how about selling araucanas as EEs?

[Marlinchaser]

You could always sell them as "CHICKENS" Tell the purchaser that they may lay colored eggs, and the purchaser probably wont care about thier PETagree most dont really care they want a colored egg, or a Brown egg or a white chicken or red chicken. If they get what they want it doesnt matter.

 

[Birch Run Farm]

Anne is right on but so is Jody. It is extremely difficult to even make the breed standard. The hardest part to acheive being tufts on both sides of the head and that due to the lethal gene!

But getting rumpless, tufted and 'perfect' color (way too limited approved colors in my eyes

) is exceptionally difficult. I'm new to the breed but really love them like anone who gives them a try. They are gentle, inquisitive and active little buggers. I'll probably never develop a quality show bird but I am having fun with what I have!

Pure black, rumpless but only ONE tuft Aggggggggggghhhh!!!!

 

[amazondoc]

Hey Anne -- an off-topic question for you --

You're the one with the pics of "blue-buff" pullets on your web site. Can you tell me about those? I dunno if you read my other thread about araucanas, but I just acquired some "buff" pullets that are not exactly buff. I'm thinking "blue-buff" might fit the bill for at least one of them. But what exactly do you MEAN when you say "blue-buff"?

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I agree with Anne about them being from South America. No other breeds have tufts and no breeds really come in rumpless, it shows up from time to time but it doesnt really breed true.
I think they should have two seperate breeds, a tufted tailed and a smooth faced rumpless.
When we had araucanas I liked the challenge but when we did finally get a rumpless bird with good tufts it seems that they had white in the earlobes or the wrong color of legs.

 

[amazondoc]

Quote:
I'm thinking if I do get into breeding these guys I'll concentrate on trying to get the rumpless/tufted, and to heck with the color issues.

 

[shelleyb1969]

Quote:

Well......."purebred" is a very nebulous term in chickens. Breeders routinely add other breeds when they are trying to introduce a new color, or improve on some specific trait. For instance, four of these birds are "buff". Two or three of these "buff" birds have large and/or single combs. IMHO it is likely that some other breed was recently brought in to introduce the buff color to the araucanas. So -- are they "purebred", or not? It's a much fuzzier line in chickens than it is in dogs.

True, so true. Very excellent point...hadn't thought about that! Wow, I'm learning a lot today about chickens! So if this be the case with different breeds being "cross-bred" to achieve/improve a specific trait, then are any of our chickens "pure"? What proof do we have that sometime in the past, there wasn't a "john doe chicken" thrown in the mix to get a desired color? Hummmmm...something to think about.

 

[amazondoc]

Quote:
The thing is, in chickens nobody especially CARES if John Doe was thrown in there. In fact, it's fairly STANDARD to throw John Doe in, if he'll improve some desired trait or other. As long as the resultant offspring meet the standard of that particular breed, and as long as they breed relatively true to that standard, then they are "purebred" so far as any chicken person really cares.

 

[Anne]

Quote:
Hey there!

Pigpen (the "blue-buff" pullet) was just one of the many interesting yet entirely accidental results of a cross between GDW roosters and white hens, in an effort to introduce yellow skin (the correct skin color) into my flock.

When I say "blue-buff" I simply mean that her plumage is a non-standard combination of blue and buff. I think I also have the phrases "black-red" and "blue-gold" on my site somewhere. It's just my own personal way of trying to describe a totally non-standard color combination/pattern. I've noticed that a lot of other Araucana breeders with non-standard colors use similar descriptors.

 

[amazondoc]

Well darn. I was hoping you had provided me with a more-or-less official category for these girls. OTOH, maybe we can just make up our own "official" category, eh?

 

[amazondoc]

Hey, I just found this on the Ameraucana Club web site:

"What are Easter Egg chickens?

The Ameraucana Breeders Club defines an Easter Egg Chicken or Easter Egger as any chicken that possesses the blue egg gene, but doesn’t fully meet any breed description as defined in the APA and/or ABA standards. Further, even if a bird meets a standard breed description, but doesn’t meet a variety description or breed true at least 50% of the time it is considered an Easter Egg chicken."

Seems like nonstandard araucanas would fit that definition just as well as nonstandard ameraucanas. Hmmmmmmm.....