The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Stereo on January 09, 2015, 05:42:59 pm

Title: Blue hens
Post by: Stereo on January 09, 2015, 05:42:59 pm
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?
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: nutterly_uts on January 09, 2015, 05:51:41 pm
It works that way in Orpingtons so I'd presume its the same
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: shygirl on January 09, 2015, 07:55:37 pm
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.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: clydesdaleclopper on January 09, 2015, 08:02:07 pm
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)
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: Steph Hen on January 10, 2015, 07:04:20 am
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.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: landroverroy on January 10, 2015, 09:25:20 am
 Me too.
I've never had any other colour but blue from mine.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: shygirl on January 10, 2015, 11:02:24 am
are lavender and blue the same colours?
I mentioned lavender as that's the only colour we had.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: Marches Farmer on January 10, 2015, 11:52:12 am
Blue Laced Wyandotte + Blue Laced Wyandotte=50% blue laced, 25% buff laced and 25% gold laced ... just to confuse things further!
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: chrismahon on January 10, 2015, 12:04:25 pm
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.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: Stereo on January 10, 2015, 07:54:00 pm
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.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: Steph Hen on January 10, 2015, 10:51:42 pm
Are there blue Araucanas?
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: landroverroy on January 11, 2015, 06:43:01 pm
Yes - they're technically called lavender. ::)
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: HesterF on January 11, 2015, 11:53:36 pm
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.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: devonlady on January 12, 2015, 08:23:05 am
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?
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: Steph Hen on January 12, 2015, 08:55:59 am
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?
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: HesterF on January 12, 2015, 09:56:24 am
Again no idea whether this applies to Araucanas but in Orps, lavender is a pure lightish grey colour whereas blue have a pencilling/lacing effect around the edges of the feathers and tend to be darker. The cockerels are easier to tell because the blues have a darker head/neck feathers whereas lavender are one shade all over. But I hatched lavender and blue chicks at the same time and it was months before I was sure which was which (not helped by the blue pen being one to potentially produce all three colours so I was expecting splash in there too).

Just had a quick google and it looks like Araucanas are the same. From the breed club website:

http://www.araucana.org.uk/photos.html (http://www.araucana.org.uk/photos.html)

Lavender top, blue bottom.
Title: Re: Blue hens
Post by: Stereo on January 12, 2015, 10:12:09 am
It does look tricky with the hens. I've got lavender hens and a cockerel and a blue cockerel and with the boys, it's easy to see the difference. The wet slate description is very accurate. I think I might try to get some blue hens which should give a range of offspring. I can then maybe start a black line as well if I can hatch enough hens.