Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[featherhead007]

I will never know if they produce well. The chickens love the young plant stage. And sneak in and devastate them before I even put up a cage

I have plenty of grapes and lemons, oranges and other citrus

 

[micstrachan]

Dorothy That's one looker! To steal from Charlotte, "Some Comb"!

Teehee! At 3/4 White Leghorn, I thought you’d like Dorothy. She needs to molt off that ratty tail, however. LOL.

 

[micstrachan]

Yep, Alice definitely has a crest. No beard or muffs though.
View attachment 2393705

Um... YES. That is a giant crest. In the US, Araucanas are “rumpless” and have those huge mustaches! But no crest!

 

[BY Bob]

Teehee! At 3/4 White Leghorn, I thought you’d like Dorothy. She needs to molt off that ratty tail, however. LOL.

Apparently I am pretty easy to read.

 

[micstrachan]

Alice is gorgeous! I love that we got a picture of her out of this conversation.

Right???

 

[micstrachan]

Speaking of Crests

I just love the lacing on Flash’s crest.

 

[micstrachan]

Slow Motion

I know you all love my slow motion videos. Here is a really cool compilation of chickens and grubs. I really enjoyed it.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/cool-chicken-video.1233174/

It was AMAZING!!!!!

 

[micstrachan]

my phone died mid post... but basically
Ameraucanas were extensively bred from Auraucanas to eliminate the genetic defect while still laying exclusively blue eggs. Easter eggers are a first generation cross breed with one Ameraucana parent. This is an unstable cross, so if you breed two Easter eggers together your chicks could range anywhere on the spectrum going back several generations in traits to their great grandparents.

for instance with dogs:
Labrador+ Poodle=Labradoodle (a fairly uniform cross breed)
Labradoodle+labradoodle= genetic chaos; with offspring anywhere from seemingly pure Lab through looks like almost pure poodle.
If you pulled the most “labradoodle“ like pups and bred them to to each other and their parents (Backcrossing), after enough generations you could establish the labradoodle as it’s own breed to where Labradoodle +labradoodle= labradoodle

This is what happened in the case of the Ameraucana. The blue egg gene in the Ameraucana is not dominant. Easter eggers can produce a high range of egg colors as they are F1 Ameraucana cross hybrids. There are other things that go into eggcolour with only two true shell colors, white and blue. Brown is a coating with many different genes affecting it, and when you cross a blue and a brown layer you often get green, a chicken that carries the blue shell and a variety of brown coating genes.

Crested Cream Legbars, however, have two Dominant Blue genes so they will only ever produce Blue or green laying offspring in a first generation cross.

it’s a confusing topic to start with. I’m focusing on a niche multicolored egg market which is why I’ve spent so long looking into it and trying to wrap my head around what would be best to add into my flock. The CCL has strong blue genetics, but is a smaller and far less frequent layer. I have been breeding their F1 Offspring into my flock but don’t have any pure CCL or Ameraucanas, as of yet

Kris, you are a wealth of information. I find this extremely interesting. My major in college at UC Berkeley was human biology. But then I went on to practice molecular biology. You’d think this would be second nature to me… But it’s not! I still have to really think about it. Extremely fascinating to me.

 

[micstrachan]

Calling Phyllis

All this roosting talk has derailed the best thing from today so I am posting it again! How about Phyllis coming when called!?

She’s sooooooo cute!!!!

 

[Aussie-Chookmum]

I’m thinking that the Australian “Araucana” is likely quite different genetically, possibly through the same selective breeding as Ameraucanas?. I forget, do they also lay blue eggs? Do they have any fatal genetic conditions?

Our Araucanas all lay blue eggs as far as I know. Alice does and so does Pepper who is a cross.

The breed standard in Australia is for the tail (not "rumpless"). Apparently it is the rumpless and ear-tuft genes that are associated with the lethal gene.

It's hard to tell in the photo, but Pepper's egg is ever so slightly greener than Alice's