Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

More breeding trauma from me, Sorry, just thinking out aloud
So I never particularly liked Black birds., until that is I hatched some Black Ameraucana pullets, that can't be beat in the laying department are supper beautiful and outgoing.
Now I am very very tempted to put Blue male over Black hens to give me a better chance at a small flock of these supper girls.
BUT, and boy isn't there always a but? now that I know the Blue & Black & Splash have to be treated as separate varieties when making breeding selections, I am actually going to be making an outcross again, so exactly how much trouble am I asking for????
Feel free to throw eggs...

Blue rooster over black hens should give you 50% black babies and 50% blues.....

Nothing beats test breeding to know for sure- go for it.

Robbie wrote:Nothing beats test breeding to know for sure- go for it.

Yeah easy for you to say! :)
So far my experience of outcrossing to another variety has been that it takes one more generation to reassemble the genes in the more or less correct way. it's the F1 that I am worried about, and I know I am asking for the under color leakage again, when I am just starting to feel I got some semblance of control over it.

The F2 from a sibling cross is in theory more heterogeneous than F1. The quickest way I know how to find out how just mixed your critters are, is to mate, then cross siblings from that mating. That's when all the nasty hidden stuff (or, really good stuff!!) can show.
I don't know of any other way to find out for sure.

Not planning to be breeding siblings, and really not wanting to uncover all the nasty stuff, on the contrary, I would like to completely avoid uncovering anything and just end up with birds that appear perfect in just the way I envisioned them, and keep all the unpleasant familial secrets completely hidden. Firm believer in all the skeletons staying just where they should be, in the closet, covered in feathers.

I don't think you are asking for that much trouble. I think you will find that one colour of offspring is slightly smaller than the other, and the blacks will in all possibility, not be the best examples of the colour... but looking forward, you will likely get some usable hens if you hatch lots, and have a nice base for F2. And knowing how selective you are, I'd bet those future F2s will be pretty darn nice!

Last summer Ameracauna blue slate roo over black hen begat a couple of splash hens. Not that selective when I set eggs, just whatever laid that day, so not sure of what percentage. Only one roo around, so he was for sure the daddy. The splash were a surprise for me, never had one before.

That black hen that we saw was just stunning!

Blue x black should give you 50% blue and 50%black as heyden said. If you just want good black layers then use you best type blue boy and best black layer hens and either keep your resulting blue kids out of your blue breeding program or sell or process or whatever. Then keep your blacks as layers only......its easy lol. Just band all the kids so you dont mix them in with any "improvement" breedings-unless of course you get something stunning-then the plan changes lol