Speckled Ameraucana?

[Qwatra]

Breeding question- I am planning a speckled Ameraucana breeding project and looking for the best breed to use for the spangle/speckled/mille pattern. I'm after the beautiful colors found in Spangled Old English Game roosters, but how hard is it to breed out aggression? Any suggestions for the best breed to use to keep the bluest eggs possible? Is anyone else involved in this project? Any pictures? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Possible candidates so far are Mille Fleur D'Uccle, D'Anvers, Speckled Sussex, Jubilee Orpington, Russian Orloff, Mille Fleur Leghorn,...

 

[Qwatra]

Any advice?

 

[speckledhen]

Breeding question- I am planning a speckled Ameraucana breeding project and looking for the best breed to use for the spangle/speckled/mille pattern. I'm after the beautiful colors found in Spangled Old English Game roosters, but how hard is it to breed out aggression? Any suggestions for the best breed to use to keep the bluest eggs possible? Is anyone else involved in this project? Any pictures? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Possible candidates so far are Mille Fleur D'Uccle, D'Anvers, Speckled Sussex, Jubilee Orpington, Russian Orloff, Mille Fleur Leghorn,...

Using any of those, you are going to lose your blue egg color. Are you wanting to do bantam or LF? Belgian D'anvers are only bantams and very small ones at that. They are clean legged with rose comb so you would not have to fight the feathered leg, EXCEPT that the Mille Fleur D'Uccle was used to create the Mille Fleur d'Anver and some pop up with feathers stubs on the legs anyway. And the rose comb is different than the pea comb of course.

Orloffs would have beards, the spangling and clean legs, but of course, are brown egg layers so your eggs would end up green, not blue. And they have yellow legs, so you'd be introducing the yellow skin into a white skinned bird, messing up your leg color. Ameraucanas have slate legs and only slate legs so they would appear greenish from yellow with slate overlay. They have a cushion/strawberry comb, not pea, so you'd deal with comb issues.

Orpingtons would not mess with the skin/leg color, but the type is way wrong and the comb will give you lots of "gob of chewing gum" combs from single over pea. And the egg color, again, is brown, giving you green eggs.

I'm no breeder, not really into projects, per se, so can't say which is best, generally. Maybe the Orloff, but again, no expert.

 

[Gray Farms]

Hope you've got patience lol. Speckled birds take a lot of work and years to get them to where they need to be. I personally have been working on Millie Fluer English Orpingtons for 5 years and have nearly got them where I want them.

I think the Orloff is going to be you best outcross to get what your wanting. They have the speckled pattern and the beards and the general body shape your wanting. Only thing you'll have to breed out is the yellow legs, the raspberry comb, and the brown eggs. Getting the brown egg laying genes out is going to be the toughest part.

So ideally you'd breed them to a solid red Americauna or a buff if you have too. But about any solid light color would do to get started. Not black or blue however. And you'll want to stay clear of splashes as well. Or anything with a pattern, like wheaten or partridge.

 

[Qwatra]

Thanks for the input! That helps a lot! I was definitely leaning toward the Orloff, but also came up with Tolbunt Polish. Any thoughts?

 

[Gray Farms]

The Tolbunt pattern is very unstable. I wouldn't if I were doing it.

 

[Qwatra]

Unstable? How so? It is my understanding that it is a pattern resulting from two genes, Mottled gold lace or Mille gold lace, but there seems to be disagreement over which one.

 

[Gray Farms]

True, but crossing them to another color "and breed especially" will open the flood gates of color patterns that are behind the millie pattern. I think you'd get a very small percentage of birds that would be useful and a large number that wouldn't. Might be worth a shot though for genetic diversity in the end project.

 

[Wappoke]

Breeding question- I am planning a speckled Ameraucana breeding project and looking for the best breed to use for the spangle/speckled/mille pattern. I'm after the beautiful colors found in Spangled Old English Game roosters, but how hard is it to breed out aggression? Any suggestions for the best breed to use to keep the bluest eggs possible? Is anyone else involved in this project? Any pictures? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Possible candidates so far are Mille Fleur D'Uccle, D'Anvers, Speckled Sussex, Jubilee Orpington, Russian Orloff, Mille Fleur Leghorn,...

Why not use a buff ameraucana rooster over speckled Sussex females? Make sure the females lay a cream colored egg. Use a male ameraucana to insure sex linked dermal melanin is carried by all the offspring (blue/slate legs). Every chick will carry the pea comb gene and one gene for blue egg shell. Skin color is the same white. Both birds carry the columbian gene so all offspring will be homozygous. Every offspring will carry one mottling gene. The combs of the offspring will be weird looking because pea comb is incompletely dominant. Ear lobe color is the same.

The coloring of the F1 offspring will favor the buff color because the offspring will carry one dark brown gene. Tails and wings will be mostly black, male shanks will be light blue females will have blue shanks.

Cross F1 males and females producing F2 generation hatch 30 or more chicks to make sure you have a number of speckled chicks to pick from.

From this generation you can select for speckled, darker red ground color, slate/blue legs and pea comb along with body conformation.

How you proceed depends on the characteristics in the F2, especially egg color.

 

[Qwatra]

Thank you!!! This was extremely helpful!!