Why Can't Hatcheries Keep Pure Ameraucanas?

[NYREDS]

I never really care what they're called or are as long as they lay colored eggs

There's the real why of it. Most people who buy them are looking for blue/green eggs & nothing more. If that satisfies your need why would you go elsewhere & spend more.
It is absolutely no secret that hatcheries produce quantity not quality & they do it cheaply & efficiently. For most of the chicken buying public that's enough. I don't understand why people continue to seem surprised by this fact.​

 

[featherz]

I brought a couple of EE roos to the livestock auction - told the guy they were EE's and he said "oh, you mean americaunas? ok!". LOL. Ya really can't win on that one, I don't think.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think it is generally wrong to lump all hatcheries together. Just like everything else, some are better than others and some follow the SOP better than others. Some breeders follow the SOP better than other breeders. But due to pen breeding, even the hatcheries that do select pretty closely to the SOP will not consistently produce anything close to show quality chickens. When hatcheries put 20 roosters and 200 hens in the same pen, they have no control over which rooster breeds which hen. Good breeders will carefully select which rooster mated with which hen is most likely to produce a chicken meeting the SOP. They will often have different lines to try to produce prize winning hens, knowing that the roosters from those crosses will probably not be prize winners. Good breeders are really good!

I believe there are 8 different recognized colors/patterns for Ameraucanas. Somebody will correct me if I am wrong. If you cross two prize winning Ameraucanas and the offspring does not meet the SOP, you do not have Ameraucanas. You have EE's. If you put chickens that meet the SOP for the 8 different recognized colors/patterns in a pen and let themn randomly breed, you are not going to get show quality birds. After a very few generations, you will be even further away. Even if you chose nothing but prize winning Blue Wheatons (hatcheries are not going to do that) and did pen breeding for a few generations, even doing a good job of selecting your breeders, you are not going to have show quality birds. After a few generations of breeding crosses with crosses, a lot of genes get hidden in the mix. You become even more uncertain what you will get.

While some hatcheries are more honest about breeding prize winners than others in their advertizing, they are not in the business of producing show quality birds of any breed, let alone the mix that are EE's. And some are more honest about not calling them Ameraucanas than others. If you are a serious Ameraucana breeder, you should know the difference and know that you are going to pay for show quality. The prices you pay for hatchery birds should be a dead giveaway.