I hope someone can explain this.
My Americauna hen was very sick, I don't know what was wrong with her, but I thought she was going to die. Well, she recovered, except for the use of her right leg, (we now call her Hop-A-Long) she does quite well on one leg , and has started laying again.
Now here is the puzzle, before she got sick she was in a run with an Americauna roo. and laid an olive green egg.
After she recovered she is outside where the only other chicken is a White Leghorn roo.that had been injured, and she now lays a light blue egg.
Anyone had an experiance like this?
lynda.
Changing Colors???
Well, Lyndainvirginia I myself had the same problem. I'm thinking it's that each rooster has its own genes. Like if it mates with one roo I'll have one color egg. If it mates with the other roo, the egg/s produced will probably change color.
I too have a chicken with a leg that is not in use. My brother calls her (Gimpy), I think it's pretty mean.
Well Good Luck, Eric
From my understanding of genetics "white leghorns" are one of the breeds which can suppress brown from coming out in eggs. Many folks who are trying to get their Ameraucana hens to lay blue will throw in a white leghorn to try to get rid of the green eggs. Most of us buy under the ameraucana concept but in reality we are buying easter eggers.
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/dual.html
My understanding is that if you get green eggs from your hen then she herself is a mutt and not pure.
I bought "easter eggers" from Ideal hatchery. Then I bought "easter egger" eggs and hatched them. I was surprised to see all the eggs I bought were different shades of green or greenish blue, but NO blue. I was disappointed, and started doing some reading at that time. That is when I realized the difference between green and blue.
In the end it's ok with me because my goal is a happy back yard flock. I don't intend to show or specialize, although down the road I may need to change that viewpoint...lol
The difference between what I hatched and what I bought (mine are too young to lay yet) bird wise is all the birds from the hatchery have very dark legs and an almost hawk like features of the head/face.
The eggs I hatched only one is a dark bird with darker skin looking similar in appearance to the hatchery birds...the others hatched from the same breeder have yellow legs and two of those are pure white. One is a muted color almost a cream with barring. I'm expecting them all to lay green eggs.....lol.
This is a copy and paste ::::::::
What about egg color?
If they are purebred for egg color Ameraucana chickens will lay blue eggs. I would describe them as a light pastel blue and others may describe the blue color differently, but if they are pure for the blue egg gene they will not lay pink, green or olive drab eggs. Although an egg will occasionally receive an extra dose of blue at one end, this is not the norm. I know many would like the eggs to be a deep blue or Robin’s egg blue, but that is not the color of blue chicken eggs. You will know the blue is the proper purebred blue when the inside and outside egg shell colors are the same.
Another copy and paste :::::::::::::::
This is where the naming system gets confusing. True ameraucanas are a purebred, tailed, blue-egged only bird with muffs and a beard. Contrary to popular belief, apparently true ameraucanas have little relation to the tailess araucanas. The ancestors came from the same guy, but a different "kind" of chicken.
Where the problems begin is where during the blue-egged chicken craze, hatcheries started crossing ameraucanas with any breed and called them, incorrectly, "araucanas," "ameraucanas," or "americanas." Any bird that laid a colored egg was called that. Now, most people have no clue that their "ameraucanas" are not real ameraucanas. The best term I have heard for the crossbreds is "Easter egger."
Blue eggs is listed as a breed characteristic, and both ameraucanas and araucanas should be bred for it along with type and plumage. Typically, the green-egg layers have the worst type because the green is evidence of crossbreeding.
~Julie
This message was edited Jun 15, 2007 8:34 PM
I find it highly unlikley that the bird will lay a different color egg because of who she mated with
If she's alone would it then be a different color again?
More likely it has something to do with her illness, stress,or what she's eating
Supposedly by genetics if she is alone her egg will be green. Her egg can only be blue if she is pure blooded.
Now when she is mated with a rooster apparently his genes come into play not only of the offspring but the egg too...supposedly. White leghorns are often used because they have the ability to suppress brown color eggs even in a brown egg laying female....
Again I have not experimented at home, only know what is written about the genetics online. Does seem hard to fathom.
I like this link a lot......
http://www.poultry.allotment.org.uk/Chicken_a/egg_shell_color/index.php
here is another link
http://www.the-coop.org/wwwboard/discus/messages/15/5817.html
here is another link
http://marsa_sellers.tripod.com/geneticspages/page0.html
Genetics of eggshell color:
Brown eggshell color is a complex trait and as many as 13 genes have been proposed to account for the range in eggshell color. The white eggshell color is due to an absence of blue and brown, and perhaps some modifying factors (genes), since there are different shades of white. The blue eggshell gene, O, expresses if it is present which is why it is considered to be dominant. The gene symbol for the recessive, wild-type gene is o or o+. My understanding at present is that the locations of the brown eggshell genes are not known and it is not known how many brown modifying genes there are or where they are in relationship to the genes of known locations. Brown may itself be just an array of white modifiers. There is a recessive sex-linked gene, pr, that inhibits the expression of brown eggshell genes and can be used to help remove the brown tint from white eggs, for example.
