Ameraucana thread for posting pictures and discussing our birds

[Nicole01]

Quote:
I know this is a bit of subject... but what size are the leg bands. I had no idea they made them that small. I want some! ;-)

Size 5. They were cheap on eBay. I bought 25. I'm getting the numbered ones soon since I'm hatching another batch of Ameraucana eggs.

 

[Christie Rhae]

Has anyone considered using the blue bantam Ams with really great lacing to introduce that to the LF?  I keep reading about using different breeds, but if you just used the bantams, then you'd just have the size to contend with....???

Do bantams truly have pattern genes? Or just very nice edging? Who has them and why have I never seen pics of them?? Lol

Unfortunately, I've sold out of almost all of my bantams, but this generation, they have very wide lacing.  I've been going back to black to improve the lacing, and it's been working.  My last 2 pairs are marked for donation at our fall show's breeders auction.  I'll try to get some pics soon to show you...  

So what kind of birds were used to get the lacing in them originally? I was under the understanding that no blues had the pattern genes. I have seen pics of beautiful edging but no lacing- pattern genes.
I would be very interested in seeing these birds!

 

[ChickenLeg]

a few of my 12 wheaten/ bw that hatched last week were not completely yellow... several of them had a black spot on their heads.
one of the hens that they came from has a small amount of black on the tip of some of her feathers where it should not be..
so the most logical assumption was the offspring with the small black spots (some were only the size of a penhead) came from that hen
and they just have bad genes. therefore i'm just selling off those chicks as pet quality birds.

i guess my question is, has anyone else had any problems like this before?

I know i shouldnt of bred her to begin with, but her muffs&beard were ALOT bigger than the others. and her legs were alot bluer! she just had awesome traits, except for the blk tips on some of her feathers. and i mean they are very small spots, you wouldnt notice them unless you were standing right beside her. I just wish she didn't have those spots :/

but their is good news! I just placed my order with paul smith for 15 bw, and 10 wheaten chicks for his first spring hatch!
I'm sooo excited! Last year was John Blehm's last year to sell dayold wheatens, i waited all summer only to find out he no longer carried them after the 2012 spring hatch, but my current wheatens/bw are the 1st generation offspring of a spring 2011 order from blehm so maybe i'll have 2 lines to cross and have something nice to work on for a while

we need more people working on wheatens and bw and less lavenders lol

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

Quote: Unfortunately, I've sold out of almost all of my bantams, but this generation, they have very wide lacing. I've been going back to black to improve the lacing, and it's been working. My last 2 pairs are marked for donation at our fall show's breeders auction. I'll try to get some pics soon to show you...

So what kind of birds were used to get the lacing in them originally? I was under the understanding that no blues had the pattern genes. I have seen pics of beautiful edging but no lacing- pattern genes.
I would be very interested in seeing these birds!
I don't know, I started with blues with edging and kept breeding them back to blacks, and ended up with heavy lacing this generation...

 

[AinaWGSD]

a few of my 12 wheaten/ bw that hatched last week were not completely yellow... several of them had a black spot on their heads.
one of the hens that they came from has a small amount of black on the tip of some of her feathers where it should not be..
so the most logical assumption was the offspring with the small black spots (some were only the size of a penhead) came from that hen
and they just have bad genes. therefore i'm just selling off those chicks as pet quality birds.

It does seem like a logical assumption. But then again, so does the theory that you can get a blue bird by crossing a white bird and a black bird (after all, blue is really just a shade of grey and black+white=grey, right?). I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about the genetics of wheaten/bw so you may be right and I could be totally wrong. But knowing what little I do know about how some other kinds of genetics works, I would not be so quick to assume that the chicks with the black spots on their heads are from the hen with the black spots in her feathers. And knowing what little I know about how chick down translates to adult coloration, I also wouldn't automatically assume that the chicks that aren't completely yellow will continue to have black in areas where they shouldn't as they grow in their juvenile and then adult feathers. I would wait on some advice from someone experienced with the variety to chime in before selling them off as pet quality birds this early in the game.

