Bantam buff blue-egger layers

[John W Blehm]

It was a beautiful day to sit and watch the birds yesterday.  As I was daydreaming about breeding I decided I'll do a little crossbreeding.  I've often had requests for just pullet chicks especially from urbanites that just want a few laying hens and some of them have to deal with ordinances that allow only pullets/hens.  I plan to cross bantam buff Ameraucana cocks over the few bantam Lakenvelder and silver spangled Hamburg hens I have to produce sex-linked blue-eggers.  The pullets should be buff with some black while the cockerels should hatch more whitish.  These hybrid pullets/hens should be better layers than most bantams due to the hybrid vigor (heterosis).   

[Mike Gilbert]

And then I bet those extra, unwanted F1 roosters will go back over some of the hens to make Golden Lakenvelders and Golden Spangled Hamburgs!   Am I right?

[John W Blehm]

And then I bet those extra, unwanted F1 roosters will go back over some of the hens to make Golden Lakenvelders and Golden Spangled Hamburgs!   Am I right?

No.  They will probably be sold as meat birds.  I have my bantam Vorwerks and I'm not interested in golden spangled Hamburgs.  My friend Ed Linton worked on them for several years and I believe he is ready to give up on them.  The Standard calls for a different color/pattern in the tails of the golden than in the silver...weird.  He has developed some very nice bantam black Hamburgs that are making it to champion row.

[Beth Curran]

I like this. Around here I have very little demand for breeder birds, and a sex-link EE would help pay the feed bill. I've been thinking about something like this since my buff/black project, when I put a black male over a buff female. The only F1 was female so I can't say what the males would have looked like but when I bred her back to buff all of the F2 males were white/cream colored. None of the females were that color. I culled the males and used a buff male over the females, and all F3s were buff. But I remember thinking it would be great if I could intentionally produce the result I got in the F2s. I'm anxious to see how your project goes!

[John W Blehm]

I like this. Around here I have very little demand for breeder birds, and a sex-link EE would help pay the feed bill. I've been thinking about something like this since my buff/black project, when I put a black male over a buff female. The only F1 was female so I can't say what the males would have looked like but when I bred her back to buff all of the F2 males were white/cream colored. None of the females were that color. I culled the males and used a buff male over the females, and all F3s were buff. But I remember thinking it would be great if I could intentionally produce the result I got in the F2s. I'm anxious to see how your project goes!

Jerry has used his cuckoo Ameraucana hens to get sex-linked chicks.  The cockerels hatch with a white spot on their heads.  Sex-linked black laying hens are produced using the Barring gene (B) like Jerry has done.
Sex-linked red laying hens are produced using the Silver gene (S) as I'm doing with my bantam blue-eggers.  A big difference between your proposed project and Jerry's with mine is that you guys are outcrossing different Ameraucana varieties and I'm crossbreeding.  The more distant the relationship between the male and female parent lines/stains, the more "hybrid vigor" should be inherited by the chicks.  It could be a hundred or more years since my bantam buffs shared a common ancestor with my bantam Hamburgs or Lakenvelders, so that is as important to this cross as being able to sex the day-old chicks by down color. 
The really good meat and layer hybrids are descended from great grandparent (GGP) strains that are so distantly related that they claim to be "unrelated" while being the same breed.  They'll cross Cornish GGP stain A with Cornish GGP stain B to produce a Cornish grandparent (GP) strain that will be crossed with another that came from Cornish GGP strains C & D to produce the Cornish parent strain that is then crossed with the Plymouth Rock parent strain to finally produce a meat bird.   

[Mike Gilbert]

I would just point out that any chick carrying the sex link barring gene would have a spot on the head of the chick down, and both males and females would get if their father were pure for the barring gene.  If the male had only one copy of B, then half the females and half the males would inherit, so it is not a sex link cross.  The way to get sex linked chicks with that cross is to use solid males and barred females.   That way the males get one copy of B from their mothers, and the females would be solid colored, as they would not get a copy of B since their sire did not carry it.

[John W Blehm]

...The way to get sex linked chicks with that cross is to use solid males and barred females.   That way the males get one copy of B from their mothers, and the females would be solid colored, as they would not get a copy of B since their sire did not carry it.

Right.  Jerry used cuckoo (B) hens and that is the way the commercial hatcheries produce their black sex-linked layers, but with barred (B) hens.

[Dennis Heltzel]

I agree that there is a huge market for known pullet chicks. Every chick I hatch is either autosexing, or an Ameraucana. One of my best sellers last year was a LF black sexlink that laid blue eggs. Father was a black Am (named Casanova, because he wouldn't tolerate any "help" from other roos, he insisted on servicing 24 pullets by himself) over California Grey pullets. A Cali Grey is basically a barred leghorn. They lay *lots* of white eggs.
The only drawback of this cross is that they lay so well that the blue color fades over time, but no one has found that sufficient reason to criticize them. They usually buy some Cream Legbars also to keep some very blue eggs in their basket.

For next year, I plan to raise some Silvers and Wheatens to sexable age to sell started pullets to people that want pure Ameraucanas. I'm also going to experiment with a Cream Legbar pullet and Black (or Lavender) Am roo to make black sexlinks.

[John W Blehm]

Here is what the bantam buff Ameraucana/Lakenvelder cross chicks look like.  The pullet, on the left, is very buffy while the cockerel is more silver.

[Dustin Bonner]

Very neat, John! I wondered how those were going to turn out for you.

[John W Blehm]

...and here is how they look as young adults.

[Dustin Bonner]

What pretty looking little things!

[Cesar Villegas]

...and here is how they look as young adults.

John with the black tail feathers would this cross be useful to improve the wing carriage on wheatens. Since wheatens already black in their tails. I’m seeing pretty good wing carriage from that cross

[John W Blehm]

...and here is how they look as young adults.

John with the black tail feathers would this cross be useful to improve the wing carriage on wheatens. Since wheatens already black in their tails. I’m seeing pretty good wing carriage from that cross

This was the result of crossbreeding (crossing an Ameraucana with a different breed) and only for the propose of producing a hybrid for egg production and something to experiment with.
Unless genes are needed to make new varieties of Ameraucanas that aren't already within the breed I don't recommend any crossbreeding, but rather only outcrosses (crossing an Ameraucana with another Ameraucana of a different variety or strain) to make improvements to type, combs, size, wing & tail carriage, etc.
Unless someone has done a lot of homework and is in for the long haul I believe crossbreeding of Ameraucanas should be behind us. 
 

[Mike Gilbert]

I would like to point out that the Standard calls for relatively low wing carriage.   There is a discussion of this on the Ameraucana Alliance Open Facebook group.  You will find it under the post of the LF Blue cockerel.     https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmeraucanaAlliance/