I have white Amerucana hens & black Amerucana hens. Then I have 3 roos a blue wheaten, a wheaten and a young white. I then purchased Wheaten eggs from a breeder and put them under my broody hen, last night something got my eggs that was less than a week from hatching My hen is ok but still sitting So now I wont have any wheaten hens for my wheaten roos! What would be the good or bad of putting one of my Wheaten roos over my blacks or my white hens? As I said my white male is to young for breeding right now. I dont have the money to get more wheaten eggs from a decent source right now. The original plan was to hatch the wheatens and raise them for spring breeding. Any opinons on what my color result for a blue wheaten or wheaten roo over black hens or white hens??
Don't use the white. Whatever you do, don't use the white. Black x Wheaten or Blue Wheaten makes a bunch of black or blue offspring with leakage that resembles brown-red quite well. Wheaten is recessive to solid black, so they'll all carry Wheaten but look like leaky blacks. If you use those and cross back to a Wheaten again you're back on track with a 50% chance of pure Wheatens. The rest of the blacks and leaky blacks I'd advise to either breed or sell as Easter Eggers or keep as layers.
Thank you! So is there anyone to cross the whites with? Other than whites? I plan on keeping my whites all white, but wondered if they would be recessive to the wheaten or blue wheaten? So keeping the whites out of this whole Wheaten thing.... I am thinking I may try the black with one of the Wheaten roos and the worst outcome will be EE's right?? At the best I will have birds I can cross back to Wheaten and get a decent wheaten right? I know I shouldn't but I think I will keep an eye out for another set of Wheaten eggs and put them in the Bator this time?
Quote:white hides every color.. so in all honesty, you really have no idea what color your birds are, or what color genes they are carrying. I guess that if you don't mind what color you want, and want to be suprised everytime a chick hatches.. breed with the whites. In alot of cases, breeding a white chicken, to another white chicken, doesn't really mean your getting white chicks.
I want to keep my Ameraucana's standred colors so the can classify as Amerucanas not EE's. So my whites are good quality whites and I dont really want to muck their color up. I do want to get a good color that is why I asked. I dont want to breed nice Amerucana hens and roos, to get EE's. It makes no sense to me. So if I breed them I want to be sure that some if not all the offspring will be a correct color. I understand that in any breedings you can possibly get a poorly colored bird, but the Amerucanas I am talking about breeding are White, Wheaten and Blacks all from lines of breeders, I believe are good lines. So I dont want to muck them up just becuase I lost my batch of Wheatens. I am unsure of the outcome of crossing the colors which is why I asked.
You can try a cross with the blacks. Be sure to mark the chicks as being out of a black hen and whichever father (wheaten, blue wheaten) you use. Depending on the specific E-allele of the black hen, you may get all black chicks. Or there may be some leakage. Let's assume mama is E/E and daddy is E^Wh/E^Wh; all chicks will be E/E^Wh. If you take the best and breed them back to another wheaten (blue or not), about half of that second generation should end up pure for wheaten. Worst case scenaro is that you sell off the chicks as mixed variety and start again next year. Blue gene works as always, so if one parent is blue wheaten and the other is wheaten, about half the chicks should inherit blue and half will inherit not-blue.
Thanks! I am still gonna try and get some Wheatens when I can, but until then I am going to cross the black girls with one of the Wheaten roos. Thanks for all the help!!
