Was I duped?

[Frazzemrat1]

Fair enough. I can research

Without getting too in depth... I know that if you breed two tufted to eachother, the chick will get either two tufted genes and will die in the shell before 18-19 weeks; have one copy of the tufted gene and be tufted, or have no copies and be clean faced. My understanding is that because of the low hatch rate, many breeders will breed clean faced back in to keep the genetic pool more diverse. And yes, show only the tufted ones.

eta, the two aruacana that I have; my rooster is tufted and my pullet is clean. I plan on breeding them and seeing what happens. I also plan on allowing him to breed my other girls and maybe have easter eggers. Crazy ones. LOL

 

[Kusanar]

Without getting too in depth... I know that if you breed two tufted to eachother, the chick will get either two tufted genes and will die in the shell before 18-19 weeks; have one copy of the tufted gene and be tufted, or have not copies and be clean faced. My understanding is that because of the low hatch rate, many breeders will breed clean faced back in to keep the genetic pool more diverse. And yes, show only the tufted ones.

eta, the two aruacana that I have; my rooster is tufted and my pullet is clean. I plan on breeding them and seeing what happens. I also plan on allowing him to breed my other girls and maybe have easter eggers. Crazy ones. LOL

Ok, so that's exactly what I thought, just spelled out more.

 

[willchickeneat]

This is how an easter egger (EE) roo looks like at about 2 months. Hatcheries are generally only 90% accurate, so occassionally you'll get a rooster. I ended up with 3 this season. Pullet's tail won't be as high as this. Even if they're high, they don't fluff out and look loose. See how it looks loose with sharp tips?

BTW, as people stated, you generally won't find real Ameraucanas at feedstores. Only recognized colors for Ameraucanas are usually:
Black, blue, splash (BBS), wheaten, blue wheaten, buff and white. Self blues are in processed of getting recognized as an official color. There are project Ameraucanas that people do for fun, such as chocolate or mottled. They have to breed at least 50% true to be considered an official Ameraucana.

If you want a real Ameraucana, the only online hatcheries that I know of that carries true Ameraucanas are: My pet chicken, Meyers and Cackle but they sell them at a ridiculous price. http://fowlstuff.com/FAbout.html is by John Blem, one of the original breeders of Ameraucanas, but the min. order is 25.

I would join Facebook groups such as Real Ameraucana Marketplace or Real Ameraucana Group and connect with people who would know/experts about Ameraucanas. They are a closed group, so you have to ask to join.

http://ameraucanaalliance.org/faq.html is also a good start to learn about them.

Sometimes people post them on Craigslist, but be wary. Ask questions and get good photos to verify if it's the real deal. http://ameraucanaalliance.org/photos.html has images of the different colors and what they should look like.