Thank you for such a detailed response - the websites are extremely helpful.
I am trying to find a local breeder (I'm using that term loosely here to mean most of Ontario) and have found one, who seems very reliable. She's certainly very passionate about her birds, which makes me feel confident in what she's telling me. She had mentioned, though, that it's unlikely to find pullets/hens so I wanted to confirm a bit before buying chicks.
What you've mentioned is exactly my concern with purchasing from hatcheries. Birds are being marketed as Ameraucanas that aren't, and it's difficult to confirm. I have easter eggers right now, and they're wonderful, but I'd like to get a few purebreds, both because I love the look of the bird, and because I'd like the egg colour. The websites will definitely help me be able to identify the difference.
As an aside, I had noticed that there's quite a number of small breeders of a variety of heritage types out towards Quebec. Are you in the Ontario Poultry FB group? It's really helpful, and I do often seen Quebec posts, probably because of proximity. I'm heading out to Quebec soon to visit family and have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to drive past these breeders, if my current hunt doesn't pan out.
I'm happy that you were lucky in finding a passionate breeder! Hopefully I'll find some in Maines or a country equally close or even within canadian borders to order from, the closer to Quebec the better as it's where I live.
Ameraucanas... from what I understand of the internet (correct me if I'm wrong), people confuse them alot with their rumpless, tail-lacking cousins the Araucanas, so the term Easter Egger is most likely used by Americans to help differenciate Ameraucanas from Araucanas in their countries. But in Quebec I find it has a different meaning.
Ameraucanas are referred to as purebred, blue-laying chickens with beards and tails that come in 8 different standard plumages whose pictures you can find on the Ameraucama Alliance site I linked you to above. Their plumages are as follow: Black, Blue, Blue Wheaten, Brown Red, Buff, Silver, Wheaten and White. The site also gives an egg color reference sheet like for marans, except this one is for Ameraucanas and their varying shades of blue. The bluer the egg, the better. (Ameraucana page with pics, taken from Feather Site:
https://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Arau/BRKAmer.html)
As for Araucanas, I thought at first from what I gleaned around me that they were green egg layers, easily recognizible by their lacks of tails and the twin mustaches found on their faces. But when I look at our American neighbors, I read alot that they are actually blue egg layers, not green ones. Araucanas also have alot more varieties in plumage than Ameraucanas, which would explain the general confusion over who is what when you end up with Easter Eggers, also known as Ameraucanas. (Araucana page with pics, taken from Feather Site:
https://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Arau/BRKArauTrue.html )
Easter Eggers (what I've learnt through my own searches, anyway - correct me again if I'm wrong here) are the result of a specific cross between at least one Ameraucana or Araucana parent and a beige, white or brown layer. The goal is to make a hybrid that gives a different egg color to the Ameraucana or Araucana parent, going from light blue to dark olive and beyond.
However in Quebec, Ameraucana and Araucana hybrids (mostly Ameraucana, as it's a very popular breed over here) bear different names depending on the egg color they lay: Easter Eggers are beige over blue egg layer hybrids, and usually lay out light blue eggs. One must keep in mind that since this is a cross, half the resulting chicks will lay light blue (thus meriting the title of Easter Egger), while the rest lay beige and (possibly) pure dark blue eggs in equal parts. Those are 'failures', thus harder to sell off since they're crosses with the wrong genetics - mostly roosters, as hens aren't a total loss since they still produce eggs... just the wrong color, and by default, have the wrong breeding genetics, so aren't great candidates for reproduction. Most of those failed crosses often end up in the cooking pot due to no one wanting them, since they can't sell their offsprings easily when they do reproduction. Only the non-informed and those who don't care or don't mind about standards sell those kinds of Ameraucanas, who are usually descendants of failed crossbred Easter Eggers, re-crossed with successful Easter Egger Ameraucana hybrids.
To clarify things, in Quebec (and maybe in the US too, I've not searched deep enough to confirm yet), depending on which parent you breed with your pureblood Ameraucana, you get either an Easter Egger (if the egg is light blue) or an Olive Egger (if the egg has an olive color rather than a blue color.)
To get an
Easter Egger, you breed a
beige/tinted rooster over your
Ameraucana hen. (Ameraucana male over beige/tinted female is also possible, though the color might differ a bit.)
To get an
Olive Egger, you breed a
brown-egg rooster over your
Ameraucana hen. (Ameraucana male over brown-egg female is also possible, though the olive shade might be lighter rather than darker.)
