EE or ameraucana?

[AUChick9202]

Looks just like my EE

 

[klf73]

it is a pretty EE.
there is a wonderful thread that tells the difference between araucana, ameraucana and ee ...
brief synoptis
araucana- lay blue eggs, rumpless or tailed, TUFTED or clean faced, NO muffs or beards. their body shape is different than the ee and ameraucana. I believe to show them they need to be rumpless and tufted. breeders keep tailed birds because it helps with fertility, clean faced are kept because a tufted to tufted breeding has high mortality. only sold by breeders

ameraucana- lay blue eggs, bearded/muffed, come in specific colors(standard) and breed true, which means they produce offspring that look just like them. only sold by breeders

ee's-no standard, most muffed and bearded, some with green legs, lays blue, green or brown eggs. hatcheries usually outcross with production breeds to increase egg laying. sold everywhere...

btw- I own all 3, except my ee's are from my mixed color ameraucana stock...

 

[CindyJeann]

There was this South American Chicken that layed a blue egg. Someone brought just a few to North America and bred them to laying chickens here and got a cross breed that layed blue eggs and people called em Easter Eggers. Then someone got the bright idea to breed Easter Eggers back to look like the "orginal" and thus was born the Araucana, rumpless, earmuffs, and blue eggs. Unfortunatly the gene for earmuffs is fatal so any chick that inherited two copys of the gene died in the shell. So then someone decided to creat a new breed out of the Easter Eggers excluding the fatal gene for ear muffs, thus the rumped, bearded ameraucanas with set colors were born. I like the EEs best myself. But people who spend a lot of time trying to get the color just right culling generations of EEs till they finaly breed mono-colored chickens can sometimes get upset when people confuse the genetically diverse EEs with their high bred Ameraucanas.

At least this is how my internet research has lead me to understand it.

 

[lavenderlakefarm]

Check out john blehm's article on the subject. He is one of the best breeders in the country on ameracaunas and former president of the Ameracaunas Breeders Club. This gives you the basics,
http://www.ameraucana.org/faq.html

 

[hcppam]

New to this too, an ameraucana has a color standard in feather and egg? the ones we buy at the feed store that are sold as ameraucana are EE...because they come in cool color paters, not just black, blue and white...am I close

 

[CindyJeann]

Hatcheries sell their EE chicks as Ameraucanas, I guess they just like the name better, but they don't meet Ameraucana standards. And since the feed stores get thier chicks from hatcheries, you can only buy EEs not Ameraucanas from a feed store.

EEs do have breed traits, in that they generally have beards, green/slate legs, and lay blue/green eggs. Since no one breeds EEs for show there are no set standards for how they have to look so they can be missing a trait or too. I personaly like them best. Because they are more genetically diverse, they tend to be stronger healthier birds.

 

[mrs918]

Wow great info, thanks guys. Im surprised they are selling them with the wrong name...i mean, easter egger just sounds funner anyways to me at least

 

[stormylady]

Ok I don't know genetics (chicken) but I do think you have an EE, and a very pretty girl too! And out of the 3 I prefer EEs, I like variety! LOL

 

[klf73]

Quote:
I agree, easter egger would be better marketing, the name says " I lay colored eggs"

 

[Chicken Boy-17]

EE!