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Dennis, do you have pictures of the lavender olive eggers? do they just look like lavender ameraucanas? If you have those black sexlink ameraucanas this year, I would like to get one with a few other chicks. The lavender olive egger sounds terrific! I've not decided if I will take a few duck eggs for Sunny to hatch yet. Hubby needs to get waterline to the coop first, so I have to wait and see. Which duck is the friendlyest? I don't care about egg production at all. I prefer to get the chicks after May 1, so it's warm enough for them to move to coop at about 5~6w old.
 
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TillyPeeps said:
Dennis, do you have pictures of the lavender olive eggers? do they just look like lavender ameraucanas? If you have those black sexlink ameraucanas this year, I would like to get one with a few other chicks. The lavender olive egger sounds terrific! I've not decided if I will take a few duck eggs for Sunny to hatch yet. Hubby needs to get waterline to the coop first, so I have to wait and see. Which duck is the friendlyest? I don't care about egg production at all. I prefer to get the chicks after May 1, so it's warm enough for them to move to coop at about 5~6w old.
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This is my first year producing them. I'm sure they will be nice, I am using cuckoo Ameraucanas (lavender and some black split to lavender) with lavender Marans roosters. Previous hybrids involving ameraucanas (the black sexlinks of yesteryear) make me think the chicks will have muffs and beards, with pea combs. The feathered legs of the marans should also be dominant. Not sure of the leg color, but I think they will be slate or black, as that also seems to be dominant, but there is a sex-linked gene involved, so the dark legs of the black sexlinks might not be true in a reversed cross. So, in a nutshell, I think they may look like Ameraucanas with feathered legs. The sexlink olive eggers should be produced in pure black and pure lavender, unlike the autosexing olive eggers I produce every year, where the pullets look a lot like Welbars, with a small crest.
My goal is to produce a wide variety of sexable chicks where I can accurately predict egg color and hen appearance -- while using as few pens as possible. Olive eggers (at least the F1 hybrids) do not take a separate pen, I just put legbars with the Welbar flock and cuckoo Ams with the lavender Marans flock. All the blue eggs from those 2 pens will produce Olive Eggers that can be easily sexed and separated by color at hatch. In other words all the blue eggs from those pens can hatch together, the males will have head spots, the females will not, and will look like Welbar pullets (the autosexing OE's) or be black or lavender (the sexlinked OE's). Obviously, I put a lot of thought into the pens and how to hatch them to keep them separate from the other breeds.

If I produce sex-linked Ameraucanas, they will be mostly blacks, as I can't seem to find a non-cuckoo lavender rooster. Used to have plenty running loose on the farm until I started to look for one last summer. I raised a few non-cuckoo chicks late in the season, and don't you know -- all lavender ones were females. Some of the black cockerels could work, but I was also raising splits to mottled and those cockerels don't carry lavender at all. So, it will be a surprise when I get chicks from that cross.
I also plan to produce cuckoo Ameraucanas. Hopefully, I can learn to sex them by the size of their headspots, like Barred Rocks and my Genetic Hackle. but headspot size can be tricky to gauge, with some chicks falling into the middle "size", so I am unlikely to be able to guarantee pullets with those, but I hope I can sex them, as the lavender cuckoo pullets are really neat birds.

As for ducks, none of mine are as tame as the "average" chicken. I think to get ducks tame, you need to handle them gently and often as ducklings. Broody raised ducklings might prove to be quite wild around people. Glen from Sand Hill says the friendliest breed has are his Buff ducks. Of the breeds I do have, I have found the Mini Silver Appleyards and the new Aztecs to be a little tamer than the Australian Spotted's. I also have a pair of (very rare) Shetland ducks. They really think I am out to kill them every time I go into their pen.
 
My sweet splash marans starts to lay now. But she lays light brown eggs.:hmm My only welbar hasn't back to lay yet. I miss those shinny dark brown eggs. I think I need another Welbar. DS wants a black ameraucana, so I will drive to get one whenever you have any black sex-linked Ameraucana. Lavender OE sounds super cute too. Of course, Opal legbar are so beautiful! and Spitzhauben! I thought I have a large 8x10 coop, but it's still not large enough for all the chickens I want...:barnie
 
I really like the pure black Ameraucanas too. They are such fluffy, but sparkly birds. The black roosters are way prettier than the lavenders, or even blues. Something about them just makes me happy. I feel that way with the genetic hackles too. Those are both breeds I have had for a long time, so maybe some nostalgia?
 
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LadyBehir said:
Happy New Year everyone! Not going to the Farm Show this year. :(

Question - what is everyone's large fowl breed favorite? I like big birds and I cannot lie....
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Definitely English Orpington. Big, friendly and beautiful :) I plan to experiment and cross them with my blrw roo and see what I get. I'll seperate them... after I beat this stupid strep throat.
 

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