Americanas are beautiful mid-sized chickens that lay blue or blue-green eggs. I find that they produce a lot of eggs during the summer, but are not particularly good at laying during the winter under my rearing conditions (no extra heat or light). However, the joy of including the blue eggs in a carton outweighs the reduced egg laying.

Although Americanas can be used for both meat and eggs, I find the quality of the meat to be far lower than what is provided by my Barred Rocks or Marans. Therefore, I keep Americanas mostly for eggs.

My current pure blue rooster is named “Blueberry”. He is a sweet boy that keeps a happy flock of very productive hens. He has two pure blue and two splash hens, each of whom produces very blue eggs.

A breeding pen that has only Blue and Splash (out of the Blue-Black-Splash gene trio) will only result in Blue and Splash offspring. To get all three colors of the gene trio you have to breed Blue to Blue (results will be 25% Black, 50% Blue, and 25% Splash).

Egg color of offspring cannot be guaranteed, but usually follows from the parental lines. Egg color is often brightest in the spring, and may fade to a very pale blue or near-white later in the season.

For the most part, I find these Americanas to be friendly and easy to handle. We have occasionally had birds that were more flighty in nature. I avoid breeding such individuals as this is not a trait I like working with.

I also find the Americana roosters to be particularly intolerant of other roosters. They will often not even tolerant younger cockerels in the flock. I have to keep these roosters well separated with good pen fences and deflectors in place to avoid injury. Having said that, the roosters are friendly to people and often dance and greet us at feeding time.

[More Pictures to come]

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