Anne..BBR (esque) Araucana.. :)

[hinkjc]

Here is the BBRish color I got from my duckwing boy. What do you think? Is it workable? I'm thinking about keeping them to play around with it next year. The male is unilateral tufted and rumpless (nice skin color so far) and the female is tufted and tailed (and wrong skin color, altho that can be corrected).

Jody

 

[pips&peeps]

He looks more brown red to me.

Can you try using an ameraucana that is already the correct color? I am sure there are lots of extra wheaten and blue wheaten boys available to pick up. Or is BBR different than wheaten?

Here is a picture of one of the nicer guys I raised this year. He is missing some saddle feathers because the older boys picked him a bit, but is an example of what I am working towards.

I also wanted to add, that I know you are working very hard on developing colors as it seems to me that standard colors are very hard to come by in araucanas.

 

[hinkjc]

Thanks for the info Jean. I went back and looked at the pics on the Araucana and Ameraucana sites. I'm not sure I can tell the difference between brown red and wheaton?? Is it just the lower red on the wing? I'm not sure if wheaton and bbr are the same, genetically. I will have to research that. I also noticed my pullet is colored in reverse. hmmm I got a lot of work ahead of me. lol

Thanks for the pic. That is one handsome boy.

Charlie has always loved that coloration on the roosters, so I thought we'd give it a try this year.

Jody

 

[Anne]

Hi Jody,

How old are the birds? I would bet the cockerel is not much more than 2-1/2 months old. I can see the start of a wing-bar on him already. The blotchiness on his chest will probably clear up. Red will probably grow in on the hackles, though they'll likely be heavily streaked with black. Nice leg color!

The female is very dark but has the beginnings of a BBR-ish pattern.

I think it's totally workable.

From what I've read on the forums and in books, there are TWO types of BBR: "Wild-type" and "Wheaton" type. The bantam standard calls for wild-type BBR, whereas the large-fowl standard calls for Wheaton type. However, wheaton-type BBR hardly exists in large-fowl Araucana any more. For this reason, some Araucana breeders think the large-fowl standard should be changed to wild-type BBR, while other breeders are trying to use wheaton-type bantam Araucanas or other breeds to bring Wheaton color back into large fowl.

The two types of BBR start out very differently -- "wild types" start out with stripey reddish-brown chick color, whereas "wheaton" chicks are pure yellow. When mature, correctly-colored roosters look almost exactly the same -- both have the "red duckwing" (black breasted red) pattern, with orange hackles and saddles, red shoulder, black wing-bar and chest. The females, however, are very different. A "wild-type" adult female will have a bright red or orange breast, fading to darker red-brown or even grayish throughout the rest of the body, and black/orange or black/gold striped hackles. A "wheaton" adult female is supposed to be a more-or-less uniform shade of reddish-blonde, such as in a female Cubalaya. Ann Charles told me that Gary Ramy's hen (pictured below) is the closest she's ever seen to a Wheaton Large-Fowl Araucana hen.

I have often considered bringing in Bantam Araucanas or other breeds in an attempt to improve plumage color in my generally poorly-colored flock, but I'm too scared of all the challenges it would present. Depending on what I used, I would have to deal with breeding out at least one (usually more) of the following: beards/muffs, white skin, wrong egg color or poor egg color, wrong comb type or poor comb type, puny size, and bad or wrong body type/conformation. This list is daunting to me, so for now I prefer to try to work with what I have -- though the pic of Jean's gorgeous roo is seriously tempting me! If I had an Araucana roo with that plumage color, I'd have it made.

 

[hinkjc]

Anne, thank you so much for the info. The pullet was hatched on 7/14 and the cockerel on 7/21, so around 9 weeks. I figure he has a lot more changes to go through until he fills in his adult plumage. Both hatched as striped chicks (I originally marked them down as bbr & gold duckwing on the hatch sheet). So that probably means they are the wild type.

Charlie and I were just reviewing Cathy Brunson's book on the color patterns. I am going to have to brush up on this, but really just want to have fun with it too. I'll post some new pics as he fills out more. It will be interesting to see him mature. Thanks again for your insight.

Jody