The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Ameraucana Marketplace
Silver Standard Description
Mike Gilbert:
Sam,
What about the A.B.A. Standard? Would that be changed then to conform with the A.P.A.\'s? If you can find out any information at all about clearing up the shafting, we would be very grateful. I will also discuss the saddle striping matter with other breeders of the silver variety at our upcoming national meet in Sedalia, MO, on October 15th. Thanks.
Mike
John:
--- Quote ---My gut feeling is to go along with whatever is decided for leghorns, as it is supposed to be the same color pattern.
--- End quote ---
Sounds like the way to go to me.
Sam,
Thanks for posting here so that all of us can beware of what\'s happening and have a chance to chime in.
grisaboy:
Hello Sam and everyone,
As long as we are discussing tweaking the standard for silver, I will thow around some more fat to chew on. I agree with Mike that one of the biggest issues with silvers is the shafting in the females. I don\'t agree that the standard should automatically call for the silver color to reference the silver leghorn. This is the case in the silver gray dorking as well. But in the dorkings, the Red variety does call for shafting in the females. So now you have the red variety calling for shafting and the silver variety calling for no shafting. I think there should be consistency in calling for shafting or no shafting between the varieties. In Ameraucanas we do not yet have a \'Red\' or \'Light Brown\' or \'Black Breasted Red\' variety to compare to, so silver is going to be the base pattern for these future varieties. Since shafting is more or less \'natural\' to the silver variety, why couldn\'t this be the standard? There is precedence in allowing shafting in the red dorking, welsummers, and American game bantams (ABA) so we would totally be plowing new ground here.
Just some thoughts.
Curtis Beck
Guest:
The difficulty with regard to the shafting in Silver females is that there is no Silver version in either Standard that I know of where this occurs. The description for females is without shafting, regardless of whether the male has striped saddles or not. That means that a custom one would have to be fashioned, proposed and adopted by both the ABA and APA for the Ameraucanas - a Herculean task in all likelihood. I think that the Dorking genetics is a little different, and the Red Dorking females called for the shafting because of the similarity to the Colored Dorking variety. While shafting in Silver Dorkings may have been a problem of varying magnitude, it seems that the early Standard makers still felt that a clean, well stippled, shafting-free color was the desired idea.
In discussions with the Leghorn breeders (and I mean some of the deep ones that worry or ponder over the fine points of color) the counsel is that the color of the cape (neck area under the hackle) is a link to the shafting, and they select for males that do not show color along the shaft in the cape. In fact, one advised that cape color can be evaluated pretty early in young males. To get less shafting in females, select males that have strong black color at the feather center, and which do not show any light striping in the middle along the shaft.
The thinking on the saddle stripe in males is that it has more of a link to breast color in females.
Again, all the other breeds with a Silver variety that doesn\'t reference back to the Leghorn (in the APA SOP) call for striped hackle and saddle in males, and no shafting in females.
As I suggested earlier, I need to do a matrix comparing the female color in the two silver variants (Silver as in Leghorn and Silver as Dutch Bantam) to see if there are any other striking contrasts there. I\'m still interested to know if Silver Ameraucana males are striped in the saddle, or have breeders been able to move more toward a clear silver saddle as in the ideal Silver Leghorn.
Sam Brush
John:
OK, here is what I think it should be...
Curtis mentioned \"natural\" and I think it is natural for the saddle to have the same description as the hackle. Silver duckwing, brown red, wheaten and others seem to follow this pattern. I like the language the ABA uses on p. 234 to describe the silver plumage of a male\'s saddle: \"Same as hackle\".
As far as shafting goes, I think the birds look best with the least amount of shafting. It would be great to eliminate it, but don\'t know if that will happen.
I would like to get some feedback on another thought. The silver Leghorn male (APA p. 133) and the silver Ameraucana male (APA p. 197) both show the hackle striping on the lower hackle feathers, as the Standard calls for but my silver bantam and LF Ameraucana males have it all over their hackles & saddles like my brown red do. Do the silver Leghorns really have it only on the lower half? If so it is achievable, but as Curtis brought up, we don\'t have to copy the Leghorn silver description completely.
I think it is interesting to also note that although both breeds use the same written description that the Leghorn portrait has no saddle striping, while the Ameraucana has it on the lower half of the saddle to go with the hackle\'s look.
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