Of What Quality is He?

[Chilebound]

Here is a photo or two of my Roo; I am fairly certain that he is an Americauna......BUT I am interested to know how good he is? I worry that he is a little small(?). The reason why I ask is that next spring I hope to enlarge the flock by natural means--and let the Hens do the work of keeping the chicks warm and feed, not me. The hens are all different kinds--but I do have two other Ameraucana hens, but more than likely the resulting would be half EE and half whatever the eggs came from. He is now 7 months old.

Also has anyone done this cross breeding stuff? and how do the resulting hens lay?

 

[chicken wild]

He is an EE.

 

[Goose and Fig]

He does look like a young silver ameraucana, but I'm not too familiar with that color and the standards. Not sure he should have any white on his belly. Unless you have silver hens, all resulting chicks would be Easter Eggers. Can never have too many EEs

 

[Goose and Fig]

I would post his pic on the ameraucana thread- there are a few people that raise silvers that could give you more info.

 

[Illia]

Sorry but he's an Easter Egger (our name for a crossbred falsely sold as an Ameraucana) Hatcheries like to sell under false claim. Your hens are also Easter Eggers, and not real Ameraucanas. They're good for cool egg colors and that's it.

If you really do want to get into breeding real Ameraucanas, you can head over to the Ameraucana thread in the Breeds, Genetics, and Showing section and ask around there. Including myself, there are quite a few Ameraucana breeders who'd love to help you out.

 

[donrae]

If you're breeding for a backyard laying flock, I'll bet he's fine. Sounds like the majority of your offspring will be crossbreeds, anyway. My small experience with crossbreeds is they lay very well. I've heard that your third and farther generations may lose some laying ability, don't know how true that is personally as I'm on my first generation. My EE/brown leghorn young hens lay very nicely. I'm hoping to hatch more of my own replacements out next year.....I have a EE roo and two brown leghorns over a mixed flock of purebred hatchery layers (BO, BR, EE, BSL, and a brown leghorn). My understanding is your typical hatchery EE is bred for egg color and production, that's exactly what I'm looking for!

Your roo is beautiful, I have a soft spot for the silvers