I would just like to put up some pictures from
some of our breeding projects. The first picture is
of an Ameraucana x Leghorn, single-comb pullet.
These birds are white with beardmuff, lots of
feathers and big tails. They are robust and
enthusiastic about living their chicken lives. The
rightmost pullet in the picture is the one I intend to
show here:



The next picture is of the grey chick I mentioned in
earlier threads. She is 3 weeks old now and has
barring. This baby is half Ameraucana and half
Leghorn. She is either blue of lavender and I don't
know which yet. I'm not sure if lavender can even
support a barring pattern. These pictures don't
really do them justice....



The third picture is a lovely pullet from our Dakota
Black Barred project. Her white bars are really
more grey than white and her black bars are also
just a darker grey. A picture might be worth a
thousand workds but seeing this baby in person is
worth a thousand pictures. She gives the
impression of being a "light colored" bird.

Ooooppps, the grey chick in the middle picture has
an Araucana (not Ameraucana) sire and Leghorn
dam. She is rumpless as can be seen in the
picture.

P.S. I hope you get to notice that the Ameraucana x
Leghorn pullet (rightmost pullet in the first picture)
has dark shanks and is very white. As an F1 pullet
in our blue egg project, she does not have barring
(none of the F1 pullets do because of the way the
barring is inherited in this cross). At the same time
she is VERY white. The leftmost pullet in the
picture is another of these Ameraucana x Leghorn
pullets. They don't seem to need the help of the
sex-linked barring in order to be so white as they
are. They are very pretty birds with their dark
shanks against their white plumage.

The last pullet looks like she may have mottling. Check out the possibility that on some feathers (about 1 out of 5 if she is EE an e+ bird would have white tips on most feathers so I don't know how it would be for heterozygotes)the darkest bar will be just after the white tip. Some feathers will not show distinct barring, but will be patchy. Bb momo males are also this funky color while BB momo males are sometimes mostly white, but you can tell that they should have been barred if you look at them closely.

Thank you for your post. The grey chick in the
middle photo is also one that has the darkest
black bar as the first. It isn't all that clear, but she
has neck feathers that are more clearly barred. I
was wondering about this "first bar" thing.

In the morning, I will look at the tips of the feathers
to see if they are white or black.....

Very nice looking birds Info, thanks for sharing.

I have examined the photo of the third chick. She is really a lovely little bird and the true barring appears to be coming out at this early age. However I also think that you might have a bird with a problem in her Right foot. The photo does not do this justice, but I think that the 'heat' during incubation varied slightly to the high side of the recomended .4 degrees and this can and sometimes does result in the tendency of the inner toe to kick in (sometimes on both sides). I breed Scots Dumpys (for five years ) and have only just recently eliminated this problem from my own hatching. Yours interested. Peter.