The Ameraucana chicken come in both a large and a small bantam variety. Their are eight colors are officially recognized for poultry shows by the American Poultry Association: Black, Blue, Blue Wheaten, Brown Red, Buff, Silver, Wheaten and White. There are currently several project colors of the Ameraucana chickens being developed, including the beautiful Lavender Ameraucanas. The Lavender Ameraucana is a beautiful pigeon grey color. I hope to be raising them in the spring of 2012.

I have put together a short video showing the colors of some of the Ameraucanas I currently have at the Backyard Chicken Coop.

Many people will mistake the Ameraucanas with the Araucana breed as they are similar chickens because both breeds lay eggs with egg shells that are colored in various shades of blue or light green, have pea combs, and should have the red earlobes, but they have many differences and are completely different breeds. Ameraucana traits include full tails, muffs, beards, and slate or black legs depending on the variety. According to the American Poultry Association, the Araucana breed must be rumpless (meaning no tail) and have ear tufts.

A big mis-conception about the blue eggs that come from the Ameraucanas and Araucanas, is that they are lower in cholesterol than white and brown eggs?

Many people have asked this question due to some of the hatcheries claiming that these eggs were reported to be lower in cholesterol and higher in nutritional value than other chicken eggs. This is not the case at all. Basically the only different in the color of eggs is the shell color itself.

Try some Ameraucana chickens in your flock. You can’t go wrong. A flock of Ameraucans with the blue eggs, Anconas with white eggs, speckled Sussex with light brown eggs, and the Marans breeds with the very dark brown chocolate eggs will give you an egg basket that even Martha Stewart would be proud of.