Inbreeding EE's

[marymac]

Just was wondering about EE genetics. Since they carry the ameracuna gene and the rest of it is what ever, if you were to inbreed for enough generations, would you eventually get birds that look like true ameracunas.?

 

[blaundee]

If that were your project, to take them from EE to Ameraucana, I'd say to get a Ameraucana rooster, and selectively breed for the Ameraucana traits. (It's easier to just BUY some pure Ameraucanas.) You would use some inbreeding, but by using inbreeding alone and too much, you would only mess up the genetics you have.

 

[Illia]

To actually answer your question - No. Most Easter Eggers have green or yellow shanks and some even have yellow skin, and most Easter Eggers have a wildtype BBR/Duckwing coloring.

To actually get an Ameraucana, you'd need to get rid of the green legs, yellow skin, green eggs (which is impossible if you only have them) and get rid of the color, too. You'd need to work on an APA accepted color, and the only ones you can do that with from standard Easter Egger colors are Silver and Wheaten, which even then, most near-wheaten Easter Eggers I see are too far from Wheaten to even be improved on.

So, really, no, it is not possible. When people mention there's Ameraucana behind them, they refer to grandparents waay back there, and a lot of hatcheries actually work with Easter Eggers that we received in the US before we created and wrote up a standard for Ameraucanas. Most Ameraucana colors are not available in hatchery based EE's, especially, because most of our Ameraucana colors were created from other breeds. Most Easter Egger colors came from the original "mutt" breeds we brought from South America.

And of course, there is the leg and egg issue. You'd need to get rid of it, and both are very hard to do.

 

[marymac]

Quote:
WOW!! That is a lot of info for my brain, lol. Sounds really complicated. To further mix up this mixed up breed, what about a roo I have? His father is a BLRW and his mom is an EE, now he looks like an EE has puffy cheeks and the coloring is there but his legs are yellow and his comb is wide flat and thick, I think, like the BLRW. Would he still be called an EE and if bred to an EE would the off spring lay blue/green eggs or possibly brown or blue/green eggs. My main question though is if I were to sell or give him away would I say he is an EE?

 

[Illia]

An Easter Egger is any bird that has the blue egg gene (or who's parents had it) and doesn't meet all the qualifications for an Ameraucana or Araucana, so, yes, they'd be Easter Eggers.