Barred Americanas?

Shnookie · Post by **Shnookie** » Sat Sep 24, 2016 6:11 pm

When you cross a non-barred rooster with a barred hen, you get chicks that are all black. They are sex-linked - the boys have a white dot on their heads, girls don't. Some of mine stayed black, and some changed to black and gray barred. I have one of the black ones and one of the barred ones. The all black one has green and purple sheen.

Skinny rooster · Post by **Skinny rooster** » Sat Sep 24, 2016 7:12 pm

Did anyone else suffer a migraine after WLLady flooded my little brain with how to make Barred Americanas! Lol. What part of "trying to take the easy way" did you not get? Lol I want "you" to do it. Any way on the serious side I suspected that there were no barred Americanas. I wouldn't tamper with Chanteclers, think I might get deported lol. The closest thing for sex links there would be Buff Chantecler rooster over Dominique hens. That should be interesting.

Flat Rock Farm · Post by **Flat Rock Farm** » Sat Sep 24, 2016 8:25 pm

A person on a facebook forum had this handsome fellow for sale but is an EE crossed with an EO, nice barring and cheek muffs!! :wink:

Post by **WLLady** » Sat Sep 24, 2016 9:06 pm

So if you put a barred rooster over anything all the kids will be barred. If you put a non barred rooster over barred hens you are making sex links and all girls will be black and all boys will be barred. Same principle as the gold vs silver because barring is also a sex linked gene so girls can only ever get 1 copy at the most and only from dad-so if dad isnt barred the female kids cant be...where boys can get 2 or 1 and are always barred.

So in trying to establish barred ameraucanas you need to start with a barred rooster so everyone gets at least 1 copy of barring. Or...if you use a barred girl your first generation girls will not be barred and your first generation of boys will be split for barred and you need to add another cross to barred. Easier to use a barred boy in the beginning so everyone is barred.

Skinny rooster · Post by **Skinny rooster** » Sat Sep 24, 2016 10:58 pm

Sorry WLLady if you are posting to me, didn't mean to give you a headache back lol. No my goal (in my daydreaming) was for sex link babies, not Barred babies. I understand the sex link process, I used to breed black sex links. That's why I was wondering if Barred Americanas existed already, a person could put a black rooster over Barred hens and promise his/her customers all hens, that's for the people who just want some interesting birds for laying and don't care about pedigrees. Sometimes (like this year) I feel everything is such a waste, I put in all kinds of time and money only to discover after a month or two that I have been raising nothing but a bunch of roosters.

Post by **WLLady** » Sun Sep 25, 2016 12:15 pm

Lol no headache here skinny rooster!! Sex linking is great but i find when i hatch i am still left with a bunch of roosters....i cant seem to just off them at hatch...or get them to auction (because then i know someone else will get stuck with a bunch of boys). If you want barred ameraucanas tho...lol. i had a bad experience with sex linking way back when i was just a newbie chicken person and didnt bother to check and spent 3 years with a layer coop full of balck and white striped birds. Lol. My hubby said no more zebra chickens. What would be neat is barred ameraucana girls covered by whatever gold based brown layer line rooster would pretty much guarantee green egg laying girls- probably a nice selling point....
(I have 30 grow out boys running around my property right now....all from projects and all terribly cute....sigh)

Shnookie · Post by **Shnookie** » Sun Sep 25, 2016 12:47 pm

Here he is.

Skinny rooster · Post by **Skinny rooster** » Wed Sep 28, 2016 11:39 pm

WLLady, I didn't at first understand why I was mixing in leghorn, but now I think I understand. I am only using the leghorns to find the boys carrying the blue egg laying gene, correct? Then take him and put him back onto blue egg females, yes?

windwalkingwolf · Post by **windwalkingwolf** » Thu Sep 29, 2016 1:59 am

He looks like a very good start to a barred Ameraucana project! He only has one copy of barring, so you should either find him a barred mate or breed him to his barred daughters.
In Ameraucanas, the blue egg gene is closely tied to the pea comb, so if you mix an ameraucana and a barred rock, 99.9% of the pullets with pea combs will lay green, and the single combed offspring will lay brown. If you take those first generation pea-combed, green-laying pullets and cross them with a (white egg laying)Leghorn, THEIR pea-combed offspring will lay blue. If you want to try this, don't use a white leghorn, or all your offspring will look white and it will take you forever to get back to good barring.

Post by **WLLady** » Thu Sep 29, 2016 7:57 am

Skinny rooster wrote:QR_BBPOST WLLady, I didn't at first understand why I was mixing in leghorn, but now I think I understand. I am only using the leghorns to find the boys carrying the blue egg laying gene, correct? Then take him and put him back onto blue egg females, yes?

that's right! because if you cross with the brown layer you would get green and not be sure if the brown + blue was from dad, or blue only.
you wouldn't cross to leghorn to enrich blue, but only to identify the males, you'd sell all the leghorn cross chicks, keep the dads that gave blue laying offspring in the cross to leghorns and put them back into the breeding pool with the appropriately barred girls laying blue.