My Other Blog

As promised, today I am going to write about a topic dear to many hearts— buttockless chickens, better known as Araucana chickens— and how I got some.

The Araucana chicken is descended from a couple of South American chicken breeds known for laying blue eggs. None of these original chicken breeds is called ‘Araucana’, which is the name of a local Indian tribe.

The Araucana breed of chicken is accepted by the American Poultry Association (also known as the Evil Poultry Dictatorship or EPD), and in addition to the blue egg thing, they are known for being rumpless, lacking the tail found in most chickens. They also have tufts— little bits of feather on each side of the face. The tufted trait is a rather hard one to breed for, because if a chicken has two genes for tuftedness, it will die in the egg. Only chickens with only one tuftedness gene can live, and so there are a good many Araucana chickens with no tufts.  To see a picture of an Araucana chicken with tufts, visit the Araucana page at Wikipedia, the Liberal Encyclopedia .

There is another kind of blue-egg chicken bred from the same South American chickens that produced the Araucana. These chickens have buttocks, and have muffs and beards on their faces rather than tufts. When this breed was accepted into the American Poultry Association, the name Ameraucana was chosen since ‘Araucana’ was taken. Note the spelling of Ameraucana (there will be a test).  It’s not ‘Americana’ or ‘Ameracauna’.

To add confusion to the game, the chicken breed called ‘Araucana’ in Great Britain resembles the Ameraucana rather than the American Araucana, and has buttocks.

For added confusion, if you look at your poultry catalog (you DO have a poultry catalog, don’t you?) you may find a breed of chicken listed as ‘Araucana/Ameraucana’ or ‘Araucana/Americana’. These chickens are not Araucanas or Ameraucanas, but are crossbreds usually called ‘Easter Eggers’, and are bred for their ability to lay green and blue eggs.

A word about egg color. There are really only two chicken egg colors, white and blue. In both cases the color goes right through the egg to the inside. In the case of brown eggs, the color is a coating on the outside of the egg.  Green eggs occur when a chicken has genes for laying blue eggs, and for the brown coating that produces brown eggs.

If you want Araucana chickens that really are Araucanas and not Easter Egger crossbreds, they can be hard to find. I looked for hatching eggs from the usual sources (eBay and Eggbid), searched the internet, and still couldn’t get hold of an actual no-buttocks chicken.

Finally, I turned to Craigslist. I had thought that Craigslist was just a place for prostitutes and their clients to find each other, judging by news reports, but found there are more practical and less evil ads as well. A lady in Crivitz, Wisconsin had two Araucana roosters for sale.  Now, I live in Daggett, Michigan, but Crivitz, Wisconsin is very nearby, and so I quickly emailed and arranged the sale.

I asked the owner if she had any female Araucanas for sale, and she said she had one that had the same coloring as one of the roos.  I asked for directions to their place, but they said their roads were no good and we arranged to meet in the parking lot of the Walgreens in Marinette, Wisconsin.

I just wonder what the men on the security cameras at the Walgreens thought when they saw two pickup trucks in their parking lot, the exchange of money for chickens, and the loading of the birds from his pet carrier into mine. Probably thought it was some sort of shady deal, perhaps involving cockfighting.

And there was cockfighting involved as soon as I unloaded my new roosters into the henhouse. It just wasn’t very good cockfighting. The new Araucana roosters got beat up by my Brahma roosters. It was embarrassing. Brahma roosters are big, but not feisty.  They frequently get bullied by bantams (miniature chickens). Getting whupped by the Brahma roosters is like getting beat up by the Amish. What a disgrace!

After a few days, I noticed one of my Araucana chickens chasing a hen and mating her. What caught my attention about that is that it was the Araucana HEN.  After taking a closer look at ‘her’, I confirmed that ’she’ was actually just a small rooster with very few rooster feathers.

Since the seller charged me the same price for the ‘hen’ as for the roosters, I don’t feel I got cheated. The amazing thing about the whole deal is that they had Araucanas for sale that were, in fact, real Araucanas.  Amazing.

I notice that the Esperanto pledge located in the sidebar has only increased by one since the last time I looked, while the counter on this blog has gone up bigtime. That means there are folks out there reading this blog and NOT promising to learn Esperanto if 10 million people do the same.  That is NOT okay. Sign the promise NOW or I will let my Brahma chickens beat you up! Vi DEVAS lerni Esperanton! (You MUST learn Esperanto). At least if 10 million people promise to learn Esperanto, you must.

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