Ameraucana

I have two Ameraucanas, but I wish I had more! They are the best in the coop! Lay beautiful blue eggs everyday. Love their look, their feathers and eyes are gorgeous. They aren't noisy, which is good because I have close neighbors. To sum it up, I love my Ameraucaunas!

My ameraucanas are super friendly and sweet, dont mind being held in the least bit. They are pullets right now and are very fast and one is rather flighty, but it seems to be reducing with age.

They are so cute

This one escaped my Coop the other day while free ranging in the yard. Wing was clipped, it could still fly. Could jump ridiculously high.
I believe it now lives in my blackberry bushes but i have not seen it for 3 days now.

This breed was the first breed I ever became acquainted with, and first impressions are important. Luckily, it was a very good first impression. These birds are well-known for their beautiful light teal eggs, which with the bird's age, get larger in diameter, peaking at about two years of age. The eggs can reach a size well past the "Jumbo" eggs in the store once the hen is about two years old.
The Ameraucana is also a very hardy bird, capable of surviving our wet, freezing winters, and then, in the summer, surviving temperatures of about 106 degrees F. I highly recommend this bird to anyone wanting chickens in such extreme temperature planes.
As for personality, I found the personality of the hens and of the males to be very non-aggressive, and
relatively friendly. I have had only one male that was aggressive, but the other four were very docile and just ran away if approached. Despite the friendly demeanor, they generally do not seem to like being picked up, but if they are caught and picked up, they will calm down, unless they are still under a year. If they are young, they may proceed to flail in panic.
Sadly, out of the original set of hens, I only have one remaining amongst the younger generations.Her name is Anastasia. She is three years old, and is still a bold, friendly little hen. She often comes up to me when I approach, if only to stop two feet away from me. Though she runs when I try to scoop her up, it's a half-hearted run, as if she's only putting up the effort for the drama of it, and when she's finally cornered, she stops running and allows herself to be picked up.

This is my personal experience with these wonderful chickens. I think this breed is a great one to own especially for families with kids.

I live in N. California and figured if was going to have chickens again (use to have mini's) I wanted them to be something unique; why not? My aunt has had Ameraucana chickens (and every other kind), and a close friend of mine had an awesome hen. Happy to have such beautiful birds!!!!

We have two of these in our flock of 7, and they are very skittish and a little bit strange. They are loners and tend to disrupt the calmer birds in the flock.

Ameracaunas are among my favorite breeds, but they are not the friendliest chickens I have. Still my flock would be lacking without them. I have a few chicks and I hope that spending time with them now, while they are young will help to lessen their fear.
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Added:
I now have 9 Ameracaunas in total, they remain the prettiest birds in my flock but all of them are super shy and won't come near me at all. It's funny given that so many people have friendly birds. I now have 3 year-old laying hens, 2 seventeen week old pullets, and 4 eight week old chicks.Would they be less shy if they had their own pen? Or a pen with other calmer birds...like Brahmas? I'm not sure how to befriend them and would welcome any advice on this front.

I got a trio of these and I don't care for them at all. For one the rooster I was given in the trio has a curved spine so he will have to be killed. The birds won't calm down or tolerate being held at all. And to top it all off, their ugly. Now I'm just speaking about my birds i've seen others that were calm and beautiful. Mine are ugly and mean.

My first chicks

This bird is a very cool looking and calm chicken.

Ameraucanas are almost endlessly in different color patters, never the same color and pattern. I had 4 of these beautiful birds and now I'm down to 3. I lost my absolutely most loved Ameraucana, Crossbeak. I loved her so, so much. It was a very difficult for me to deal with her loss. But I still have Amber, Belle, and Cheetah to love for as long as they live and I live. I will love all of my chickens till the day I die.:/

While the rest of the chickens are gathering for their daily meal worms, our Ameraucana is frantically squirming about 5 feet behind the rest. We often have to free her from bushes, because she has gotten stuck. She is not quite of egg-laying age yet. Hoping for the best.

What a great looking bird, so calm, and easy to handle. But of our 8 birds, this one is by far no rocket scientist, but what she lacks in brain power she makes for in her good looks and charming personality.

I love my Ameraucanas! I have 4 hens and 3 chicks. The hens are great layers, and I love the colored eggs.

i love this bird its the wierdest one i have

When I brought the birds home , she was the first to get a name....Xena, after the warrior princess. Ever since she was a chick, she was always looking for the next best place to fly, the newest corner to investigate. She is fairly aggressive, but not mean with the other birds.She is number two in the pecking order. She has always been okay with being held,all of my hens are hand trained, but when I pick her up she always shrieks as though I am murdering her, " Unhand me, you foul curr!!!" she says. A wonderful addition to the flock!

I love getting blue eggs everyday from these beautiful birds.

We got our Ameraucana girls from Murray McMurray and they were great the first full year that they laid (except all we got was khaki green and tan). They are super-sweet girls and not too difficult to catch. When being held they are very calm.

After their first year of laying, however, their productivity went WAY down. This will be their second full summer and I would say that each girl is now laying maybe one egg a week (and no, there's no possibility they're laying outside the house somewhere). We've always used lights on a timer to keep their "daylight" consistent to encourage laying throughout the year and they have ready access to a large electric-fenced yard, plus I occasionally let them out to wander our property and graze on grass and bugs (with supervision--too many predators). Our other breeds that we got at the same time are still laying great.

Also, this past winter was extremely mild for Vermont. It was more like a Pacific Northwest winter (I grew up out there). However, we lost 3 girls. Their house was well-ventilated (actually the winter was mild enough to leave it open much of the time) and didn't smell bad, the girls didn't have mites or upper respiratory infections, they were not attacked by predators, they didn't have diarrhea... They just... died. I think they just reached the end of a very, very short life. Not very hearty at all.

We really haven't had them long enough to give a good review, so far so good though