Australian Araucana

Finally, about the chickens that this site is named after!

Araucanas are well known for their blue eggs, hence Blue Tamago (tamago =  egg in Japanese).

We got this breed for no other reason than to make our egg basket look pretty, we already had brown, beige and white eggs, now to add blue and you get a fantastic looking egg collection.

There seems to be a bit of confusion in what an Araucana should look like. In America, Araucanas do not have tails (rumpless)and have some seriously funny handlebar ear tufts, no beards or muffling on their heads.

The gene for ear tufts are called an incomplete dominant gene, only one copy of the gene is required to produce the ear tufts. Incomplete means that having the gene doesn't necessarily mean you will get ear tufts. To make matters worse, this gene is lethal when present on both alleles. This means that chickens with the tufts have a dominant copy and an recessive copy of the gene and unfortunately 1 in 4 chicks from tufted parents will perish.  So had enough of your genetics lesson? Back to the Australian Araucana.

 Australia follows the British standards which can come in a tailed and rumpless form, but so far in Adelaide, I have only come across the tailed version.  Araucanas have thick muffling around their head, so lots of small feathers around the head, they can look like beards, small ear tufts and a bouffant hairstyle. Small or no wattles can be seen and ear lobes are hidden by the muffling.  These chickens only have a small pea comb and thei eyes are yellow (interestingly, when they are chicks, their eyes are grey and as they mature, it turns to yellow with flecks of red). The have strong legs that should be slate/dark grey colour.  They can come in a variety of colours: blue, black red, silver duckwing, golden duckwing, black, white and probably a few other colours that I have not heard about. The most popular are lavender which is what ours have.

Araucanas are in very high demand in Adelaide and hens even more so. Our introduction to this breed started one summer when an advert was placed on gumtree for a lavender araucana hen for sale. These adverts get picked up very quickly and we had called the owner within the hour. A trip to Parafield later, we met the breeder who had about 6 araucanas in his courtyard backyard! Plus chicks and he had converted his bedroom into an egg incubation station (he moved his bed into the lounge room). To placate his neighbours, the rooster was placed in a box inside the house at night. We picked up a little bantam araucana that was in her second season (I took that to mean she was about 2 years old), parted with $40 and brought her home.

 

 Meet Pipsqueak, or Pippy for short. She was so much smaller than our other big hens that this name suited her. Plus she was really, really fast and zippy, which made catching her incredibly difficult. She must have had little contact with humans when she was young, as she hates coming close to people and if you do manage to catch her, she screams bloody murder!

Anyway, we felt sorry for this little one being by herself, she didn't want to interact with the other hens, so it was to our surprise that another advert came up selling two araucana hens.

Another drive, this time a much longer drive to Lewiston up north of the city. The owner made a mistake of putting the advert up on New Years Day, but she was happy enough to have us come up. Two young hens, one white and another lavender were in a chicken tractor with their brother. Not wanting a rooster we just bought the two, parted with $30 and brought them back.

On the ride home

Meeting Pippy for the first time

 Well Pippy wasn't going to be outstaged by two young hens! She was the older more mature (although slightly smaller) hen that had to put them in place. These twins were around 15 weeks old, so still quite young and about a month to two months away from laying. We christened the twins, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Dee Dee (grey) and Dum Dum (white) for short. There was a reason why we called the white one Dum Dum, but that story is for another day.

 LAYING

Well, Pippy continued laying the day after arriving at our house,  Dee Dee started laying about a month later and Dum Dum soon after that.  The twins were full sized Araucana, with Pippy being a bantam, but their eggs were pretty much all the same size. With the twins being a shade larger.  Eggs were a beautiful blue/green colour and range in weight from 40-50gm. They usually lay about 5 out of 7 days. So far, none of the three hens have shown a sign of being broody.

TEMPERAMENT

Pippy aside, the twins having grown up with us are quite friendly. If you are in the garden, they will come up to you to see what you are doing.  The twins grew to being a third bigger than the bantam, so they are quite light and easy to handle. The twins do like to cackle quite a bit, as they like talking to each other. When they were young, if you separated them, they would cackle and scream until the other one turned up. Pippy was quieter, until you tried to pick her up. The twins are fine to handle, they don't seem to mind it very much.  

Appetite wise, they are quite small eaters, meaning that their poos are much, much smaller (especially in comparison to an Australorp), meaning that they will take longer to foul up a smaller space. Testament to the guy that was breeding Araucanas in his courtyard backyard, it was not a stinky slippery mess, even with all the chickens he had.

Pippy and Dee Dee digging away

After seeing the Araucanas in the small courtyard backyard, this breed seems to be quite happy in smaller areas, although, as with most chickens, they do like to free range and they will dig up the garden. Their longish legs mean that they can dig and forage quite well. Even Pippy the bantam was very good at digging.

Overall, if you have a small garden, Araucanas would be suitable. Although the eggs are small-medium size, they have the interesting talking point of being blue/green! Friendly birds if you have lots of contact with them (meaning you bring them lots of treats).

For those in Adelaide wanting to purchase Araucanas, keep an eye out on Gumtree during the summer months or there is the local breeder Nicky's Chicks, but be warned, she has a very long waiting list for hens. There is also the Backyard Poultry noticeboard site to check out.