Ameraucana thread for posting pictures and discussing our birds

[Dorthia]

Hey are those blue eggs yours ?

 

[marchick]

I have a question on egg color on the egg color chart. Which shades are preferred or accepted for Ameraucanas? I am not sure I asked that question correctly! I have two blue Ameraucanas that just layed the first eggs next to a larger sapphire egg and a black copper egg.

 

[bruceha2000]

Sadly computer screens don't always accurately represent color. They look kinda green to me and I think blue is the only acceptable color.

 

[samouw]

Sadly computer screens don't always accurately represent color. They look kinda green to me and I think blue is the only acceptable color.

Well, yes and no. You're absolutely correct about the different ways that different computer monitors display colors. There are even differences in the way our eyes perceive different colors. That is one way the egg color chart is helpful.

While blue eggs are what the standard requires, "blue" covers a wide range of colors: all the way from a very pale, nearly white, blue to a very dark with greenish tint blue,.

What you want to avoid are pure white eggs, or eggs with any brown. Although, given a choice, I would much rather see white or very pale eggs in the nest box, as it is much easier to darken that color in the ensuing generation, than see brown in the nest box. That brown can be very hard to get rid of and I would just cull a hen that laid it.

 

[marchick]

Well, yes and no. You're absolutely correct about the different ways that different computer monitors display colors. There are even differences in the way our eyes perceive different colors. That is one way the egg color chart is helpful.

While blue eggs are what the standard requires, "blue" covers a wide range of colors: all the way from a very pale, nearly white, blue to a very dark with greenish tint blue,.

What you want to avoid are pure white eggs, or eggs with any brown. Although, given a choice, I would much rather see white or very pale eggs in the nest box, as it is much easier to darken that color in the ensuing generation, than see brown in the nest box. That brown can be very hard to get rid of and I would just cull a hen that laid it.

On the chart I would say the sapphire egg is like a C9 and the Ameraucana egg is like C12. I heared that since this is the first eggs that they will probably lighten.

They will probably end up in my olive egger pen! Do you know if I used a black copper Marans x sapphire would that cross make an olive egger? thank you!

 

[scflock]

Well, yes and no. You're absolutely correct about the different ways that different computer monitors display colors.  There are even differences in the way our eyes perceive different colors.  That is one way the egg color chart is helpful.

While blue eggs are what the standard requires, "blue" covers a wide range of colors: all the way from a very pale, nearly white, blue to a very dark with greenish tint blue,.

What you want to avoid are pure white eggs, or eggs with any brown.  Although, given a choice, I would much rather see white or very pale eggs in the nest box, as it is much easier to darken that color in the ensuing generation, than see brown in the nest box.  That brown can be very hard to get rid of and I would just cull a hen that laid it.

I have a black hen laying white...
Haven't gotten one in a while, though. I think she just stopped laying, because I haven't gotten one in a while. There's no way they turned the same color as the others in just a few weeks, is there?

 

[jerryse]

I have a black hen laying white...
Haven't gotten one in a while, though. I think she just stopped laying, because I haven't gotten one in a while. There's no way they turned the same color as the others in just a few weeks, is there?

I have seen it happen once .

 

[Shaffer]

If your hen has laid for a while the egg color can get lighter to near white. Now if the egg is white is probably because everyone was putting Sumatra into them possibly. If white do not hatch the eggs the only problem is what egg color is the male carrying especially if they came from the same flock. I got a male and test mated him but all the offsprings were cockerels so I kept one only pullet that was good enough to keep and will mate the father back to her and dump all the males at auction and then raise a few pullets to sell if they lay a blue egg or a white egg if so will cull the whole bloodline did not add it to my main flock.

 

[scflock]

If your hen has laid for a while the egg color can get lighter to near white.  Now if the egg is white is probably because everyone was putting Sumatra into them possibly.  If white do not hatch the eggs the only problem is what egg color is the male carrying especially if they came from the same flock.  I got a male and test mated him but all the offsprings were cockerels so I kept one only pullet that was good enough to keep and will mate the father back to her and dump all the males at auction and then raise a few pullets to sell if they lay a blue egg or a white egg if so will cull the whole bloodline did not add it to my main flock.

Let me give a little more info. I got the chicks last year from Paul Smith, so I think it's an anomaly, not a bloodline issue. They just started laying in December, and in the first two weeks I got about 6 cream white eggs, no more than one a day. I haven't gotten any since, but I have also not gotten 4 eggs in one day from that pen. There are 3 black hens and one blue with a splash rooster. I hatched my first group last weekend, did not incubate any white eggs, and got 2 splash chicks from that pen. That's why I say it was a black.
Given that scenario, do you think it's possible that one laid white for a few weeks, then turned blue? I have 8 total hens, and all in the other pen lay blue

 

[samouw]

I have a black hen laying white...
Haven't gotten one in a while, though. I think she just stopped laying, because I haven't gotten one in a while. There's no way they turned the same color as the others in just a few weeks, is there?

You know, it's strange that you should ask. I have never seen it before, but this year one of my blue wheaten hens was laying a nearly white egg. When she first started laying, I just couldn't believe it. But her eggs are a bit darker now - still not as dark as I would like to see, but they are a tad darker.

So...before this hen, I would have said that the eggs only get lighter. Now I've seen it for myself that they can get darker.

Oh - her first egg was in the crate on the way to the December Blackville show, to give you a time frame.