When I was in high school and my parents agreed to my keeping chickens, they asked how long chickens live. I only had a year left at home, and they wanted to know what kind of commitment they could look forward to once I left.
I read, and informed them that typically laying hens live four to six years, with variability among breeds and, of course, predator pressure.
They decided that even if they didn’t love keeping chickens, they could undertake this commitment. My father designed the chicken coop we built as more of a shed, with the idea that it would be a useful structure should the chicken hobby not persist.
But chickens have stuck with us. While I was at school, then traveling, then working before moving back, my parents not only cared for my original flock, they added a few chickens of their own as the first ones began to die.
They added a few young hens in 2010. These were Ameraucana breed, and supposed to lay blue eggs.
The Ameraucana has a pea comb (small, and with conjoined protrusions like peas), gray legs, and a muff (fluff on her neck under her beak), a curved beak and an upright tail. This breed comes in a variety of colors. Ours is multicolored grey, brown and gold.
This breed was accepted into the American Poultry Association (APA) standards in the 1970s.
I had trouble finding consistency online when I went to learn about this breed’s history. If you’ve ever met chicken enthusiasts you may be familiar with their passion in talking about their birds. The same holds true when they write about breeds online — each source adamantly insists that their narrative is the true story.
A few sources I read claim the Ameraucana descends from the Araucana chicken, bred by the Mapuche tribe in Chile back to the 1500s.
The Araucana lays blue eggs, has ear tufts rather than a muff and no tail. The gene for ear tufts also causes chick mortality in the shell. So breeders became interested in modifying this breed to keep the blue eggs but eliminate the lethal gene. Thus, the Ameraucana was bred crossing the Araucana with other chickens.
Another source states the Araucana and the Ameraucana are totally different — sharing only a few genes, and as dissimilar as any other unrelated breeds.
Yet a third claims that Ameraucanas were bred, and their traits isolated, from widely varied Easter egg chickens.
This last explanation makes least sense to me, as my understanding of Easter egg chickens is that rather than an actual breed, each is a cross, which results in layers of shades of blue or green eggs.
Whatever their origin, Ameraucana are beautiful birds and lay beautiful eggs. One hatchery website noted that one in 300 Ameraucanas may lay pale brown eggs. Another said as many as 3% to 5% may lay brown eggs.
While I imagine the percentage does depend on the genetic pool available, my family’s experience differs from advertised slightly expectations. The source of their Ameraucana hens sold gorgeous blue eggs, and bred the chickens himself. But their two hens both ended up laying pale brown eggs.
Ameraucanas are supposed to live for seven to eight years, and stop laying after about five. Again, our experience has differed — one of these hens is still alive, now 12 years old, and just this week laid three eggs.
Despite these inconsistencies, we love our venerable Ameraucana hen, whose name is Lady.
ALDONA BIRD is a journalist, exploring possibilities of local productivity and sustainable living in Preston County.
