Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Araucana vs. Ameraucana


Warm, lazy days -- Miss Susie Hutchins and Jack relax in the shade.



The bantys enjoy some watermelon -- a post Labor Day chicken feast. They seem blissfully happy in the chicken tractor.





The young Ameraucanas and Wyandottes are biggering and biggering (that's a Dr. Seuss word and if you haven't read The Lorax, you should) -- but they haven't caught up yet to their long legs (yellow for the Wyandottes, an odd greenish-gray for the Ameraucanas.) Their plumage is getting quite colorful -- one reason I like the Ameraucanas is the interesting mix of colors -- solid white, buff, golden, and mixtures thereof.

True Araucanas (I've recently learned with a little exploration into this chicken stuff) are tailess, have ear tufts (wild sprouts of feathers aside their beaks) and lay blue-green eggs. Unfortunately those ear tufts are tied to a lethal gene -- making it hard to produce show-quality birds and making even non-show quality fairly expensive.

I'm happy with my mutt Ameraucanas -- descended, no doubt, from the real thing but possessing rumps (the Real Thing even lacks a coccyx and slopes down at the rear). All I ask is that they lay the blue-green eggs,

Some of the Amerauanas are developing characteristic ear muffs (not tufts) -- you can see it on the white one here.
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2 comments:

Susan M. Bell said...

I love that you have both a black-and-white dog and cat. How cute is that.

Vicki Lane said...

When Hutchins was a kitten, Jack was fascinated by her and followed her around everywhere to the point that we called them the Border Buddies. They are pretty cute together, in their furry tuxedo get ups.