A Newbie Seeking Help

[Bluebonnet]

Yep with my ee/ameraucanas I was so wishing for pink, but I got green and tan from them. FYI I think I recall reading that ameraucana purebread may possibly still have brown eggs.

Profit is a difficult think to achieve, if your coop is $1,500, how many doz eggs is that cost? But various breeds offer different personalities. If ur into it for companionship, get chicks and hand raise them.

Some ppl grow/mix their own feed. I grow fodder aka wheatgrass to cut into my feed bill$

Do a search and you'll find more answers on the board, and yes welcome

Thank you for the welcome Drumstick Diva!

Scott M - Wow. I did not know that. That would be really nice if that is true. Perhaps someone else can confirm this as well? Do many people still keep Ameraucanas or are they really rare? I'm starting to think that they might be endangered due to intermixing with Easter Eggers.

Profit isn't a concern. I'm not super into companionship but I would like docile breeds since I will be keeping them for years.

Wheatgrass eh? Hmm. I wonder if I can grow that in containers.

Gryeyes - The link still doesn't work for me.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m not going to try most of your questions but I think you might be interested in how chicken genetics work with egg color.

There is one gene that controls whether the base color is blue or white. There are a whole lot of genes that influence the brown color. Green is just brown on the blue base color.

Base blue + no brown = blue
Base blue + brown + green
Base white + no brown = white
Base white + brown = green

The reason you can get so many different shades of green or brown is that there are a whole lot of different genes influencing brown. Which ones are present and how they work together or against each other really varies.

Back to the base color. The genes that determine blue or white come in pairs. Blue is dominant so if just one of those genes is blue, the pullet will lay a blue or green egg. Both the hen and rooster contribute one of these genes to their offspring. If you have just one of the parents with both genes in that pair blue, the offspring will get at least one blue and the pullets will lay blue or green eggs. If one parent has pure white and the other parent has one blue and one white, about half the pullets will lay blue or green and the other half will lay white or brown, depending on what brown is there, if any.

Another possible combination is where both parents have one blue and one white. About ¾ pullets from that crossing will lay blue or green and the other ¼ will lay white or brown.

With these mixes, you really don’t know what genes the rooster is carrying. And you don’t know whether the hen or rooster that has the blue gene has one or two copies. With that blue gene being dominant it is kind of hard to get the white gene out of the flock if it is ever introduced.

I don’t know any hatcheries that have true blue egg layers. They may call them Americana or Araucanas but they are not really. Other breeds have generally been mixed in with them to get the various colored eggs.

With chicken genetics, if the person selecting the breeding flock does not continually reinforce a certain trait, the flock soon loses a lot of that trait. Not all breeders select their breeders for egg color. A specific example. Marans are supposed to lay really dark eggs, but unless the person selecting which chickens get to breed selects the breeders for that dark egg color, in a very few generations the egg color will not always be what you expect.

This becomes a real problem because there are a lot of different people out there that breed chickens. Not all of them have the same goals you have. Just because someone breeds a show-quality Maran does not mean the eggs will be dark. The judge at the show does not see the eggs, especially with a rooster. Some people do combine breeding show quality Marans with laying dark eggs. It can be a tricky slope. Hatcheries are much the same way. You have different people selecting the breeders at each hatchery. Not all of them are going to select for the same goals.

I don’t have any great advice for you on how you can get chickens that lay eggs the colors you really want. Maybe go to the “Where am I? Where are you!” section of the forum and find your state thread. There might be someone fairly close that can help you out.

Good luck and with your other goal it I really is easy. You have to collect it but any chicken will poop a lot.

 

[Bluebonnet]

Hello,

Thank you very much for that detailed explanation regarding egg coloration.

I realize that egg colors can and WILL vary and that you might not always get what you pay for, especially with Ameraucana chickens because there are just so many easter eggers out there that finding a true Ameraucana chicken can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Not because someone is intentionally lying either but because so many easter eggers are advertised as true Ameraucanas that someone like me who doesn't know how to tell the difference could buy an easter egger while believing that it is an Ameraucana and then turning around and selling the easter egger chicks as true Ameraucanas and so on and so forth.

Egg colors also naturally vary a few shades either way. That is to be expected and I do not hold the expectation that all eggs will be one specific hue. That's just not reasonable.

Is there anyone who is known here for selling true Ameraucana chickens? Is there some type of test I could order that would prove that the chickens are true Ameraucanas? Some sort of certificate or pedigree I should look for? Price isn't the issue. Being sure that I get good breeding stock is because if I want to breed the chickens down the road I want to care for the purity and advancement of the breed.

Always buy and breed for the quality and health of the breed. Responsible pet ownership is very important to me.

For eggs I was thinking Marans for the chocolate / intensely dark colored eggs and Ameraucanas for the blue and possibly green and pink eggs. I would love to have Lamona chickens for the white eggs but they are not available for sale to my knowledge.

I'm not certain on what breed would be best for light brown colored eggs.

Since I'm only going to be a small self sustaining farm I would prefer heritage breeds.