Not What They Told Us...

[HomesteaderWife]

Well, we bought four young chicks awhile back and the people at this little feed store said, "Oh, they're Aracaunas!" Very proudly, which I knew was not going to be true. I figured maybe some little Easter Eggers. Wrong. Our three hens and our rooster all look totally different.

Rooster: Has a very strange comb, which doesn't even appear to be a rosecomb. This is a HUGE rooster!

Hens: Two have single, nice looking combs. One of them has a single comb but really thick in parts and sticking out different directions. Two very large hens and one tiny, skinny thing!

I've attached some photos. Any ideas? Thank you so much (and please ignore our other sweet hen in the background, haha, we know what she is!)

 

[QueenMisha]

Not sure about the roo. Know I've seen something like him but honestly can't remember the breed. The front and back on the log look like very poorly bred EEs - you sometimes see them without a muff/beard and showing a single comb if the hatchery gets lazy enough. Middle one mostly does as well, although I've not got a good angle of her. Last one looks like maybe a Golden Laced Wyandotte, except I've seen poor quality specimens show a single comb more often than a pea, so it's possible she's a cross.

 

[drumstick diva]

Sometimes people don't mean to mislead - they may have been given incorrect information when they purchased their birds. I can't enlarge the photos, so don't see them well enough to guess. I think they are very pretty. Are they all the same age?

 

[Lady of McCamley]

I can't see your roo well enough to say what he might be. From my screen, it looks like he has a full rosecomb to me. But I'm not seeing a great shot of him.

The pullets all look like EE's to me.

It is important to remember that there is no breed standard with EE, so there can't really be "poorly bred" Easter Egger. EE's are simply a hybrid bird with (hopefully) Araucana, or more typically Ameraucana, somewhere close enough in the parentage that there is hope of a blue egg gene.

Your pullets indicate Ameraucana in the background as some have beard/muff and pea comb.

Golden Wyandottes never have a pea comb. They should have a rose comb, but sometimes can have a single comb (which is a major flaw but happens in the hatchery). You do not have a GLW.

And yes, EE's can vary a lot as EE's are hybrids, mutts, with the genetic math taking off especially if it was an EE rooster or EE hen used in the parentage (which I suspicion) with different hens of different breeds.

Your rooster could possibly be an EE with a rosecomb as genetics could produce an offspring with a rosecomb if an EE was bred with a rosecomb breed (like a Wyandotte)....it would depend upon the genetics of the combs in the parentage, but a rosecomb parent over a pea comb parent either produces a walnut comb or if there were incomplete (heterozygous comb genes), then you could have walnut, rosecomb or pea comb results, or even single. (See article linked below). And sometimes just plain funk.

But as I said, I would need a much better shot of the rooster to have any type of educated guess.

Pretty flock.

LofMc

http://www.extension.org/pages/6536...backyard-flocks:-an-introduction#.Vg4Yy3pViko

 

[QueenMisha]

It is important to remember that there is no breed standard with EE, so there can't really be "poorly bred"  Easter Egger.  EE's are simply a hybrid bird with (hopefully) Araucana, or more typically Ameraucana, somewhere close enough in the parentage that there is hope of a blue egg gene.

Your pullets indicate Ameraucana in the background as some have beard/muff and pea comb.

Golden Wyandottes never have a pea comb. They should have a rose comb, but sometimes can have a single comb (which is a major flaw but happens in the hatchery). You do not have a GLW.

Lol, two points I should have clarified:

When I said "poorly bred", I meant based on the typical perception of an EE, not any kind of standard. To me, a proper EE shows a full muff/beard and pea comb, in combo with any plumage color (often buff with a hawk-type pattern) and an 80% or so chance of laying a green or blue egg. When I said "poorly bred", I meant to say that it's got more mutty of a type than the stereotypical EE.

And you do, very rarely, get pea combed Wyandottes. That's not to say they are any great or even OK specimen of the breed, or that they might not have a small amount of another breed mixed in, but out of every batch of Wyandottes I've worked with at my workplace (usually 50-150 birds every couple months), you get mostly rose combs, maybe 5-15 single combs, and 1 or 2 pea combs. They're rare but with hatchery stock it happens.

 

[BantamLover21]

I can't see your roo well enough to say what he might be. From my screen, it looks like he has a full rosecomb to me. But I'm not seeing a great shot of him.

The pullets all look like EE's to me.

It is important to remember that there is no breed standard with EE, so there can't really be "poorly bred" Easter Egger. EE's are simply a hybrid bird with (hopefully) Araucana, or more typically Ameraucana, somewhere close enough in the parentage that there is hope of a blue egg gene.

Your pullets indicate Ameraucana in the background as some have beard/muff and pea comb.

Golden Wyandottes never have a pea comb. They should have a rose comb, but sometimes can have a single comb (which is a major flaw but happens in the hatchery). You do not have a GLW.

And yes, EE's can vary a lot as EE's are hybrids, mutts, with the genetic math taking off especially if it was an EE rooster or EE hen used in the parentage (which I suspicion) with different hens of different breeds.

Your rooster could possibly be an EE with a rosecomb as genetics could produce an offspring with a rosecomb if an EE was bred with a rosecomb breed (like a Wyandotte)....it would depend upon the genetics of the combs in the parentage, but a rosecomb parent over a pea comb parent either produces a walnut comb or if there were incomplete (heterozygous comb genes), then you could have walnut, rosecomb or pea comb results, or even single. (See article linked below). And sometimes just plain funk.

But as I said, I would need a much better shot of the rooster to have any type of educated guess.

Pretty flock.

LofMc

http://www.extension.org/pages/6536...backyard-flocks:-an-introduction#.Vg4Yy3pViko

x2

 

[HomesteaderWife]

Thank you for all the help- this is why I love BYC so much. Very honest and knowledgeable answers. I will post some more photos here shortly of each chicken. Like I said, I knew they weren't going to be straight Araucana at a little feed store like that...but they really looked a bit EE as babies. They are all the same age.

As I said, I will post some more photos shortly. Thank you again, everyone.

 

[HomesteaderWife]

**Added more photos to original top post**

 

[junebuggena]

Your rooster looks like a mixed breed. There is nothing about him to indicate that he might be an Easter Egger, though. Typical hatchery/feed store sourced Easter Eggers don't have rose combs or wattles, and he's lacking the bright yellow legs of most rose combed breeds. Even my clean faced Easter Eggers don't have wattles.
Your pullets look like typical Easter Eggers to me.

 

[Kev]

Yeah they look like something from a freely bred flock containing EE and other breeds and simply calling all chicks from that EE.

The rooster IMO is a Game chicken crossed with some type of dual purpose breed, perhaps wyandotte due to rose comb.

Rose comb is a single gene, however it is extremely easily "altered" by presence or absence of other genes and as result, crosses/mixes between rose comb and other comb types will always throw a bunch of strange looking combs.