Blue Egg Layers from University of Arkansas

[banjoejoe4783]

hi i have 10 UofA blues chicks that i pulled out of the bator here are some pics

 

[ronott1]

I didn't think to get a picture of the eggs, but I can tell you they are a blue egg. Not green or any other color.
Dr. Bramwell said that they used Araucana and not Ameraucana to produce these layers.

Quick question. There is a breeder close to me that has Mille Fleur Leghorns and rumpless and tufted and non tufted Araucanas. Would you get something like these if you bred them? What is the best Rooster and hen combination?

 

[Ridgerunner]

These chickens have been selectively bred by someone who realy knows how to select the best breeding flock. I don't know if they selected just for color but I suspect they also selected for egg laying ability. The stock they started with was not leghorns. It was chickens bred to lay better than leghorns. And I don't know the traits in the original Araucanas they started with. By now, you may be wondering if I know anything, and that may be a legitimate question. I'm not even finished telling you what I don't know.

I don't know the quality or traits of the mille fleur leghorn flock you are talking about. Leghorns should lay fairly large white eggs and lay several of them, so at least I know something. That gene that makes the Mille Fleur speckling or mottling is a recessive gene, so it will not show up in the first generation if they are crossed with any chicken that does not have it. And I don't know the quality or purity of those Aracaunas. I sure don't know the color of those Araucanas so I cannot tell you what colors or patterns the offspring will be but they should not have the mille fleur speckling.

But assuming the leghorns are pretty typical for leghorns and the Araucana are pretty typical for what Araucana should be, what you should wind up with is a chicken that lays blue eggs. They should lay more eggs and larger eggs that the Auracana lay, but maybe not as well or as big as the leghorns. The adult chickens will probably not be very large, so they would not be really good for meat, although you can eat any chicken.

I don't know any real benefit in making that cross as to which is the hen and which is the rooster from an egg laying perspective, but I'd use the leghorn rooster over the Araucana hens. I'm not confident that the Araucana are pure Araucana and pure for the blue egg gene. If you only hatch eggs from the Araucana and those eggs are blue, then you know that the hen has at least one blue egg gene. If you use an Araucana rooster over the leghorn hens, you really don't know if he has any blue egg genes unless you are certain he is pure Araucana. When you say some are tuffed and some are not, that raises my suspicions.

 

[draye]

These chickens have been selectively bred by someone who realy knows how to select the best breeding flock. I don't know if they selected just for color but I suspect they also selected for egg laying ability. The stock they started with was not leghorns. It was chickens bred to lay better than leghorns. And I don't know the traits in the original Araucanas they started with. By now, you may be wondering if I know anything, and that may be a legitimate question. I'm not even finished telling you what I don't know.
I don't know the quality or traits of the mille fleur leghorn flock you are talking about. Leghorns should lay fairly large white eggs and lay several of them, so at least I know something. That gene that makes the Mille Fleur speckling or mottling is a recessive gene, so it will not show up in the first generation if they are crossed with any chicken that does not have it. And I don't know the quality or purity of those Aracaunas. I sure don't know the color of those Araucanas so I cannot tell you what colors or patterns the offspring will be but they should not have the mille fleur speckling.
But assuming the leghorns are pretty typical for leghorns and the Araucana are pretty typical for what Araucana should be, what you should wind up with is a chicken that lays blue eggs. They should lay more eggs and larger eggs that the Auracana lay, but maybe not as well or as big as the leghorns. The adult chickens will probably not be very large, so they would not be really good for meat, although you can eat any chicken.
I don't know any real benefit in making that cross as to which is the hen and which is the rooster from an egg laying perspective, but I'd use the leghorn rooster over the Araucana hens. I'm not confident that the Araucana are pure Araucana and pure for the blue egg gene. If you only hatch eggs from the Araucana and those eggs are blue, then you know that the hen has at least one blue egg gene. If you use an Araucana rooster over the leghorn hens, you really don't know if he has any blue egg genes unless you are certain he is pure Araucana. When you say some are tuffed and some are not, that raises my suspicions.

I was told by Dr. Bramwell himself that it was Araucana and Leghorn that were mixed together.
No crossed chickens.

 

[Ridgerunner]

 What lethel gene?  There should not be one if Araucana and Leghorn are crossed.


