Quote:
question for you!! Say I have 2 white *ee's* (came from mixed colored birds) and I breed them and hatch 2 eggs....one chick is white and the other mixed color....Do I have pure ameraucanas??? Afterall that is 50% aint it??
You must have a much larger sampling, scientifically speaking, to be able to say a bird breeds true a certain percentage of the time.
I agree, think you need at least 3 figures to get an accurate assessment. I am sure if you take 2 white *ee's* and breed them and cull carefully for the standard you may, after many years work, end up with ameraucana. I am going to be working on some new color ameraucana and I will sell them as EE's until I get them to breed true(heck of a lot better than 50%). When I accomplish getting them to breed true, if they meet the standard and I can get people interested, I will say unrecognized color ameraucana while trying to get it recognized. I have EE's I just hatched, some mixed color ameraucana and some ameraucana over andalusian/australorp....they all hatched with muffs/beard, pea comb and green legs(anadusian cross). I hatched those for my daughter because our dogs ate one of her hens.
so to the OP, I consider any chicken that has a pea comb and a muff/beard a lays an off color(non standard brown/white) egg an EE, but that's just my opinion
when you start losing those indentifying marks it gets fuzzy for me....