Ameraucana thread for posting pictures and discussing our birds

[SteveH]

Quote:
Egg color is one of the qualifiers on my yard . My first Ameraucanas will hopefully start laying this fall . Every one of them will first be tested by an outcross to another breed . The resulting chicks will be marked as to its parents and tested to see if they all lay blue/green eggs . If one of my first Ameraucana prooves to be not heterozygous for blue eggs it will be marked as an EE regardless of any other traits . Aa far as the chickens on my yard are chosen : leg color , beards , color pattern , and body type don't mean a thing if they produce offspring that lay white or brown eggs .

Homozygous.

To have two copies of the same gene. ie. blue/blue

Heterozygous, Two different copies. ie. blue/brown

Thank you dak , I make that mistake nearly everytime I type it .

 

[Hens and Roos]

Here is our almost 4 month old Ameraucana boy-he was hatched out at the end of April 2010 from eggs HappyMtn sent us. The kids named him "Eagle"

Any opinions are welcome.

 

[CityChicker]

I don't know why I even read these threads! I sometimes can't resist because I love the blue egg layers, LOL. I always get a chuckle though reading people's thoughts about breeding these birds. There have been so many new people that have entered the hobby in the last few years, many of whom do not have the first clue about the history of the birds, why they are called what they are, and the politics of breed development (and especially why exactly the hatcheries really call them what they do).

I have kept these birds since before anyone had ever even uttered the word "Ameraucana". The politics of the breed are really truly Laugh Out Loud funny to me. Yes, we now have three distinct breeds (or better yet, two distinct breeds and one fairly non-descript breed). That said, there are too many people that get all up in arms over the breeds when they themselves are fairly clueless. Some examples of what I mean....number one example- Egg Color. Egg color quality has declined over the years. Too many people these days, usually newbies that have bred the birds only a few years, focus too much on the appearance of the birds and not the thing that is really, truly the bird's calling card, the egg color. Yes, there are other factors that differentiate the breeds, but egg color is the factor that really makes the birds what they are and draws people to the breeds. If you are breeding birds that lay anything other than blue eggs, you are not breeding Ameraucanas, period, end of story, no negotiation. The birds are supposed to lay BLUE EGGS. The standard specifies this in black and white. Why then do I see self-appointed Ameraucana police advertising birds that lay green, white, light brown, etc... eggs? There is more to conforming to the standard than just looking like an Ameraucana.

....on the topic of "looking like" an Ameraucana though, the accepted color varieties are also clearly stated in the standard. Now, I am not someone that thinks that breeds/varieties should remain stagnant. I love seeing people develop new varieties. It is just humorous to me to see people that get all upset about hatcheries selling EE's as "Ameraucanas" when they themselves are raising non-standard varieties. LOL. Anyway, no offense and I am being jovial about this. I just think that all the easily ruffled feathers of Ameraucana breeders is rather funny, especially from the perspective of someone that has kept the birds since the 1970's. I see a lot of "double standard" these days. My biggest pet peeve though is all these breeders that are selling birds that look like Ameraucanas (often for top dollar, far more than the hatcheries) that don't lay Blue eggs! It literally makes me bust out laughing that people are more concerned about breeding birds that appear to be Ameraucanas than preserving the one factor that makes the breed famous in the first place! LOL, sometimes you just have to laugh.

 

[Kansaseq]

Citychicker,
I would love to see any pics you may have of your birds and eggs from way back

. I think it would be so cool to see how they have evolved since then.
(And I ask this in the most sincere way--not trying to be snarky or anything related, just really really curious!)

 

[megcpat]

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Kansaseq, great idea.

 

[SteveH]

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I'll second that . I love seeing the pics and reading about the various forms of earlier blue or green egg layers here in the U.S. or even from South America .

 

[Kansaseq]

And what a cool pictorial history for us on the development of our beloved blue egg layers

 

[CityChicker]

Quote:
Why would I think that was "snarky"? LOL, I am not sure what you mean. I know we definitely have pictures of our birds from back then. I am going to try to put a lot of them on a website eventually. I have been going through pictures of my family's birds and have found some from all the way back to the 40's-50's (of various breeds, not just the blue egg layers). I don't know if we have egg pictures. It is just not the sort of thing we photographed back then (and a lot of the very old pictures are black and white anyway).

The egg color back then was much, much better. The typical color was the light, bright blue not all the various colors we see today. The birds themselves though were not nearly as standard as they are today. Keep in mind, that people didn't separate the birds into the different breeds and start selecting for the traits we know today as "Araucanas" and "Ameraucanas" until the late 70's to early-mid 80's. I can't show you something that simply didn't exist. My family had the birds as long as I can remember, but they were not selecting for the traits that we now know differentiate the birds from each other. Why would they have? The standards did not even exist until many years later. The birds were all called Araucanas (again remember this was before the terms Ameraucana and Easter Egger were even invented). They were all blue egg layers and they were a mix of the traits we see today in all three breeds. For all intents and purposes, they were similar to what we call EE's today in that they were not standard. The selective breeding for the Ameraucana and Araucana traits came much later (hence the real reason so many hatcheries still call them Araucanas, because they always have).

At any rate, there was not nearly the consistency in appearance the breeds have today simply because the different breeds did not exist and the traits had not been specifically selected for. The egg color though is one thing that was far more consistent back then, IMHO, before so much outcrossing was done for example to brown egg layers. All poultry breeds evolve over time though. Some improve. Some don't. Some gain popularity. Some fall by the wayside. This has happened in other types of poultry as well (thinking of waterfowl, which I became much more interested in over the years than chickens). Many have been improved upon greatly (some, not so much, LOL). For example, I also raised Cochins back in the 70's-80's with Blue being my main focus in the 80's. The best of the best quality Blues in that day are barely what we would call hatchery quality today. That is how much the breed has changed and been improved upon. The blue egg layers are the same sort of situation. They look far more standard today because breeders have focused on that in the last 25-30 years. Prior to the approved standards, Araucanas were basically of the same non-descript nature EE's are today.

 

[Mahonri]

So if you only use the BLUEST of BLUE eggs for hatching... you are on the right path.

I'd love a pictoral history from the 70s as well! :0)

 

[megcpat]

Quote:
I assume you had to add that line about being sincere because of my reply. I was being snarky through your post and that was bad form on my part. I apologize Kansaseq.