Improving LF buff Ameraucanas

[John W Blehm]

Hopefully a week from today I'll have some photos of chicks from these crosses with my first hatch of the season.  I also kept a LF black/Polish cross cockerel to put over the LF buff hens. 

so that cock bird is black and I guess dominant white?  Interesting method for buffs.

The dominant white (I) came from the silver laced buff Polish.  It changes black to white, but it doesn't effect red/buff color.  So self buff varieties that carry dominant white would show silver/white "salting" in the tails rather than the common black "peppering".  With the Polish dominant white (I) makes what would be black lacing into silver/white.  This Polish variety is based on E^R, so even though they bring in several undesired traits when crossed with Ameraucanas they could be used to try to improve laced blue Ameraucanas.

[John W Blehm]

Here is one of the pullets hatched earlier this year from part of this lf buff improvement project.  She is from a lf buff Ameraucana cock over a lf black Ameraucana/lf laced buff Polish pullet.  She has dominant white (I) in her tail that the photo doesn't show, but overall I feel this is a lot of progress for the F2 generation.
The Polish hen, in the previous post, was her grandmother.

[Mike Gilbert]

Yes, that is a big change for one generation to the next.   Good work.

[Suki]

Well it sure is an interesting look.

[John W Blehm]

If all goes well with these growing buffs I'll have plenty of breeders to work with next year.  So far I'm planning on 3 different small flock matings and maybe up to 3 pair matings.

[Mike Gilbert]

If all goes well with these growing buffs I'll have plenty of breeders to work with next year.  So far I'm planning on 3 different small flock matings and maybe up to 3 pair matings.

How many did you hatch to get your keepers?

[John W Blehm]

How many did you hatch to get your keepers?

According to my records I hatched 173 chicks from the matings that produced these.  Not all of these remaining will be breeders next year, but I don't like to cull too severely too early in case a varmint or virus reduces the numbers I have to work with. 

[Michael Muenks]

The color is great on them. Well done John!

[John W Blehm]

I noticed 6 eggs on the ground, yesterday, in the pen of LF buffs.  Since my 1st hatch of this year was on January 19th, this makes the oldest pullets 20 weeks old.  The bad news is even for pullet eggs these are small.  The good news is even though some were more greenish, in person than in this photo, about half were much bluer than is normally expected from LF buff Ameraucanas.  Part of the logic behind the crosses I made was to improve egg color and size, using LF blacks that lay large to exra-large blue eggs and Polish that lay white/tinted eggs.

[Mike Gilbert]

My October hatched LF Blue Wheaten pullets are laying a small egg too.    The good news is that they are blue, not greenish, and they lay a lot of them.    These are out of one of the last of Barb Campbell's roosters, a wheaten.   I lost him over the winter to a digestive issue, so am happy I decided to use him last fall.   

[John W Blehm]

Cackle Hatchery got a start with what were supposed to be LF buff Ameraucanas several years ago. I don't know who they got them from, but at least some of the hens laid brown eggs so Cackle disposed of the flock. It seemed obvious that someone had been cross breeding with Orpingtons and/or other breeds. When Jeff, the owner of Cackle, told me about it and that he wanted to offer LF buff Ameraucanas I retrieved some birds from breeders that got them from me to be able to furnish Cackle with real buff Ameraucanas. The egg color on mine wasn't great, but at least they hadn't laid a brown egg in decades. I did some outcrossing and crossbreeding over the past few years to make improvements with blue egg color at the top of my list. This year I sat a lot of eggs from this project, but the hatches were poor. Besides that I was very fussy when it came to day-old phenotype and which chicks to send to Cackle. I'm now back out of large fowl chickens and hopefully the few started chickens I sent to Cackle this spring will turn into a good breeding flock for them over time.

[Michael Muenks]

Great work John. They look really good. I really appreciate your work and dedication to keeping large fowl buff going.