Ameraucana thread for posting pictures and discussing our birds

[ChocolateMouse]

I agree. I rather felt that way myself. I expected them to lay blue eggs. I mean, I could understand some laying green eggs, given color bleed, or putting a really nice green egg hen under a double blue rooster would give green eggs, etc, but absolutely not brown. Given that blue is a simple dominant it should not have been hard to ensure that you have a double blue rooster over your hens before you sell if you chose to go that route (or vice versa).

 

[bruceha2000]

If they are REAL Ameraucana they can't lay anything BUT blue!! You paid for REAL you should get REAL! Clearly the seller has a bad breeding flock.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Nope! She has denied the whole thing. She says that her birds are 100% pure, she is refusing me refunds or replacements "due to the amount of time and money involved in raising show quality potential birds". She is claiming that brown eggs can sometimes crop up because they came from Easter Eggers and crossing in other breeds.
Listen to this rubbish;

"Many, many years ago when the Ameraucana breed was created, it was done so by crossing blue egg layers to brown egg layers so technically speaking, the genes could resurface depending on how the hundreds of genes line up for each individual bird."
"Some wheatens or blue wheatens will grow up to lay a pinkish egg. Suspected to be from a brown egg gene creating a coat over the blue egg gene."

(To confirm, I cracked open one of each egg color. The brown is white on the inside, the green is blue on the inside. Because of course they are, that's how egg shell pigment works.)

This is total nonsense. She's even had a (newsletter) position in an ameraucana breeders club so one would expect a professional... But I feel more and more like she's deliberately trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Blue eggs are not determined by "hundreds of genes". Utter rubbish. And she was very condescending in addition, and talked down for paragraphs about vague hand-wavey genetics, breed history, other breeders, and in what ways I should be selecting my birds instead of addressing the fact that she sold me lemons.

Suggestions? :/ I was happy to let it drop if she refunded these pretty-but-will-take-years-to-fix birds, even if she wouldn't refund the shipping, but she's given me a stark refusal? I'm considering writing her associated breeders clubs, but now I see she has some, admittedly lower, position in it and I wonder if that's wise. Politics are nonsense of course but exist.
She also says she's not offering birds for sale any more so it's not like I can go leave bad feedback on websites for her.


Oooh, I am just SO mad. Even IF she's not being deliberately contrary, anyone could see brown egg laying birds will take multiple generations to 'fix' and make them standard. Brown eggs just aren't OK to me, especially given the fact that easter eggers/Ams are so often falsely advertised.

 

[bruceha2000]

"Many, many years ago when the Ameraucana breed was created, it was done so by crossing blue egg layers to brown egg layers so technically speaking, the genes could resurface depending on how the hundreds of genes line up for each individual bird."

There are those on this thread that can verify or deny that but MY understanding is they took hens that were laying blue and crossed with roosters that had the potential to lay blue (likely came from a blue egg) until they got birds that routinely laid blue. Makes no sense at all to cross a brown layer into that result unless there was some trait (beard, muffs, color) that they couldn't get from the breeders they had and couldn't get other breeders that had the trait. And they would have done it KNOWING it would be a huge pain to get rid of any shell color genes that were other than blue in future generations.

From my understanding, it takes 1 blue gene from each parent to get a blue egg. Sounds like her breeders are at best "1 blue gene" hens AND roosters if they are producing hens that lay brown. At the very least a "2 blue" hen or rooster paired with another bird could produce green, never brown. If a hen lays a blue egg and the hen from that egg lays other than blue, wouldn't she be tossed out of the breeding flock? Someone correct me here if that is wrong.

It is true that the SOP says they only have to breed true 50% of the time (which I find amazing). Those that are on here and have been breeding Ams for decades can tell us how often their stock don't breed true. But I would ASSUME that if a given hen lays blue and the offspring from a given rooster lay blue, it would be pretty rare to get other than blue from the next generation. And if a breeder has been doing it for some time, I would also ASSUME they have weeded out most of the birds that would throw any brown in. However, I also know that this chicken genetics thing is pretty darn complicated.