The brown pigment, ooporphyrin, is deposited primarily on the outside of the eggshell and is a chemical compound resulting from hemoglobin metabolism. In fact, much of the brown pigment can be buffed off with a common kitchen (plastic) scrubbing sponge and warm soapy water. The blue eggshell pigment, oocyanin, is a byproduct of bile formation and is present throughout the eggshell.
The eggshell color genes interact in the following way. The effect of the blue gene is dominant over white. The effect of the brown gene is dominant over white. When blue and brown genes are both present, both genes contribute to the eggshell color making the eggs appear green. In this case, the inside surface of the eggshell will be significantly less green and more blue than the outside surface, which is where most of the brown pigment is.
Since the blue and brown eggshell color genes should be at different locations, we need at least two pairs of genes to describe the genotypes of the blue, white, green and brown layers. For the purposes of this discussion, I use the fictitious symbol, Br, to indicate a brown eggshell color gene. I represent the complementary recessive gene that takes the place of Br when it is absent as "br" (lack of brown gene). We can represent the genotype of a blue eggshell layer as (O, O) with (br, br). Blue and white genes, (O, o) with (br, br) also yields a blue egg, but perhaps a lighter blue. The pair of eggshell color genes, (O, O) with (Br, Br), are the genes for producing a green egg, (o, o) with (Br, Br) produces a brown egg and (o, o) with (br, br) yields a white egg. Females having one blue gene and one or more brown genes will lay eggs having a greenish color. My personal experience with eggshell color makes me believe that this genetics picture of eggshell color is oversimplified (there are certainly more than one gene for brown eggshell color. In order to account for the wide range of shades of brown eggs we see in our Sil-Go-Link line, there must be a relatively large number of eggshell color modifying genes that are not yet known. Most people accept a rule of thumb to the effect that a daughter will lay eggs that are a color between that of the parent lines.
To explore the genetics of eggshell color, let’s cross a green egg layer (faux-Araucana or Easter Egg Chicken) with a white egg layer (Leghorn). Here as before, I will use the fictitous symbol "Br" to represent brown eggshell genes. The genes of the green egg layer are (O, O) with (Br, Br) assuming the locations of the blue and brown genes are not the same. The Leghorn is (o, o) with (br, br) for eggshell color (white). In this example, the daughters will all have one gene for blue eggshell color and one gene for brown. They will all be green egg layers! My personal experience with eggshell color genetics leads me to believe it is more complex than this. There certainly must be a number of brown eggshell genes and once you have them, it is difficult to breed them out completely.
Julie
The way I read this is not that mating a green egg layer with a leghorn will produce blue eggs but that crossing a green egg layer with a leghorn will produce a chicken that may lay blue eggs. Or actually that they will be green egg layers.
yeah. my easter egger used to lay a variety of shades. I think crested chick is right and it has to do with diet and stress.
I've read thru the articles an cant find where it says the egg color changes depending on who its breed to
It says the DAUGHTERS egg color will be this or that depending on the parents
But I can't see where the cock bird has anything to do with it except influencing the color genes its children produce
and that first article says stress changes the egg color
not trying to be a jerk about this but if what you are saying is true I'd REALLY like to know
It could open up all kinds of experiments
I agree it makes much more sense to me that the "daughter" would be a blue egg layer But it seems very odd to me that when lyndainvirginia puts her hen with a white leghorn, as she states, in the first post her eggs are suddenly blue.
That is what made me go back to copy and past articles. It seems too coincidental that suddenly they change color, yes I know there was an injury which would be stressful but she doesn't claim the eggs turned until she was with a different roo....
It would be nice if someone else could experiment. Or perhaps lyndainvirginia could place the hen back with the original amerucana roo and see if the eggs turn back to green etc....
I guess given the circumstances stated by lyndainvirginia, I'm not willing to say it's impossible that the white leghorn is somehow contributing to her change in egg color. I'm also not curious enough to go out and buy a white leghorn....lol
~Julie
She also said the chicken was very sick before and has now recovered. It makes no sense to me at all that what rooster the chicken is bred with will affect the egg color. If that's true, you'd be getting different color eggs from any chicken depending on the rooster.
And I don't see at all where that article is referring to anything other than chickens from the cross and that in fact even that doesn't make the chickens more likely to produce blue eggs.
Thanks for all your input.
I am incubating the blue eggs and if they hatch I will keep them seperate from the others to see what developes.
I am planning to put her back with the Americauna roo. soon.
If the eggs change back to green I will let you know.
I am posting a pic. (not very good ) of the Americaunas.
The 2 on the left are the ones in question. They do have the hawk like apperance.
lyndainvirginia I have a question that roo that is orange and white, by any chance is it mean. I'm asking cause I have the same one. And it's pretty mean to me.
Eric,
No he is not mean. The only mean roos I have are bantys.
Especially the Old English Game bantys.
Lynda.