Yeah!  Lots of people question the purity of hatchery stock.  I don't.  If they say they have Leghorns and I buy them as Leghorns, then I have Leghorns.  Their word is just as good to me as any other breeder.  

 

I'm not questioning the purity of hatchery stock. I don't even remember the word hatchery coming up until you mentioned it. I don't bash hatcheries. They provide what they provide and that's where I get most of my parent stock. I've gotten the same breeds from different hatcheries. They look different, not because they are not purebred, but because you have different people selecting the parent breeding stock.

To me, purebred chickens really does not mean much other than they should breed true. When I say pure for a trait, that means they have two copies of the gene, not split for it. If they are pure for the blue egg gene, both genes for that trait should be the blue egg gene, not one blue and one white. That way, they breed true for that trait.

A flock of purebred chickens can quickly lose certain traits unless the breeder constantly reinforced that trait. It comes down to strain a lot more than breed to me. The best example I can think of is from an article I saw recently. A breeder took a flock of chickens and split it into two separate flocks. He then started selectively breeding one flock for large size and the other flock for small size. The same purebred chickens, just selectively bred. I don't knwo how many generations it took, but the average size of one flock was 9 times the size of the other. Both flocks were purebreeds of the same breed and the same original parents. No outside blood was brought in. That to me shows the power of selective breeding.

You have spoken to Dr. Bramwell about these and I have not. When I see "commercial" leghorns I assume these are birds that have been selectively bred by someone that knows what they are breeding for to really enhance the egg laying ability and the feed to egg conversion rate. A standard leghorn, whether from a hatchery or from someone's backyard flock, should lay a lot of nice sized eggs. But they are not very likely to be up to the same standard as commercial leghorns.

So that is where I am coming from in suggesting that you won't get the same quality in the first generation cross of birds of unknown quality as you would get by having someone that knows chickens well enough to be teaching about them in a state university that has access to excellent breeding stock careful select the initial breeding stock, then go through a few generations of careful selective breeding for certain traits.

I'm not a expert on Araucanas. From what I have read, that lethal gene is somehow tied to their rumpless nature. It is a recessive gene so you need both copies to be present to kill the chick. Since the chickens that laid these eggs are not rumpless, I would expect that fatal gene to have been bred out of them, though that is just an assumption.

In any cross between Araucanas and Leghorns you would not have any chicks that have two copies of that gene, so the first generation would not suffer any consequences. But since it is a recessive gene, it is possible that the chick is split for it and could give a copy to offspring. That's a problem with recessive genes. They can be hard to totally get rid of since they can hide under the dominant gene.

 

[ronott1]

Not so big on the egg, these are bantams. Nice size egg though for a bantam egg.

Mille Fleur Leghorns are large fowl.

They lay 300 eggs per year, so are production.

 

[banjoejoe4783]

i have nicnamed them UofA blues

i hope DR BRAMWELL don't mind

here are my new babys

 

[banjoejoe4783]

Hi there,

Sorry if I offended you. All caps is considered shouting. Red color indicates Anger.

Just internet etiquette

Once again, sorry to have offended you.

sorry i did not mean to shout

 

[nicalandia]

Lets go back to the basics of this thread. Dr. Bramwell and his unnamed friend developed these from a COMMERCIAL strain of White Leghorn and a pure Araucana.

It is doubtful this new breed can ever be duplicated by any other person. using a different variety and/or strain of Leghorn and Araucana would most likely just develope another Easter Egger..

I´ll have to disagree with you here.. the egg laying mutt can be reproduce with available stock.. I myself can get my hands on commercial production type white leghorn and where you get the O gene(blue egg shell) its of no concern. all you have to do is make sure you have about 98% leghorn blood in there and you will have a leghorn that lays blue eggs... that´s simple enough...

 

[Arielle]

Arkansas Blues works for me! Many breeds have names that needed to be the right name to become popular. Bourbon Red turkeys did not originate from Kentucky. But the name sure fits the color. THere is a B/B/S chicken sold at a big name hatchery that is called a blue. They only sell the blue chicks.

If they don't get on the ball and name this new breed, we might do it for them/him.APA needs 5 breeders and something else to be APA eligable. Marans now have 2 varieties APA listed. Sorry don't know much about this end of chicken breeds.

Arkansas Blues. Nice sound to it.