[Stereo]

Can somebody confirm for me please? I have a lovely blue araucana cockerel who is very much true to type and I want to breed from him. If I buy in some decent blue hens, is it correct that I will get a mix of blue, black and splash chicks?

Is it also true that to guarantee blue chicks I would need a combination of black and splash in the parents?

[nutterly_uts]

It works that way in Orpingtons so I'd presume its the same

[shygirl]

I don't know but when we bred our lavender araucana cockerel to white sussex hens, we consistently got black chicks with white speckles - and khaki coloured eggs. probably doesn't help but anyway.

[clydesdaleclopper]

The blue gene is heterozygous so for it to show as blue in the markings you must have only one copy of the blue gene. If you mate blue to blue each parent will have 1 blue and 1 black so statistically you are likely to end up with 50% blue (1 copy of blue 1 of black) 25% black (2 copies of black) and 25% splash ( 2 copies of blue)


So mating a splash with a black will give you 100% blue BUT in the black and splash colourations you can't see other aspects of the markings so could breed in undesirable traits (such as happens with the lacing in Blue Andalusians)

[Steph Hen]

Lavender araucana + lavender Araucana = lavender Araucana here.
I know it's different with some other breeds with blue colours, like french copper blue marrans, etc.

Or maybe I've just been lucky? - not had many chicks out of them.

[landroverroy]

 Me too.
I've never had any other colour but blue from mine.

[shygirl]

are lavender and blue the same colours?
I mentioned lavender as that's the only colour we had.

[Marches Farmer]

Blue Laced Wyandotte + Blue Laced Wyandotte=50% blue laced, 25% buff laced and 25% gold laced ... just to confuse things further!

[chrismahon]

I can confirm that what Marches Farmer says is certainly the case for Wyandottes, having been a registered breeder of Blue Laced for several years. To make matters worse the buff laced show a lot of feather discolouration and of course half the hatch are cockerels! The net result is only a quarter of the hatch are the pullets you wanted to breed.

[Stereo]

As far as I understand, lavender is not the same as blue and lavender + lavender should produce 100% lavender. It's the blue which get's complicated.

[Steph Hen]

Are there blue Araucanas?

[landroverroy]

Yes - they're technically called lavender.

[HesterF]

I googled Araucanas yesterday because I'd only heard of lavenders but apparently there are blue recognised as well so they are two different colours. Based on Orps, lavenders breed true but blue/splash/black follows the pattern outlined by Clydesdaleclopper above.

[devonlady]

I have gold laced and silver pencilled Wyandottes and have been given a stunning pheasant Wyandotte cockerel, what colours should I expect from this union?

[Steph Hen]

This is interesting, thanks for enlightening me 
I realise now that when I'd read the breed standard I'd skipped down and read off the blue specification and assumed it was part of the lavender description - where they describe shades of new/wet slate. Silly me!
Anyone have any pictures? Is it easy to tell the lavender and blues apart if they were next to each other in a cage or does it come down to knowing the breeding of the birds?