Goals of the ABC

[grisaboy]

McSpin asked about goals of the ABC in another thread.
I thought it would be worthy of its own thread.

The goals are stated on the Home page (ameraucana.org).

\"The purpose of the Ameraucana Breeders Club is to encourage the continued improvement of Ameraucana bantams and large fowl through breeding, exhibition,
and dissemination of relevant information.\"

That seems pretty simple but you should read through the history to see some of the trials associated with this goal.  Mike Gilbert has been at it from the beginning and has been through the fire so to speak.  This is a relatively new breed and there is a lot of work to be done to improve the 16 standard varieties.  I think that is the primary goal of the club.

[Mike Gilbert]

Thank you, Curtis, for that post.   I agree with your assessment 100 percent.    That is why I continue to work on those large fowl brown reds and silvers.   At the same time we don\'t want to discourage development of new varieties, but folks who are so inclined need to remember it takes a TEAM to get them into the standard.   No less than five breeders who have bred them at least five years.   Having spent some time in the trenches, the best advice I can give is to form a network of breeders to work on the same projects.
A single disaster can (and has more than once) wiped out years of hard work when left to a single individual.    I am fortunate to have fellow member Bob Walchak living within five miles of my farm.   We swap/exchange bantam Ameraucanas from time to time  to help each other out, so I am naturally very proud of Bob\'s showroom successes.
One way we can all help to improve the breed is to stop hatching and even selling chicks in established varieties from green eggs.   The standard calls for blue.  While there are many shades of blue, the difference between blue and green is not rocket science.

[John]

stop hatching and even selling chicks in established varieties from green eggs

Agreed...except for varieties that don\'t produce blue eggs yet.  I don\'t know of any LF brown reds that lay an egg that is close to what we would want, so in cases like this we have to hatch those with the least amount of green and/or cross with other varieties to help improve the egg color.
I\'ve seen real improvement in the color of LF black & blue eggs in the past couple years from selective breeding just for proper egg color.  Their eggs still aren\'t as blue as they should be, but at least now I would say they are a shade of blue as opposed to mostly greenish.

[Guest]

\"Improvement\" is a pretty general term. Does it refer to improvement for shows, or is it even more general, referring to all traits?  

By the way Mike, I agree with the blue egg only preference. I just received new blue hatching eggs because mine were laying eggs that were too green.

[grisaboy]

\"Improvement\" is a pretty general term.[/quote]

There are many areas for improvement in this breed.
Egg color was mentioned above.  They do not judge egg color in poultry shows, unless you go to the ABC National.

There is also eye color, leg color, tails, beards, and size.
Also vigor, vitality and fertility.

Each variety has it\'s own issues.
I have had trouble with getting the pure white top color in Silver males.  So I have been working on that in my Silver bantams.  Still have problems with eye color and beards.  I think those will be easier to fix than the top color, so I am concentrating on that first.

Lots of room for improvements but it takes patience.  If we try to do it all at once it can be pretty frustrating.

I see exhibition as not the goal, but rather a chance to compare our birds against others.  Sometimes what looks good in our coop doesn\'t look so good when compared against Mike\'s or John\'s birds.  Helps us to re-focus our efforts.

Curtis

[Guest]

Curtis,

What do you mean by top color?

Tim

[grisaboy]

A silver male should be two colors white, with black striping on top. ( Top Color)  And black underneath.
I get silver males with red and yellow feathers in the section that should be white, especially the wing bows.  I believe this is due to autosomal red reminants from a wheaton cross I did several generations ago.

Curtis