What exactly is an Easter egger?..English Ameraucanas??

[featheredplanets]

You will find variation even in pure breeds in the SOP from one country to an other. Here in the US:

Araucana: rumpless, or tail less, has the ear tufts. Lays a blue egg.These birds are rare. And expensive.

Ameraucana: Always has a tail, always has muffs and beard. Conforms to a SOP which includes leg color, feather color, always lays a blue egg.

Easter Egger: Can be any color. Can have beard and muffs, or have a "clean face". Egg color can be blue, green, aqua, or any shade of brown.

To make things even more confusing, hatcheries in the US are allowed to get away with mislabeling these breeds. (EE is not actually a breed. It is a back yard mutt which hopefully is bred to have the muffs, beards, and lay a blue egg, though there are no guarantees.) Anyhow, hatcheries get away with selling EE and calling them Araucana, Americana (they can't even spell that name right!) or Ameraucana.

All that being said, I have had both Ameraucana and EE in my flock, and would choose EE over an Am any day of the week b/c they tend to be better layers.

British Araucana have been around since the 1930s, after being developed from birds found in Scotland from a Chilean shipwreck. These shipwrecked birds also developed into a landrace of sorts, called the Shetland. I agree that the British Araucana is closer in type to the Ameraucana, as they were bred to have the blue egg gene, but with more production qualities. The Cream Legbar was then bred from British Araucana, among other breeds, to continue this trend toward production type.

Thanks for some insight into their history! And thank you both for all your information! I think I'm understanding now

 

[LilJoe]

I know people say that EE are a cross between aby blue egg layer and any other breed, but in reality aren't they a cross of either an Araucana or an Ameraucana to ANY other breed? And if you mix an Ameraucana × Leghorn(EE) X Plymouth Rock you get an F2 EE, right?

 

[junebuggena]

I know people say that EE are a cross between aby blue egg layer and any other breed, but in reality aren't they a cross of either an Araucana or an Ameraucana to ANY other breed? And if you mix an Ameraucana × Leghorn(EE) X Plymouth Rock you get an F2 EE, right?

Actually, it's a bit a misconception that most Easter Eggers have Ameraucana or Araucana ancestry. The reality is the opposite. Both breeds were derived from Easter Egger type birds. Most hatchery Easter Eggers have not been mixed with other breeds (at least not in recent history), they just haven't been bred to meet a particular breed standard.