Hey, Just hatched some Americauna, I think.

[Pent]

Hi, I got some americauna chicks from a local breeder, But I read somewhere if you cross colors they are easter eggers, not pure Americauna, even if both roo and hen were. Is this true? I have some pics of my chicks.

 

[TrusMom]

I have gotten conflicting advice on this. I have Ameraucanas. Check out this website for a good explanation of Ameraucanas, Araucanas and Easter Eggers. It helped me to understand more about all three.

http://www.ameraucana.org/faq.html

 

[Pent]

Thanks, that did help, but I'm still not sure that if they breed true to beard, muffs, blue eggs, tails, etc, and do not conform to breed standard coloring, are they still Americaunas, or would they be classed as Easter Eggers? I ask because I have to sell some, and I don't want to misinform anyone.

 

[TrusMom]

I see...I was sold my "Ameraucanas" and they have slate colored legs/feet, tails, green eggs, beards and muffs (all good traits) but I feel like mine are mixed thus EE's. Someone explained to me that the egg color in Ameraucanas is determined by their parentage/feather color. The eggs I just set are blue and came from solid white Ameraucanas (roo and hen) which he said are the ones that produce the bluest eggs. He says only true A's produce blue but others will range from pale brown to olive green to turquoise and are EE's. It's a crap shoot really in my opinion but I would think you still have Ameraucanas and could sell them as such. If the eggs turn out blue, I would say pure but if you sell based on history and physical traits and don't get any eggs from them it would be hard to know for 100%. The blue egg is the most rare of the colors and has to come for the purer lines, again, I think! Sorry this doesn't help more. Also, I have read that most hatcheries these days sell mixed EE's as pure Ameraucanas so that isn't always a sound determiner of what you have. These guys are very mysterious indeed

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[Pent]

I got them from a local breeder, so no worries about hatcheries for me. I can't keep all 8 right up till laying, but I'm assuming things like blue eggs, etc, would all breed true no matter what color Ameraucanas you mix. I could be totally wrong on this one. I'm pretty certain bird color has no influence on egg color, however, so you mysterious "he"'s advice might be best taken with a grain of salt. A white hen can lay a brown egg, and a brown hen can lay a white egg, so it stands to reason that brown or white, Ameraucana would still produce similarly blue eggs.
My slate colored legs are starting to come in on my darker chicks, with the darkest having it on hatch day. All of them show varying degrees of beards and muffs, like little cotton balls stuck to their chins. The wing feathers are showing now, and so far the chicks with red in the fluff are getting a rich brown spotted with black, like flicking a paintbrush style spatter, the darker ones are mostly black with some brown spatter, and the light ones with little red or brown fluff are coming in white/grey, with dark grey spatter.