Araucana thread anyone?

So far here at the show in Chehalis, Steve Water's unbeatable cock (with over a dozen BIS or RBIS probably the top-winning araucana of all time) is creaming us again. So far he is Ch AOSB and his pullet is Reserve Ch AOSB. I am heading back soon to see what else is placing but just got the exciting news that my bantam Polish won her class!! Bidding is up to $50 on my white bantam pullet. No one has met $200 reserve on Steve's trio but the male is gorgeous and Steve is fine with it as there already is a buyer at $400 on his waiting list. Few non-araucana people appreciate what goes into those tufts, eh? I think there are 7 bantams and 5 lf araucanas at this show. Nice entry.
 
I wish they were darker too, but I've been told by others with Marans that my Bantam Marans egg color is actually real good for Bantam Marans, their eggs are not as dark as the Large Fowl, they were created using another breed long ago, not sure exactly on the year they were created, they have Marans in their breeding, you can find that information on the Marans.eu site if you look for information for Bantam Marans. I have 2 lines, one is from English eggs and the other is from Trish Foss lines, so at least I have a gene pool that I can work with. This year I have my first F1s from my breedings, I kept 30, 9 cockrels and 21 pullets, some of my F1s are split gened, I also have 2 Bantam Black Copper Hens that I'm using with my Cuckoo Rooster to get the other colors of them created in Bantams, I only have one Large Fowl Marans that I picked up that is small for Large Fowl from the Ohio National Show when I showed my Bantam Marans, it's a pullet that's 6 months old and from the nearest I can tell color wise is Splash, marked like a BC hen, has dark grey to the head and neck and real light white grey to the body, so I don't know if that's considered Birchen markings or not, she came from Black Coppers, the first 3 eggs laid are the color of my Bantam Marans eggs with speckles or splotches to the eggs, darker than my Bantam Marans speckles, they are speckles that are the color of good BC colored eggs, so I'm hoping to create a project group using her with my Bantam Cuckoo Roosters and hoping for better egg color and hope I get Blue Cuckoo or Blue Birchen from the crosses, then I'll be years selecting for size with those birds once I start that project. I like my Bantam Marans egg color so far, nice terra cotta colored eggs some with speckles and they lay different than large fowl Marans, they all start laying at 5 to 6 months of age and lay an egg every other day, egg color will be a work in progress as I'm going, I'm already getting better egg color in the pullets eggs than the breeders eggs, so that's an improvement.

I just think some Olive Eggers would be really neat, I've looked at information before and one reference said to use the Marans Roo over the Araucana Hen, then I found where it was also the other way around, do you have any pictures of your Olive eggs from the BC Roo over the Araucana Hen? I don't think using my Bantam Welsummer would give me as good of results as I'd get using the Bantam Marans, at least I have one Bantam Welsummer Hen that is laying an egg the color of my Bantam Marans eggs, the other hen lays those peach colored eggs. I don't have any F1s of those yet, so I think I'll wait on trying to use them for an Olive Egg project.

My friend sent me an Araucana/Ameraucana Roo that is clean faced and rumpless maybe I should try and use him, he's Lavender, would the chicks from the Cuckoo Hen be all Lavender if I did that? Or Lavender cuckoo? Just brainstorming!







Victoria
 
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Hi Victoria! It makes no diference whos the roosty and whos the hen for making Olive Eggers. Using the Lav roosty and Cuckoo hen, your babyes will be sexlinks.
 
That is a good question. If the females would be black, they'd probably be hiding he barring gene, I was thinking the Cuckoo barring would transfer to both sexes like in the Cuckoos, I was just thinking it would be cool to identify them by their coloring as Lavender Cuckoos.

Or if I bred my Cuckoo cockrels to my tufted white rumpless Araucana girls, if that would be sex linked and pass to the pullets produced, just trying to figure out which would be the best way to go. For the Olive eggers I'm sure I'd need to select for the Pea combed birds from the crosses. I could always keep the straight combed in Lavenders as project Bantam Lavender Marans, that could be cool in itself. Definately Brain Storming on this one. And need to do more research before I proceed. I saw some eggs at the Ohio National Show that was Olive Eggers and they was really neat in color, they were dark and speckled, I emailed her and she said she uses her Black Copper Roosters over an Ameraucana/Easter Egger Hen, she kept the chicks from the hatch, then she bred them back to the BC Roos, she's in her 4th or 5th generation now and says now she needs to breed them back to lighter egglayers that the Olive Eggers are actually darker than her BC eggs, and she just won the Egg Contest with her BC Eggs. Her results were darker using the Marans Rooster, I can try it both ways for sure and probably will wind up doing that, I loved the look of her eggs they was really unique in color. I think Egg Art is so much fun and always a Surprise all of us here enjoy. All those people that only eat white eggs are Clueless!

Victoria
 
Here is those pics I promised the other day, I got busy and forgot about posting them
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These 7 are roughly 14 weeks old... now for the impossible wait.... Darn i'm impatient
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I think you guys are forgetting what Lavender really is. . .
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Remember, it is recessive, and there is no "light or dark" of it. If you breed a Lavender to another color, you'll just get splits. (black birds, possibly with color leakage) If you breed back to the Lavender, you'll get a 50/50 chance, but otherwise you'll never see the color again unless you breed sibling x sibling.

It think the confusion here is with blue
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In blue, it is dominant, can vary in shade, and much more common. Breeding it to another color will give you 50% blues. Most will be dark though.

So, a Lavender x Cuckoo hen will just give black pullets, cuckoo cockerels.

A Blue x Cuckoo hen will give blue or black pullets, blue or black cuckoo cockerels.
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To introduce Lavender to Marans would take a LOT of work.
 

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