It'd be worth it if we could end up with variegated plumage!Imagine how many years, and how many generations - and how many feuds, rebellions and wars! - it would take to do that with humans!
Exactly. You've got it. The standards simply provide a guideline to what's what so us "die-hards" can argue over the same thing.
You're quite welcome, I am glad I could be of help.Well, I am glad I at least finally got it sorted out in my mess of a brain! Thanks for the help and guidance, and enjoy your breed semantic arguments - we all need something to "discuss"with others, right??
If they just breed for egg color, then those are not "mixed color ameraucanas"; they're Easter eggers. If you take a purebred chicken and only try to breed it for something like egg color, you'll eventually lose the other features that make it a breed. I just looked at the McMurray website, and the chickens pictured are of classic Easter egger color and type.
To go along with your horse analogy (I own horses as well) think of the Ameraucana as an APHA registered Paint, ignoring that most horses can be registered based on lineage in spite of breed standards, and the Easter Egger is somewhat of a grade pinto. Usually you can tell easily that a pinto doesn't have all the right genetics to be a paint based on body shape, facial skeletal ratios, etc. but sometimes it comes down to just not having quite enough white marking, or proof of lineage. It's a little different with chickens in that it tends to be more strictly based on features and not on lineage, but you get the gist.
There is a book called the American Standard of Perfection. It details shape and colour requirements for Ameraucanas, among many other breeds. Egg colour is merely one facet of things. Breed standards include comb type, colour, angle of tail, breadth of back, number of toenails, depth of breast, colour of beak—every single aspect. A bird doesn't—can't, really—have to be perfectly aligned with every single one of these things, but they have to be at least recognizable as the same thing. It isn't supposed to be a classist system, it's merely inventing a standard that one can use to distinguish particular genetic phenotypes from each other. There's a line of perfection, and a width of accepted deviation; In this case, despite the names involved, the hatchery "Ameraucanas" don't fit in that width. Are they genetically related and/or somewhat similar in looks? Yes. But not enough.
I'm going to leave out the whole mess of non-standard accepted breeds (which are still breeds in their own right.) Also, sexlinks, because then trying to explain things just hurts my head.For purposes of explanation, it's easier to pretend the SOP has all of the chicken breeds that exist. Even if you didn't ignore them, non-standard breeds and varieties still breed true, mostly; you can predict what's going to be produced. Easter Eggers, on the other hand, throw random sets of them. They do have a 'look' to them but they aren't uniform and therefore can't even be given the term 'variety' in a proper sense. (There are exceptions in the typey breeds, but again, not APA accepted exceptions.)
If you mixed varieties, then it pretty much comes down to sematics. You could call it a mutt. Or you could call it an EE, if it lays blue eggs. There's controversy over what all falls under that label. Some people say anything not a purebred Ameraucana (or other breed that lays blue) is an EE. I happen to disagree because I think the hatchery EEs have a certain phenotype set; putting, say, my Sultan cross that lays blue under that umbrella seems wrong.
If you kept breeding mixes together again and again until all they had left was the blue egg, I don't think they could truly be called Ameraucanas at that point no matter what wording you used. With birds, conformity to standard and ability to pass that on to their offspring matters more than pedigree. That's why some people can re-make certain varieties and still call them as such. Take Partridge Chantecler bantams, for instance. A lot of the ones I can find for sale now were mutts not many generations back, but they've been selectively bred now so that they breed true to their standard. Now, if you tried to do that with horses, you'd be run out of town with pitchforks.
The hatchery EEs, the kind you have---Ameraucanas were actually bred from them, not the other way around, if I have my history correct. They're simply the line that the genetics came from. I think they're from South America, originally? I forget. I don't have the links right here. Perhaps a comparable example would be a cross between a Leghorn and a Rock. Maybe throw some Wyandotte in there for good measure. If you kept all of them without culling for uniformity, and kept doing that for generations, you'd get something similar in nature to an EE. A typey mutt. If you took some of those birds out of the breeding pool, and bred and culled offspring until they were standard in colour and type, you could say it was a breed. But, even if some of the mixes you kept looked similar, they wouldn't be 'that breed' because they don't hatch chicks that look like them. Make sense? These aren't mixed, though, in a technical sense, because they were never bred true. To my knowledge, at least—the info out there is spotty. Hopefully one of the ways I tried to say it helps you. It took me a while to figure out too. I don't know which group used the term Ameraucana first. Some places call theirs Americanas. Either way, the distinction they make about them not being bred to even the minimal breed standard their other breeds are, makes it pretty clear that they're not the same thing you see in show rings.
Chickens aren't the same as cows. What constitutes a breed or colour is different across species.
I could be wrong on some of this, but it is true to the best of my knowledge. Take it with a grain of salt.
