Breed That Actually Lays Blue Eggs?

[dexterlady]

Thank you again Junebuggena, I will check out that site....Do you raise these birds?....What are they pros and cons of having them?...Are they friendly birds?....I will go look at the site...Again, Thanks.....Donna

 

[junebuggena]

I do not have Araucana or Ameraucana. I do have an Easter Egger breeding project going at the moment.

 

[cashdl]

Thank you again Junebuggena, I will check out that site....Do you raise these birds?....What are they pros and cons of having them?...Are they friendly birds?....I will go look at the site...Again, Thanks.....Donna

The True Araucana are a friendly non agressive bird. I do recommend them for back yard flocks. Anyone wanting to start raising them needs to have lots of patience.

Araucana rumplessness does breed true if your birds come from lines that only breed rumpless birds. The tufts on Araucana do not breed true. The gene for the tufts is lethal in two copies, so living birds only have one copy of the gene to pass on. That means that at least 50% of the time a chick will not inherit the gene for the tufts.

I recommend anyone wanting to learn about the Araucana please join the Araucana Club of America. It is $20 for 2 years and you get the club newsletter that is printed 4 times a year. Plus you get the membership list that tells you who has what as far as color and whether they breed and sell.

Lanae Cash
ACA President

 

[dheltzel]

I have a lot of CCL's and some eggs are very blue, like my purebred Ameraucanas, and some not so much. Even the Ameraucanas vary in egg color between strains and individual hens. It's definitely worth selecting for blue eggs and that's what I am doing with both CCL's and Ams.

One word of caution about the hybrids, especially with commercial white leghorns, they may lay a blue egg where the color is lighter than you are wanting. How saturated the blue color is seems to be dependent on the number of blue genes (1 or 2) that the hen has, so a hybrid to a white egg layer may result in a sky blue egg, which is still very pretty in a mixed carton. Commercial white leghorns also seem to have a bleaching gene that removes all brown from the eggs, and that seems to affect the blue as well. I made this cross and the resulting pullets were excellent layers, but when I put the eggs next to an Ameraucana, they looked white by comparison. That cross was also insanely broody, for reasons I'm still puzzling over.

I just got the first egg from a black Ameraucana pullet last weekend and I was reminded about how they often start out bluer and fade as they lay more eggs, this one looked like a giant robin egg (but tiny for an Ameraucana egg, being the first). I'm going to incubate it despite the small size, just because an egg that blue deserves a chance . . .

 

[enola]

Using a brown lrghorn in the cross will give you bluer eggs.

 

[Susieq2015]

Using a brown lrghorn in the cross will give you bluer eggs.

Have you tried this cross? Just wondering because I have both white and brown Leghorns to work with.