Ameraucana thread for posting pictures and discussing our birds

[delisha]

 

[SullyD]

Depends what color pattern is your AM roo? With CLs the boys have a white spot on their heads when in down. It is late and I realize that my brain is not firing on all cylinders. Post what color you AM roo is and I will work it out when I have all the brain cells functioning. It is more complex than egg color. I may have to review some notes!

Thank you! I have two options. I have two black AM's and 2 splash AM's

 

[Penny Hen]

Hi,

Newbie here

would any of you Araucana lovers be able to tell me what sex this chick might be? If it helps, we're in Australia and I think our standard for Araucanas is a little different to say the US?

Thanks!

Gorgeous! I agree that it looks like a pullet to me. Is that a small crest? They look like the British Auracanas that have the tails that mostly equate to our Ameraucanas. Dose the Aussie version have muffs and beards?

 

[Penny Hen]

Thank you! I have two options. I have two black AM's and 2 splash AM's

Still got to look up a couple of things but first I wanted to describe the difference between "autosexing" and "sex link".

Sex Link - This is where you use one pattern for the male and another for the female. For instance if your Rooster is barred and your hen is solid your cockerels will be solid and your pullets will be barred. This does not breed true after the first generation. It is apparent in the baby down not just the adult feathering.

Autosexing breeds - These breed true. They are the result of

Sexual Dimorphism:“Sexual dimorphism” includes differing colour/pattern forms between the two sexes of a species, i.e. not restricted to physical body traits. The gender colour/pattern differences in the wild type – Red Jungle Fowl (black breasted red roosters, salmon breasted hens, etc) are two alternate colour/pattern forms, the particular form expressed dependent on gender [Poultry Genetics Therory
edelras.nl/chickengenetics/theory.html#gen_theory_dihybrid ]

As you can see this goes all the way back to the wild type coloring. Legbars, Wellbars, Cream Legbars and Rhodebars all have barring thrown into this too. The Cream Legbars have the wild type base + the cream gene + the barring. Rhodebars have the wild type (black breasted red) in the roosters but the hens are red not salmon breasted gray like the Cream Legbar hens.

This is where it can get confusing because there are more than 2 sets of genes at work here. But unless you are wanting to dig Deep into gene study the important thing is to remember that Sexual Dimorphism (what makes AutoSexing happen) makes the girls look different from the boys. Now technically Barring itself is a Sexual Dimorphic gene because the girls will have thicker bars than the guys. But it doesn't become so apparent until they are several weeks old and their feathers start coming in well. (And I have not raised any regular barred chickens yet so I am not exactly sure which weeks this becomes evident.) Now the breeds that claim autosexing are different not just in adult feathering but baby down feathering (which is separate genes). In the case of CLs the males have a white dot on their heads. I think that holds true for most of the " something Bar" group of chickens. (A lot of these were created by the same guy or friends/associates of his.)

Sex linked chickens using the barring cross also produce the spot on the head but if you want to know how the creator of the CLegbar, the Rhodebar, the Wellbar and the regular Legbar got that spot to stick to the males generation after generation you are going to have to spend some brain crunching time reading up on the intricacies of genetics. I am working on it but this guy was working at a doctorate level of genetics when he created these breeds. I am only beginning to study at the Genetics 102 level (this is self study). I am still stretching my brain cells around this stuff.

For any of you who do attempt deep study I will give you a visual that I have been finding helpful when trying to follow some of the explanations about gene linkages (using them is how some of this is attained). I used to do woven bead work with seed beads. Imaging the genes as strung beads on a thread. They each have their own colors. Now if two beads (genes) are within 50 beads of each other they have possibilities (variable as to exactly how close they are to each other) in passing to the offspring together. Now in reality it is not a 50 gene spread but units called centiMorgans (cM) or map units. But it has helped my brain to wrap around the concept.

Also helpful is this image. When the DNA is being split in half to make an egg or sperm cell think of the game of Red Rover that you played as a kid. Some kids had really good hand grips and it was difficult to bust them apart. Genes that are spaced under 50 centiMorgans are like those strong gripped kids that hang on tight and resist busting apart. Not impossible to do just doesn't happen that often. That is why you can get an EE with a pea comb and brown or white eggs. The peacomb gene is linked to the blue egg gene. They are under the 50 cM range. But occasionally they can be broke apart.

