Being sold mixed chicks as "pure"

[WLLady]

problem is with pictures is you cannot tell a wheaten ameraucana cockerel from a e+ based cockerel....they look pretty much identical. it's chick down that is important in telling these ones apart....wheaten chicks are yellow. easter eggers are striped on the e+ locus.
the roosters look the same....the hens are subtly different-if you know what you are looking for. if you don't....you can easily be fooled.

i went through 7 or 8 batches of eggs, nice blue eggs, before i finally managed to snag some pure wheaten ameraucanas...it took me a few years. frustrating as heck, but i would really contact the person you got them from and see if they even know....and i sure hope they weren't from me at the wyoming sale, because i had both ameraucanas and easter eggers there, and was selling as easter eggers!!! LOL.

[Ontario Chick]

In most cases when that happens, it's just lack of knowledge.
People buy birds that are represented as "Blue footed Booby", they breed them to each other and continue selling chicks as "Blue footed Booy, without taking the trouble to educate themselves and find out what it is "exactly" they are breeding.
The best way to protect yourself, is to ask to see the breeding stock. that way you will be certain to get at least something close to what you are looking for.
Just a heads up tho "like doesn't always breed like" and deeper you immerse yourself in the fascinating world of chicken, more you will see breeding is a very "fluid" process, and genetic anomalies are more common then you can imagine.

[Home Grown Poultry]

for example... I have lightbrown leghorns. i first got only hens that came out of a breeding pen and decided to hatch every egg they gave me for the first ten days. wooohooo I ended up with some more LB hens and a decent rooster! woohooo! with the exception of one bird from that hatch they all looked like LB Leghorns. YEEEHAAAA!


fast forward a year... I set up a breeding pen with my chosen rooster and the hens. I waited a month so the eggs would be pure. I set my first hatch and hatched a 50/50 of LB and some other black chicks with black legs... not LB at all. I figured the eggs wernt pure, I gave those black chicks to a fellow PTOer to satisfy his broody! win win and continue....

every consecutive hatch has been the same. half are LB while the others are growing up into dark Brown's but they have black legs.

my only goal was to produce more white egg laying birds so I have accomplished that. i do not sell birds or hatchng eggs and so im very happy with my results. im not a genetic wizard and dont care to even try to figure it out.

I will keep my original LB Cock and 1 of his best Cockerals and maybe breed tham again next year and maybe not. I breed Rhode Island Reds, they are my passion and where my focus is. you can tell an impure chick the moment it hatches and dries off.

Cheers!

[Killerbunny]

Stuff can happen too. My sweet pure little turkey hen last year, fortunately after I'd finished hatching, kept going off to visit the handsome slate blue Tom over the road. She was sneaky too. it was only after Chita hatched her clutch she found on e little poppet with grey down we figured what was going on!

[Robbie]

QR_BBPOST

QR_BBPOST Sometimes despite best efforts, roosters get in where they shouldn't.......is that possible? The seller may be mortified to find out and will make good on the next hatch, I'd try contacting them and letting them know.

In my case when I talked to the guy he said they all lay blue eggs and have slate legs. I said that doesn't make them Ameraucana's. They don't all have muffs either. I mentioned one day he's going to piss off the wrong person with his labelling and he should just sell them as Easter Eggers. What they are. He repeated they lay blue eggs, that makes them ameraucanas. So he's 100 years old and I just chose to leave well enough alone. But when my cockerels go to the auction they get listed as Easter Eggers. What they are.

That's a shame, there seems to be a lot of misunderstandings and problems with blue egg layers masquerading as Ameraucanas. It doesn't help when the hatcheries are calling Easter eggers Ameraucanas as well...... or calling mutts Americanas.

[Doug The Chickenman]

QR_BBPOST This is my second lot of chicks, sold as day olds, that turn out to be not what they were sold as.. sigh. Is there anyway to tell what you're actually being sold? I know I can order from a hatchery like Frey's but they don't sell what I'm looking for and Performance Poultry seems to be done for the year.

Just because you buy from a hatchery does not mean you are getting what you think you are.
Example many hatcheries have Ameraucanas and in fact they are Easter Eggers as they do not meat the standard but they lay blue eggs, they also tend to mix them with Leghorns to improve the laying ability of them. So it is buyer be aware and get to know the breed you are after and know the traits you should see as chicks and as they grow.

[kenya]

With all breedings you always get some, that you say "What the #%% where did that come from .Sometimes you do get pleasant surprises though, that's the fun of breeding. I had one blue wheaten rooster, and he was pure ,throw muffless chicks, it happens. That's why you breed, see what they produce and keep and rebreed from only the best producers. The chicks from that rooster were all sold as Easter eggers. If you want to ensure a particular bird looks a certain way buy adults. In the end it's sometimes cheaper.

[Shnookie]

I sold 6 Ameraucana x EO chicks recently. That is how I advertised them. I bred them on purpose to be sold. At the same time I hatched a few pure Ameraucanas for myself. The chicks were very similar and I didn't mark them because I thought I could sort them out all right. I just found out recently that I gave the buyer a black pure Ameraucana female, and I have one of the cross-bred males. Bonus for the buyer. She wanted Easter eggers that would lay blue eggs. So she got Easter eggers and one pure Ameraucana. It goes both ways. I doubt she's upset.