I found these a number of years ago from a local breeder who has since disbanded her flock. They are pretty birds, but the original breeder released them for sale before the genes for muffs and beard were stable in the population. I spent the first few years raising dozens each year, but only keeping a few as breeders. Those genes seem to be homozygous now and I am happy that these are truly Ameraucanas in every sense of the word.
There has been a recent surge in demand for Ermine Ameraucanas and they are getting easier to find, but the Mottleds are still very rare. They look different and genetically are entirely distinct. In fact, you could have a bird with both Mottled and Ermine (Dominant White) genes. An Ermine is a white bird with some black markings. A Mottled is a black bird with some white markings. These are other differences:
- Ermine does not breed true, if you breed ermine to ermine, you will get (approximately) 50% ermine, 25% black and 25% white. This works very much like the Blue (as in blue/black/splash) gene, with ermine being like blue.
- Mottled does breed 100% true. You can easily outcross to black, but if you breed mottled to mottled, every chick will be mottled.
- Mottled Ameraucanas have mottled leg color. This is considered a fault for Ameraucanas, which have dark slate legs as part of the SOP. Their legs are rather unusual and many people find it attractive, but it is unlikely Mottled will ever be admitted to the APA. Ermines do seem destined to be APA accepted and they can be bred to have the dark legs desired by Ameraucana breeders.
You can easily tell the final color of newly hatched chicks in both, but with distinctions. Mottled is reported to be recessive, but at least with regard to chick down color, I find it to be partially dominant. I can tell at hatch which chicks are fully mottled or heterozygous for mottled. The chicks with only one copy of the mottled gene have what I call a “clown face”. It is very distinctive from the pure black (look like little penguins) and the pure mottled (lots of white/yellow on the chicks). This is very helpful when outcrossing as you can see at hatch what the phenotype is with regard to mottling.
Explanation of the genetics of mottled and ermine
Both colors are based on the Extended Black genotype. In that sense they are both “compatible” colors and could be interbred, but you probably would not want to. Mottled being a single gene recessive, is very easy to maintain as a pure line. Outcrosses are possible, but take a second generation to recover the Mottled birds. Ermine is trivial to outcross, just keep white birds of one sex and get some high quality blacks of the other sex. That pen will produce 100% ermine chicks, with genetics that are half from the black line.
There is ongoing debates about whether the sexlinked gene for silver / gold is important for the colors and patterns based on extended black. There are probably some effects, and it certainly will affect the color of any leakage, but I have not heard definitive reasoning for which is better for Mottled or Ermine.
Here are some other color and pattern genes that are usually expressed on Extended Black:
- Blue – Another partially dominant gene, making a combination that is complex to calculate progeny color probabilities. Personally, I think that Blue Mottled would be a very pretty bird. Splash Mottled would not show much of the Mottling, but could be very useful to create Blue Mottled chicks. Similarly, I suspect that Blue or Splash Ermine would not be easy to see in the final bird.
- Lavender – This gene is often called “self blue” in Ameraucanas, but the name of the gene is generally called lavender. This is fully recessive, even more than the mottled gene. Creating a pure breeding self-blue mottled Ameraucana would not be difficult and the lavender mottled cochin bantams I breed are beautiful and hands down the cutest of all the chicks I hatch. Combining the lavender and ermine genes would create a very light colored ermine, but could be useful if one wanted to breed and sell the lavender/self-blue siblings instead of black.
- Sexlinked Barring – Used to create Cuckoo Ameraucanas. This gene is sexlinked and partially dominant, so it presents some interesting opportunities for sexing the offspring with the barring gene. I am not sure how attractive a Cuckoo Mottled or Cuckoo Ermine bird would be, but if you had Cuckoo Mottled hens with a (non-cuckoo) Mottled cock, the resulting chicks should be possible to sex, at least at a much younger age than typical for the breed.