 

[Penny Hen]

Thank you! I have two options. I have two black AM's and 2 splash AM's

Well I went over to Kippen Jungle chicken calculator. In both cases black and Splash are going to walk all over the Cream Legbar's color. Your best bet to get the effect you want is a golden duck wing. That is not a guarantee that you can keep the autosexing feature. The Cream Legbars seem in phenotype for the males to be Barred Golden Duckwings and the females to be Silver Duckwings. Crossing Gold Duckwings on Silver duckwings is one of the ways you can Sex Link. It is not used near as often as barring to solid chickens though. You should at least achieve blue laying sex links. Only further breedings of the F1s would tell if the Autosexing would hold. It has been a while since I read the article on the creation of the Cream Legbar but I believe the man who created them had to breed something like 3 or 4 hundred birds before he got that feature set.

I was playing with different combinations and found that a white patterned red colombian (I don't think that even exists in AMs) makes some amazing chickens with the CL females The roosters are lemon yellow with white or black tails and the females are red with white or black tails and white or black incomplete colombian neck feathers. Very lovely. The interesting thing about this color combo is the roosters should hatch yellow and the hens should hatch brownish with maybe the chipmunk stripes.









The white gold duckwing (Pyle) makes two kinds of lovely colors but equal amounts are boys and girls of each color pattern. There is a lady from Tx that sells this color of AMs as hatching eggs on Ebay. She calls the color Chestnuts and Snow. The hens are wheaten in appearance. They are non-standard but apparently breed true.
The blue gold duckwing made lovely offspring too.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Still got to look up a couple of things but first I wanted to describe the difference between "autosexing" and "sex link".........


For any of you who do attempt deep study I will give you a visual that I have been finding helpful when trying to follow some of the explanations about gene linkages (using them is how some of this is attained). I used to do woven bead work with seed beads. Imaging the genes as strung beads on a thread. They each have their own colors. Now if two beads (genes) are within 50 beads of each other they have possibilities (variable as to exactly how close they are to each other) in passing to the offspring together. Now in reality it is not a 50 gene spread but units called centiMorgans (cM) or map units. But it has helped my brain to wrap around the concept.

Also helpful is this image. When the DNA is being split in half to make an egg or sperm cell think of the game of Red Rover that you played as a kid. Some kids had really good hand grips and it was difficult to bust them apart. Genes that are spaced under 50 centiMorgans are like those strong gripped kids that hang on tight and resist busting apart. Not impossible to do just doesn't happen that often. That is why you can get an EE with a pea comb and brown or white eggs. The peacomb gene is linked to the blue egg gene. They are under the 50 cM range. But occasionally they can be broke apart.

Thank you! I learned a lot this morning.

 

[delisha]

Quote: Thank you for all of this information. It is hard for me to absorb genetics and you made it easy for me to wrap my head around it.

 

[SullyD]

Wow! Thank you PennyHen for all that info! Very interesting! I will try hatching some from each of the AM's and see what I get! More of a fun project than trying to do anything serious! I am not sure my brain can grasp all the genetic stuff! But, I will keep notes. You never know!

 

[HaplessRunner]

For those of you who may be interested in more genetic discussions (some understandable - ), you may want to visit some of the cream legbar threads. We are working on getting an APA standard for the cream legbar. So these discussions do cover a lot of ground. Some of us including myself have experimented with cream legbar hybrids. In many cases, we have projected that the autosexing characteristics were passed along to subsequent generations. Check the cream legbar hybrid thread linked below. I also have ameraucanas that I am pretty excited about and hope to show some later this month in Virginia.

The threads:

Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/713115/cream-legbar-working-group-standard-of-perfection

The Legbar Thread

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/459044/the-legbar-thread

Cream Legbars

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/509483/cream-legbars

Cream Legbar Hybrid Thread (my thread)

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/825092/cream-legbar-hybrid-thread

Enjoy!

 

[delisha]

For those of you who may be interested in more genetic discussions (some understandable - ), you may want to visit some of the cream legbar threads. We are working on getting an APA standard for the cream legbar. So these discussions do cover a lot of ground. Some of us including myself have experimented with cream legbar hybrids. In many cases, we have projected that the autosexing characteristics were passed along to subsequent generations. Check the cream legbar hybrid thread linked below. I also have ameraucanas that I am pretty excited about and hope to show some later this month in Virginia.

The threads:

Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/713115/cream-legbar-working-group-standard-of-perfection

The Legbar Thread

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/459044/the-legbar-thread

Cream Legbars

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/509483/cream-legbars

Cream Legbar Hybrid Thread (my thread)

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/825092/cream-legbar-hybrid-thread

Enjoy!

Thank you!!