix pullets are laying well, nice color on the eggs too. It was great to not have as many extra roosters around! Hopefully next year I can add to my AB's a little (Thanks John for making that happen for me this year)

That's a very nice 'problem' to have 4 roosters the (in my mind) desirable color!

 

[Metella]

He looks great !

And I have a dark splash roo - and all my 5 young white splashes turned out to be HENS !!! So lucky from my spring hatch !

The only issue I have now - is egg size - of course pullets will start smaller - but my older AB hen also lays small eggs, decent color - almost perfectly round .... Any ideas of how to keep AB pure but pump up the egg size a little ? Not expecting jumbo sized - but my customers don't want a tiny egg .....

 

[Manningjw]

He looks great !

And I have a dark splash roo - and all my 5 young white splashes turned out to be HENS !!! So lucky from my spring hatch !

The only issue I have now - is egg size - of course pullets will start smaller - but my older AB hen also lays small eggs, decent color - almost perfectly round .... Any ideas of how to keep AB pure but pump up the egg size a little ? Not expecting jumbo sized - but my customers don't want a tiny egg .....

In my mind there would be two ways to accomplish breeding for larger egg size. First would be selectively breeding your stock only hatching from hens to lay the largest possible egg and you might even want to select for birds who are slightly larger though there isn't necessarily a direct linkage. This would take many many years I imagine (3-10?) to see a marked difference.

I am probably going to catch some fire for the second possibility but here it goes. Since the AB was bred primarily from White Leghorn crossed to Araucana, you could breed an AB cockerel to White Leghorn hens. If your White Leghorn hen carries barring under dominant white you might even be able to color sex this generation by shank color in the F1 cross(Boys carrying barring will have clean white/yellow legs, girls should have black or grey). Breed the resulting White Leghorn x AB cockerel cross F1 hens back to another idealy different AB cockerel and select for BBS coloring(birds without dominant white) and the smallest Pea combs possible (to select for homozygous pea comb/blue egg gene linkage). To see if your selection was done well, you could breed any straight combed cockerel to the F2 generation to test if your birds are homozygous, any straight combs in the next generation and you are heterozygous instead. There is still a fair amount of selecting to be done within the AB gene pool to get it to a 'pure bred' form from what I have read from everyone's posts here, so you wouldn't be set terribly far back?

I am doing the second. I have several birds who are hybridized and some for many generations(they remain Blue Egg/Pea comb linked) that I plan to breed to my AB cockerel. I have two hens that are 1/2 White Leghorn from the F1 cross who lay a large sized egg. One of my birds is starting to lay eggs that occasionally rival the 3 year old White Leghorn in size. Her typical egg of course, not the jumbo size she drops every so often.