Making a breed of chicken

[Lydia Huizenga]

I like the looks of this boy. I hope they look like him but with better leg color.View attachment 2600701

very handsome. I hope you get what you want with him. Its always so exciting.

 

[Hawks93]

False when it comes ti most hatcheries. Most hatchery “Ameraucanas“ are Easter Eggers - mutts.

I learned that if the hatchery list ameraucanas as “ for egg production but not for show” it likely an Easter egger

 

[Hawks93]

I like the looks of this boy. I hope they look like him but with better leg color.View attachment 2600701

Wow I’m planing to breed easter Eggers x Barred Plymouth rock chickens to get exactly this result ( also I’m going to try to select fro having larger ear muffs)

 

[ANightPerson]

Right now my main project is cuckoo ameraucanas. I know someone's already done it but I’m gonna do it for myself.View attachment 2529830

I've bred these before with a Dominique roo over Ameraucana hens and the results were stunning! They had much tighter barring than this, but the barring over the beards/muffs is awesome. I lost that flock to foxes but I'm definitely trying that cross again. They had PpRr walnut combs too, which I loved, but unfortunately don't breed true for for obvious reasons.

Right now I have a long-term plan to create a flock with barring, beards/muffs, crests, pea or walnut combs, and blue/green eggs. Essentially Ameraucanas with crests and barring. I've got a small flock of barnyard mixes that have each trait individually which I'm planning to breed in over the generations. I actually just set my first eggs for this year about half an hour ago.

Good luck! Love what you're doing.

 

[JadeFarms]

I've bred these before with a Dominique roo over Ameraucana hens and the results were stunning! They had much tighter barring than this, but the barring over the beards/muffs is awesome. I lost that flock to foxes but I'm definitely trying that cross again. They had PpRr walnut combs too, which I loved, but unfortunately don't breed true for for obvious reasons.

Right now I have a long-term plan to create a flock with barring, beards/muffs, crests, pea or walnut combs, and blue/green eggs. Essentially Ameraucanas with crests and barring. I've got a small flock of barnyard mixes that have each trait individually which I'm planning to breed in over the generations. I actually just set my first eggs for this year about half an hour ago.

Good luck! Love what you're doing.

I bred my ameraucana with a cuckoo maran hen so the male was sex linked.
I’ll get 50% cuckoo babies from him and I’ll just cull the ones who aren’t cuckoo. Dominique sounds like a good cross but not a good comb type.
Right now I need to work on comb, leg color and egg color. I also need to work on them breeding true which will be harder.
I may do my cuckoo ameraucana cockerel that I have right now and breed it to my cuckoo maran. Then I’ll breed that over the cuckoo ameraucana f1 x Ameraucana.

 

[Cecisflock]

 

[ANightPerson]

I bred my ameraucana with a cuckoo maran hen so the male was sex linked.
I’ll get 50% cuckoo babies from him and I’ll just cull the ones who aren’t cuckoo. Dominique sounds like a good cross but not a good comb type.
Right now I need to work on comb, leg color and egg color. I also need to work on them breeding true which will be harder.
I may do my cuckoo ameraucana cockerel that I have right now and breed it to my cuckoo maran. Then I’ll breed that over the cuckoo ameraucana f1 x Ameraucana.

What comb type are you looking for? It is definitely easier to breed in pea comb using single-combed birds, because then you don't have to worry about the R gene at all. I don't mind rose or walnut combs at all, I just don't like single combs because it gets very cold where I live and the tips get frostbite so easily.

I think you'll find that you won't have much luck with leg color and barring. The two genes are very close together on the chromosome and so it is extremely difficult to introduce a new shank color into barred birds, 99% of the time they'll end up with the same shank color as the original barred bird(s) you used.

If you just want to carry the barring onto your Ameraucanas, I wouldn't recommend bringing anymore Marans genes into the mix. You already have a halfie with the barring gene, so if you breed him back to Ameraucana hens half of the offspring will be barred and will be much closer to the Ameraucana standard. Then from there you can either select the most Ameraucana-like barred offspring and breed them or even breed them back to Ameraucanas for another generation to get rid of any lingering Marans traits. Of course there's also barring quality to consider, but otherwise breeding him back to Marans would only pointlessly dilute the Ameraucana traits (I assume) you want.

 

[Hawks93]

I bred my ameraucana with a cuckoo maran hen so the male was sex linked.
I’ll get 50% cuckoo babies from him and I’ll just cull the ones who aren’t cuckoo. Dominique sounds like a good cross but not a good comb type.
Right now I need to work on comb, leg color and egg color. I also need to work on them breeding true which will be harder.
I may do my cuckoo ameraucana cockerel that I have right now and breed it to my cuckoo maran. Then I’ll breed that over the cuckoo ameraucana f1 x Ameraucana.

Did they end up having a barred variety of colors or did the coloration of the cuckoo end up being more common ?

 

[JadeFarms]

Did they end up having a barred variety of colors or did the coloration of the cuckoo end up being more common ?

Well cuckoo makes cuckoo, not barred so I got cuckoo.

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Did they end up having a barred variety of colors or did the coloration of the cuckoo end up being more common ?

Cuckoo and barred are the same gene, just one is on a slow-feathering bird (barring) and the other is on a fast-feathering bird (cuckoo).