tough time deciding which breed. ameraucana or ee?

[fuzziecreatures]

Charlie on the left. He has grown up a little since this pic. His comb is twice as big and bright red. His hackles have come in nicely.
Moose on the right. He's a handsome boy. Mostly grey but brown splotches on the wing.

I have a couple other posts about them but no answers so I'm posting here. We got them from a local person raising them as ameraucana but not sure. Most of the chickens looked the same, so they seem to breed true. No clue if these boys do. They were not downsizing the hens at the time.

 

[speckledhen]

The one on the right looks like a blue Ameraucana whose base color is coming through, which means he shouldn't really be used for breeding if you want to breed to a standard. Do they have slate legs? They look like Ameraucanas to me. I had a black Ameraucana rooster whose gold base color bled through severely--see his pic below. He came from good breeder stock, too. Some of his sons had bleed-through and some did not.

 

[ipf]

EE is not a breed. I trust you know this. Breeds, by definition, breed true. EEs are birds that generally lay blue/green eggs, and look somewhat Amer-ish. There is no way to tell for sure by looking at a bird that appears to be an Amer if it is, indeed, a purebred Amer.

 

[speckledhen]

Though you might have to breed them to an Ameraucana hen to see if they breed true, almost no Easter Eggers have slate legs plus are solid colors in addition to that. Visually, as long as they have slate legs (which I can't see), they would qualify as Ameraucana as far as I can tell from that photo. To my knowledge, there is no blood test, so we have to go on visual plus what they produce.

 

[fuzziecreatures]

Both have slate legs. Both are fairly nice but Moose is becoming not so nice. He stands up all proud and follows me along the fence, doing his little leg shuffle he does to intimidate the other chickens. He has surprised my son a couple times by going at the back of his legs. He will likely become soup.