True breeding

[Carrie H Turbyfill]

If I order Wheaten chicks, do I have to get a Wheaten rooster for them to remain purebred?  Or could I have Wheaten hens and a Lav rooster and them not be turned into EE?

[Russ Blair]

Any time you cross varieties you will get EE. Some breeders have made crosses to improve certain varieties. I would not recommend it to any new breeder or someone that lacks the knowledge or time to get them back to pure. Especially when dealing with a recessive color like Lavender.

[Mike Gilbert]

Any time you cross varieties you will get EE. Some breeders have made crosses to improve certain varieties. I would not recommend it to any new breeder or someone that lacks the knowledge or time to get them back to pure. Especially when dealing with a recessive color like Lavender.

Russ's statement is generally true.  There are a couple of exceptions where the varieties are different by only one copy of one dominant gene.   You can breed wheaten to blue wheaten, and the expected result is about half of each - all pure wheaten or blue wheaten.    And you can do the same with black and blue, though I don't recommend it for reasons that go beyond the scope of the question.

[Dennis Heltzel]

Is anyone working on making a Lavender Wheaten? At some point, someone must have created blue wheatens by crossing a blue to a wheaten, right?

[Harry Shaffer]

Yes, there is a lady near Binghamton, NY that has them already perfected.  You can find her on BYC forum.

[Carrie H Turbyfill]

So whatever hens I get I need to get the same rooster for them to remain Ameracaunas? If you cross the colors, then it messes up their "Ameracauna" name and they become EE?

[Tailfeathers]

Carrie, see Mike's comment.  It's spot on.  As long as yo stay within the WBS, you're fine.  WBS works the same as BBS genetically.

[Suki]

So whatever hens I get I need to get the same VARIETY rooster for them to remain Ameracaunas?

Yes that's why the second part of your question....

  If you cross the colors, then it messes up their "Ameracauna" name and they become EE?

Is also true.

[Rob Skelton]

  Seems to me they remain pure Ameraucana, they are just a mixed color variety.   If I breed my black Hams to my whites, they are still Hamburgs.  Crossing any breed varieties doesn't make a mutt breed, only a non recognized variety.  easter eggers are mixed breeds, generally  unless one would select for certain traits and standardized them.

[Mike Gilbert]

We have taken the position that birds that breed predictably true for color variety are Ameraucanas, and those that don't are easter eggers.   Once you start crossing varieties you can end up with a mess that might take years to straighten out.   Except for those that are very closely related genetically, as mentioned above. 

[John W Blehm]

  Seems to me they remain pure Ameraucana, they are just a mixed color variety.   If I breed my black Hams to my whites, they are still Hamburgs.  Crossing any breed varieties doesn't make a mutt breed, only a non recognized variety.  easter eggers are mixed breeds, generally  unless one would select for certain traits and standardized them.

That is and has been my personal interpretation also, but as a club officer I don't push it.  Back at an annual club meeting, in Missouri, in 2006 the Easter Egger topic came up the club's definition was pretty much worked out that evening.  I think I was the only one in the room that disagreed with it.  I did tweak the language a bit, since the way it was originally worded Araucanas and any other blue egg laying breed would be considered an Easter Egger.

What are Easter Egg chickens?
The Ameraucana Alliance defines an Easter Egg chicken or Easter Egger as any chicken that possesses the blue egg gene, but doesn’t fully meet any breed descriptions as defined in the APA and/or ABA standards.  Further, even if a bird meets an Ameraucana standard breed description, but doesn’t meet a variety description or breed true at least 50% of the time it is considered an Easter Egg chicken.  By definition an Easter Egger is not a breed of chicken.
(Some have claimed that any variety that isn’t recognized, by the APA/ABA, is an Easter Egger, but that is not true according to the definition above.   For example, lavender Ameraucanas breed true and are not Easter Eggers.)

[Jensen Pierson]

That all being said, interesting expirement is happening at my place. I need to get the body size up on my black ameraucanas so I purchased a single Australorp cockerel in the fall to put with my 4 best orange eyed hens. So far all those chicks are growing up well, I have a few single combs but the rest are looking like ameraucanas. I have them completely separate from my other birds and toe punched. It will be interesting to see how they grow out the rest of the way. I will post pictures later.

[Tailfeathers]

Has there been any thought or discussion about taking another look at what the AA considers an EE to be?  I realize the language came over to the AA with basically everything else but I'm wondering if it might not be worthwhile to revisit the issue.

Here's a specific example that I find it impossible to argue with.  Pretty much everybody knows that if you breed two single Mb birds of the same variety together, you are going to get 25% clean-faced.  According to the current definition those clean-faced birds would not be considered Ameraucanas. 

If I take one of those clean-faced birds and breed it to a double Mb bird of the same variety (or even a different variety in the case of a BBS or WBS), I am going to get 100% single Mb offspring of which any of them could be SQ and potentially even Champion AOSB. 

Now imagine the hoopla that would come when someone says, "Well, I bred my best hen to my Easter Egger rooster and got this bird."

[John W Blehm]

Has there been any thought or discussion about taking another look at what the AA considers an EE to be?  I realize the language came over to the AA with basically everything else but I'm wondering if it might not be worthwhile to revisit the issue.

Here's a specific example that I find it impossible to argue with.  Pretty much everybody knows that if you breed two single Mb birds of the same variety together, you are going to get 25% clean-faced.  According to the current definition those clean-faced birds would not be considered Ameraucanas. 

If I take one of those clean-faced birds and breed it to a double Mb bird of the same variety (or even a different variety in the case of a BBS or WBS), I am going to get 100% single Mb offspring of which any of them could be SQ and potentially even Champion AOSB. 

Now imagine the hoopla that would come when someone says, "Well, I bred my best hen to my Easter Egger rooster and got this bird."

But with your example the clean faced offspring aren't Ameraucanas because they don't meet the breed "standard" requiring muffs, regardless of what a breed club or individual thinks.  The written Standard is the "last word" for those that are into exhibition. 
Since the Standard and judges only deal with phenotype the genotype of parent birds doesn't matter to them, even though it matters to us breeders.
I really don't think any experienced breeder or exhibitor would be surprised by your last statement, understanding that mutts sometimes can and do produce exhibition quality birds.  It is just the way it is in the APA/ABA world of exhibition poultry. 
I have Easter Eggers (according to the club's definition) right now from different outcrosses that I purposely made to be used to produce Standard Ameraucanas.  Those Easter Eggers came from Ameraucanas and some of the F1 chicks from the Easter Eggers will be Ameraucanas.

[Tailfeathers]

But with your example the clean faced offspring aren't Ameraucanas because they don't meet the breed "standard" requiring muffs

Actually the SOP lists the absence of muffs/beard as a DQ.  Doesn't say it's not an Ameraucana.  On that note, I actually watched one judge go down the line on W & BW cockerels and DQ every single one of them for having "foreign color" because their beards still had some white in them.

I forgot to mention before that I sell my clean-faced birds as "Non-Standard" Ameraucanas.  The Easter Eggers I sell are crosses from other breeds.