Araucana thread anyone?

[cashdl]

Congratulations Cathy. I would love to hear when you start getting some chicks out of Henry the 8th. His chicks should mostly hatch yellow and black when paired with a duckwing and black when paired with black but you will get some leakage later, at least that is what I noticed from the hens he was with.

Lanae

 

[smoothmule]

Lanae,

I'll definitely post when I have chicks. I have 4 roosters with the black hens right now. They're all getting along fine but when the girls start laying, I get an egg a day now, then I'll put a couple of the roosters out to free range then swap them out every couple of weeks so the roosters have free range time to build up and I can use all 4 of my roosters to build more genes into the chicks this year. I just have 6 black hens. I know I'll still have leakage in this years cockerels but I am hoping for less with each generation and this pen will stay all black so eventually, the black will be blacker. At the same time, I'll only keep the pullets closest to standard. I have some work to do on egg color in that pen but all in time.

Shirley's chick looks great this morning. Shirley hasn't laid another egg since that one was laid so I'm hoping she will. I can't get any duckwings from breeding her to Cracker Jack but I can get chocolates and blacks and from there I have it figured out how to make chocolate duckwings.

 

[poularde]

Oooh Chocolates... I would love a chocolate duck wing. You must share more.

 

[Illia]

Like a dun duckwing, as in found on OEGB's?

 

[smoothmule]

No, an actual sex linked recessive chocolate duckwing but hey, that's a gorgeous rooster. I don't have any dun to work with, but I am working on a chocolate project now and I've been working with the chicken color calculator to figure out what I need to do to get the chocolate duckwings too

 

[Stacykins]

My broody Araucana girl finally decided the wooden eggs weren't going to hatch. A shame, since I have eggs in the incubator that I would've liked to pop under her closer to when they are due, but they have a while to go. Though I bet another will go broody soon enough!

 

[smoothmule]

Shirley's chick is already in the larger brooder in the garage with the other chicks. I usually keep them in the house a few days but this one hatched alone and was so fat and healthy, I figured it would be better with other chicks and boy howdy, this chick is as large as the other 2 Araucana chicks in the brooder and was eating and drinking like a lil piggy from day one.



The chick behind this one is a duckwing Serama chick

Here is a side view. Male or Female?? Gold duckwing?

 

[smoothmule]

My broody Araucana girl finally decided the wooden eggs weren't going to hatch. A shame, since I have eggs in the incubator that I would've liked to pop under her closer to when they are due, but they have a while to go. Though I bet another will go broody soon enough!

That's the opposite of what I do. I let the hen start the eggs, to give them the best start, for about 10 days then I give her another batch and pop the first ones in the incubator then the hatcher. I don't loose a whole lot of chicks but when I do it's been in the coop with the others.

 

[syble]

I must say i'm more impressed with the laying frequency of my araucanas, i expected that they would lay less frequently by a lot lol. Although it has been a bit on the warm side this winter lol. as a side note, there was a discussion of laced blues a bit earlier, stating that they require a patterning gene? I have a solid black and a solid blue hen. my rooster is some version of blue breasted red but you can see a blue/red lacing on his breast... is that something i should aim to work in then?

 

[cashdl]

I am finding the opposite true here with regards to laying. My girls have all stopped. I have two hens that havn't laid an egg in two months, all the others stopped about two weeks ago. I am starting to get frustrated. It is fairly warm here now, but when it was freezing temps they were laying like champs. Very irritating. I have a waiting list for eggs and nothing is being laid.


Lanae