Yes I would have a great desire to out her on her website. My guess is she isn't selling any more because too many people have gotten bad birds. It would likely turn into a "me too" series of reviews. Any honest and responsible breeder would refund ASAP and go back to the drawing board. The fact that she has a "position" in the club means only that she volunteered to do the job, not that she has quality birds or is knowledgeable in producing same.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Bruecha, to clarify blue eggs only require one parent to have a single copy of the blue egg gene to produce any birds that lay blue eggs. It's a simple dominant trait. Basically, if they have one blue copy and one brown/white, the blue is expressed and you get a mix of the two. If you get two copies you get a nice, solid blue with good color... As opposed to blue/white which can be pale or blue/brown which is greenish.
It looks like this;

(Except the actual letter is O, not D but whatever) So sometimes, if the base egg color is white, or the brown very light or cream a single blue gene can look very blue despite not being genetically 100% blue.
And I suspect this is what was bred to make the birds I was sent. Two chickens with Oo blue eggs genes.
She is sticking to her guns that it was a fluke, despite me reminding her that egg color is not determined by hundreds of genes but one and that chickens that lay brown and green eggs are often not selected well. If it was a fluke, it would not be on both chickens. Shock and surprise she has now declared me 'blacklisted' from her business for the 'derogatory' suggestion that she choose her birds more carefully - the very thing she suggested to me in about 5 paragraphs in her email.
She offered me a partial refund earlier in the year for shipping the chicks with no notice into a snowstorm with no heat (1/3rd arrived dead) so I've told her to send that, since I have the receipts of her offering it. I almost hope she doesn't so I have an extra financial nail to put into her coffin.

 

[KikiLeigh02]

I would be upset too @ChocolateMouse, sound like she's either totally clueless or a complete con. All of that is just ridiculous. Like there was really a need to "blacklist" you? I can't imagine you would buy from her again. Have you tried the Ameraucana Alliance website that John Blehm runs? I think it will let you post without being a member, hopefully they could give you the best recourse for her. If she was selling you early project birds, or birds from an untested pairing she should have told you before you bought them.

 

[FowlStuff]

Only Alliance members may post on our Ameraucana Forum. The rules on this forum won't allow us to promote another one here, so I'm not providing link or URL.
Membership starts at just $10/year and includes an Ameraucana Handbook, to 1st time members.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Thanks for the heads up. I may just join.
For now it's back to the drawing board to try to find decent quality birds that aren't half way across the country. I will hang on to these for now and do some breeding back to brown egg layers to see if either rooster has two copies of the blue genes. They're pretty otherwise and they're the only adult chickens I have right now so no point in getting rid of em. :T And who knows, maybe hen 3 will have two blues. Knock on wood.

@FowlStuff , Blehm, you're not super far from me tbh. XD Got any chicks for sale this year?

 

[bruceha2000]

Bruecha, to clarify blue eggs only require one parent to have a single copy of the blue egg gene to produce any birds that lay blue eggs.

So if a hen has a single blue gene she will lay blue shelled eggs but they may have an outer brown coating if her other gene is brown and 'diluted' blue if it is white? And she may or may not pass that blue gene on to the chicks. And a chick from a blue egg may not have a blue gene correct?

 

[ChocolateMouse]

So if a hen has a single blue gene she will lay blue shelled eggs but they may have an outer brown coating if her other gene is brown and 'diluted' blue if it is white? And she may or may not pass that blue gene on to the chicks. And a chick from a blue egg may not have a blue gene correct?

Exactly that. If a hen with a single blue gene is under a roo with no blue genes, about half the chicks will lay some form of blue/green egg, and the other half will be the base genetic color (brown or white). If a hen with two blue genes is under a roo with no blue genes, all the chicks will get one blue from the hen, one not blue from the rooster, and will all lay at least blue tinted eggs.

Now genetics can be wonky, and it's reasonable to expect that once in a blue moon something may crop up strange. An example might be like a dark brown egg hen like a marans hen whose reproductive tract is lightly malformed due to genes totally unrelated to egg color and the egg moves too fast through the pigment layering area of the reproductive tract and don't get colored, so they lay light cream eggs. However, this sort of result is rare with consistent breeding for egg color and wouldn't necessarily account for the clear brown egg genetics present in BOTH hens. That's especially true of blue eggs because the blue color is part of the calcium structure of the shell so if the egg has a shell it's much harder for the color to "miss".
If it does crop up, it's still something you would be displeased to know was in your lines and strive to correct. One would hope that it's also not something you would be pleased to have sold.