 

[Christie Rhae]

Quote: I don't have tons of experience with wheaten.
But about blues... crossing a black and white does not make blue. Blue is made when a bird inherits one copy of "Bl" the blue or color diluting gene. When a bird inherits two copies of the blue gene Bl/Bl then the bird has a double dose of the diluting gene and will appear white with spots of color here and there. This is called Splash. It is not really a white bird. It still really is a black bird with two copies of the gene that dilutes color.
This may seem like splitting hairs but white and splash are two very different things.

When a black bird with no Bl gene is bred with a splash bird that has two copies all the offspring will be blue because the splash parent gives one copy of the blue gene. The black parent cannot pass on a blue gene obviously.

I don't know much but I have studied my blue-black-splash genetics. lol

 

[Christie Rhae]

From what I have read... blacks that carry a lot of Ml can give the appearance of lacing. Without Pg/Pg gene being present. This seems to be heaving "edging". Those that breed excellent Blue Andalusians do not breed back to black. They only breed blue to blue.
I am only at the beginning stages of my lacing project but was told that none of our blue ameraucana birds carry Pg/Pg. I don't know if Pg/Pg can be created any other way but to breed a bird in that actually carries the genetics.

It is the same with marans. There are none that carry the actual pattern genes. I have some blue coppers that seem to have a very nice border around their feathers. But this is only edging caused by Ml/Ml not actual pattern genes. Well.... Ml/Ml is one of the ingredients to lacing but not all of it for sure.

Like I said I am only at the beginning stages of this project so do not have years of laced bird raising experience but have done a bunch of research on it.

I am very interested to find out if your bantams really do have pattern genes... if so someone had to have bred it in. And I would really like to figure out what kind of bird was used to do this.

Forgive me... laced blue Ams is my obsession.

 

[AinaWGSD]

I don't have tons of experience with wheaten.
But about blues... crossing a black and white does not make blue. Blue is made when a bird inherits one copy of "Bl" the blue or color diluting gene. When a bird inherits two copies of the blue gene Bl/Bl then the bird has a double dose of the diluting gene and will appear white with spots of color here and there. This is called Splash. It is not really a white bird. It still really is a black bird with two copies of the gene that dilutes color.
This may seem like splitting hairs but white and splash are two very different things.

When a black bird with no Bl gene is bred with a splash bird that has two copies all the offspring will be blue because the splash parent gives one copy of the blue gene. The black parent cannot pass on a blue gene obviously.

I don't know much but I have studied my blue-black-splash genetics. lol

Sorry, I wasn't clear in my post. I do know that white and splash are different and that white and black can not make blue. But I have seen some people who don't understand the basics of how B/B/S work approach it with the idea that you could cross a white bird with a black bird and get blue. I really meant it more of an example of how breeding colors in birds is nothing like mixing paint colors and did not intend to make it seem as though you could get a blue bird from a white and a black.

 

[samouw]

Update on my "non-wheaten Ameraucana" chicks. Thanks to the input from you guys, and some further research I did off-line - these chicks have definitely been identified as EE's. I did notify the seller of the hens and she has been kind enough to offer some compensation - which I really didn't expect her to do. I figured she didn't know, either. And, another breeder has offered two of her wheaten Ameraucanas (lines which I totally trust) and a lovely blue wheaten roo - so all is well that ends well. I re-homed one of the "wh. Am" hens and am keeping the other in my egg layer pen. She is a good layer and will make nice Easter Eggers for me. The (potential) pullets in the chicks will also eventually end up in the egg-layer pen and the roo will be re-homed or go to freezer camp at the right age.

Just for educational purposes (so someone doesn't make the same mistake I very nearly made in selling EEs as wheaten Ams), here are pics of the three chicks today. The two larger chicks are two weeks old today and the littlest one will be two weeks on Sunday.

 

[pips&peeps]

Just seeing the leg on the chick closest to the camera makes me pause. Wheatens hatch with light pink/skin colored legs and really shouldn't have that much pigment in their legs at two weeks of age.