The darker the brown genes, the better the olive shade for Olive Eggers. For this reason, most of them are made from Ameraucanas (or Araucanas, if in the US) crossed with
Marans, though
Welsummers,
Barnevelders and
Penedesenca are rumored to be good replacements. However, none have been known to achieve the unbeaten olive shade of the chicks that come from the equally unbeaten purebred Marans. (each of the breeds I listed here can be found on
Feather Site by the way, if you want visuals.) Beige/tinted chickens are varied in colors and shades, so the parent that participated in the creation of the Easter Egger can be just about any beige egg-laying bird known to mankind. The quest to find out who is the father (or the mother...) can take you a lifetime, unless you know scientists and are willing to pay them to figure out your bird's mix-mashed bloodline.
To make it easier to understand, here are come charts I found while searching about all those hybrid crosses known as Easter and Olive Eggers - the best way to tell who is what is by looking up their colorful egg charts plus the Ameraucana's official American Standards.
- http://mmeggs.com/egg-colors/
-
https://scratchcradle.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/gms3-breeding-for-other-egg-colors/
-
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/203647214377226906/
-
http://www.chickinboots.com/2017/07/whats-difference-ameraucana-vs-easter.html
- And because I've literally just found this by looking up the above egg charts (thank you, BYC), you might want to go here for more info about all those crosses our poor Ameraucana birds are subjected to xD :
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/the-olive-egger-thread.131131/page-698#post-13373494
The species I've found time and again (only mid to heavy breeds, as they're the ones I'm looking for) in Quebec are:
Chanteclers,
Barred Plymouth Rocks,
Light Columbian Sussex,
brown hens (from industrial hatcheries),
White Leghorns (again from industrial hatcheries),
Rhode Islands,
Buff Orpingtons,
Brahmas,
Cochins,
Silkies,
Ameraucanas (usually
Easter Eggers, I've yet to find a serious breeder close to my home that's not two to six hours' drive away), leg-feathered
Black Copper Marans,
Wyandottes, some
Harcos, and many, many,
many bendies (crosses of unknown origins) of all kinds, shapes, sizes and colors in the barns of most farmers around the capital itself. (I've personally gone and knocked from door to door hoping to find more varieties in my blind searches for professional breeders, but from what I've glimpsed not all farmers care about standards or even where their chickens come from.... they have them for eggs and meat, and that's it.)
I am in no official poultry group. I'm just a Quebecan rookie backyarder who inherited chickens upon moving houses, and found myself a need to make a personal list of breed furnishers when it quickly became clear that in Quebec, it was hard to hear of or even get ahold of one in the first place (same thing for vets). I've spent the last two years tracking down possible breeders through internet adds and calling or visiting them personally to see if they were serious, but save for the breeds listed above and some bantam specie (Faverolles, Polonaises, Sebrights and Old Englishs), I haven't found much else. To my personal knowledge, we have plenty of brown-egg layers, just as many beige-egg layers, only one blue-egg layer (the Ameraucana), and only one white-egg layer (the industrial white Leghorn). For green eggs, people prefer to make Olive Eggers rather than order Isbar chicks. If there are Isbar breeders as well as people who breed different white-egg laying chickens to the Leghorns in the capital of Quebec or its surrounding towns, I haven't found them yet. (my search stops before Montreal, Saguenay Lac St-Jean and Rimouski to respect to limited budget I have to drive around, so it's possible I might find something beyond that. Maybe.)
If you're looking for a Quebecan hatchery that sells something else other than the basic brown or white hen and meat chicken, the only one I know of for having been referred to it four times is Jean-Guy Chabot's farm, found here (it's in French.):
http://jeanguychabot.com/accueil.asp
Exotic breed-wise, I think this man is our biggest supplier, with 16 large fowl breeds and 16 bantam breeds to provide people all over Quebec. And yes, he does sell Ameraucanas, though what plumage I have no idea as I haven't asked yet.
Group-wise, the only one I know of is the
Association Québécoise de la Volaille Chantecler, as the Chantecler is our patrimonial chicken on top of being an endangered species, and thus, has a big place in the backyards of most chicken entheusiasts. Which members are part of that association though, I have no idea beyond a certain André Auclair, whose address I found in
Standard Breed Poultry's white Chantecler list of available breeders on Quebecan soil. There are many more Chantecler breeders of course, but those you will find more on kijiji, lespacs and other selling sites ^^
When you say 'Heritage Breeds' what chicken species are you referring to when you say you found many of them in Quebec?
