The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Breeding

Breeding Lavender Ameraucanas to black, blue or both?

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Kristin Kelley:
I have a flock of lavender Ameraucanas ordered from Paul Smith last spring.  Out of 20 I've culled down to 5 good looking hens and one rooster.  I want to increase genetic diversity and focus my efforts on my lavenders only. 

I have a pen of blue and black Ameraucanas that are great quality but I'm wanting to discontinue breeding due to limited space.  I've read that Lavender can be crossed with black to create splits and improve feather quality in the second generation. Can this be done with breeding lavender to blue?  I'm only focusing on lavender and would be breeding the lavender/blue splits back to lavender.  Any feedback would be appreciated.

Paul:
  You do NOT want to use blue with self blue, incorrectly called lavenders.  The two blues (blue and self blue) are totally different genetically and will clash.  Use only blacks to cross into the self blues, which will create a black chick with a lavender gene, called a split.  Then a split may be used with the self blues producing 50% self blue chicks and 50% splits on the average hatch.  Two splits can be mated which will produce (on the average)-50% splits, 25% self blues and 25% pure blacks.  The splits and the blacks from this mating are the same color and can only be determined which they are by test mating them.  This is done by mating to a self blue.  If a self blue chick is produced then the parent being tested is a split.  If only black chicks are hatched, the black parent isn't a split-it has to be a black.  Hope this helps and that the chicks turned out good!

Kristin Kelley:
Thanks Paul, that definitely helps.  I'll only cross to black.

Don:
Kristen,  The White, Self Blue and Black are all supposed to be based on the 'E' Extended black gene.  The Blues are bred back to black on a regular basis even though some think that they should only be bred Blue to Blue.  You can find discussions about this on the forum.  Blacks are thought to be best to be 'E' with a 's' Gold gene.  Blues are thought to be bred to be 'S' silver gene, and most agree that they should be based on 'Er' as well.  If if you cross Self Blue with black, try to make sure that the black is 'S' Silver based.  Otherwise you might inherit a gold cast to the Self blue offspring.  There are a lot of folks that are working with Self Blue now that will be glad to help if you have more questions.   They are a great color,  Good Luck!

Sherry Klaus:
So the silver gene from a black that you would use to create for breeding to your Self-blue comes from ??

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