Diffences Between EEs, Ameraucanas, and Araucanas

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MsBagawkbagawk

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Hi everybody!
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I see this coming up a lot, so I thought I would gather some info about the differences of Easter Eggers, Ameraucanas, and Araucanas.

First off, I highly recommend this thread. It has a lot of good info on EEs, Ameraucanas, and Araucanas.

Araucanas:

Araucana Club of America's Website

Article from Backyard Poultry Magazine. It also has some info on Ameraucanas

Breed Page here on BYC


Varieties and Standard Guidlines

ABA Recognized Varieties~~Araucana Club of America

APA Recognized Varieties~~Araucana Club of America

Here are the Standard Guidelines. Here's some quotes from it:

  • For Standard sized birds: The standard Araucana are rumpless and have tufts of feathers protruding from each side of the head/neck. The Araucana also has a pea comb and they have the distinction of laying Turquoise or blue shelled eggs. There is close genetic Linkage between those two traits so that selection for pea comb is effective in maintaining blue Egg.

Disqualifications: Lack of ear-tufts, comb other than Pea, Rudimentary presence of tail, Stubs or feather on their shank, or more or less than four toes, white skin.

  • For Bantam birds: The Araucana bantam has a pea comb and they have the distinction of laying Turquoise or blue shelled eggs. There is close genetic Linkage between those two traits so that selection for pea comb is effective in maintaining blue Egg. One classes of Araucana bantams is recognized

Disquailifications: Absence of one or both ear tufts - Rudimentary tail - Eggs other than blue - Presence of beard - specimen with beard and/or muffs, white skin. ~~Araucana Club of America


Breed History:

Araucana History~~Araucana Club of America

Tufting and Genetics:

Article on tufting by Ann Charles This was originally published in the 2011 APA Yearbook

More info on Genetics by Ann Charles Also has some links to books on Araucanas

This is an article by Rosalyn Upson about Araucanas. It has a lot of good info about the genetics of Araucanas. ~~Araucana Club of America




I will be adding more info on EEs and Ameraucanas soon. :)

BTW, if you have any info to add, helpful links, pics, or if my links don't work PLEASE post or let me know. :)
 
It should be noted that Araucana's can also come clean faced (no tufts) and can have anything from totally rumpless, a few tail feathers, a partial tail or a full tail. In the shows, and per the standard, they should be double tufted and rumpless but this breed has a lethal gene for homozygous tufting. If a chick gets a gene for tufting from each parent, it will die in the shell. Nothing can be done to prevent it. Breeding tufted to tufted will produce some that die in the shell, some that are tufted and some can be clean faced because the parents can only carry one copy of the tufting gene. Some breeders breed tufted to clean faced. More chicks hatch, you still get some tufted and the clean faced are still good for breeding to tufted,

Rumplessness is dominant and easy to breed for. In a couple of generations, tailed can be bred up to rumpless and even homozygous rumpless with diligent breeding. Some discussion has been brought up regarding breeding rumpless to rumpless for too many generations and getting Araucana's with backs that are too short. Some say they have bred that way and never had backs that were too short but my own experience has been that using the ones with a couple of stray tail feathers to a fully rumpless gave me more balanced, healthy rumpless Araucana's. Being fully rumpless can make it hard for breeding and they sometimes need the tail fluff trimmed to increase fertility. It's harder for the cock to breed the hen and the shorter the back, the more difficult.

Also, the Araucana Club has an egg color card. There is a preference for the bluest blue egg but there are many that lay a blue green eggs, sort of turquoise colored.

Breeding "toward" the standard is the goal but using non-standard Araucana's for breeding pens is a standard practice. If only perfect, double tufted/rumpless were bred to each other, it would not be long before the gene pool would shrink to nothing. There would be so many dead in the shell, the clean faced culled out, leaving a tiny percent of "so-called" perfect Araucana's. This breed has an amazing amount of difficulty and yet there are some excellent Araucana's being produced nowadays and more and more breeders are getting interested in this very interesting, complicated breed.


 
Blackcrest said:
Ok I am confused now. i was told i have ameraucana, but my birds have a tail. But they lay either a blue egg or a green egg, i haven't figured out who laying what since they all seem to share the same nest.
Click to expand...
Easter Eggers and Ameracauna have tails, Auracana usually don't
 
Blackcrest said:
Ok I am confused now. i was told i have ameraucana, but my birds have a tail. But they lay either a blue egg or a green egg, i haven't figured out who laying what since they all seem to share the same nest.
Click to expand...


Green eggs tells you that it is a EE
 

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