Silver Ameraucana

A Line Worth Preserving

My large fowl Silver Ameraucana program was built directly from Steve Neumann’s flock. Steve worked with large fowl Silver Ameraucana for twelve years, and for roughly the last seven years his flock was maintained as a closed line.

My first birds from that line actually came to me before I ever purchased directly from Steve. I started with three Silver Ameraucana hens that I bought from a friend who had previously purchased hatching eggs from him. Those three hens were my first introduction to the Neumann line and marked the beginning of what would later develop into my larger Silver Ameraucana breeding program.

In July 2025, I brought home my first small flock directly from Steve. These were retired breeders from his program, birds that had already been used in the breeding work he had spent years developing. At that point, I was still very much at the beginning of building my own program.

Among the retired breeders I brought home from Steve was my cock, Orion. When Orion later passed in his sleep, I reached back out to Steve because I wanted to source additional males and preserve more of the genetic diversity represented within his line. I expected that conversation to be about adding a few more birds.

Instead, Steve offered me the opportunity to take on the remainder of his flock.

In June 2026, Steve bequeathed that flock to me, giving me the responsibility of continuing the work he had already spent more than a decade developing.

I was floored by the offer. At the time, I was still a relatively new and unknown breeder, and suddenly I was being trusted with the last of an entire breeding line. My immediate reaction was essentially, why me?

Steve saw something in me that made him willing to place that responsibility in my hands, and I am incredibly grateful for that trust. I do not take it lightly. Being given the opportunity to continue a line that someone else spent twelve years developing feels like the opportunity of a lifetime, but it also comes with a tremendous amount of pressure.

Steve has been active within the Ameraucana community for years, including contributing to Ameraucana breed-history discussions and Silver breeding conversations. Other experienced Ameraucana breeders have publicly recognized the quality of his large fowl Silvers, which makes carrying that line forward especially meaningful to me.

This gave me considerably more than a group of breeding birds. It gave me a population carrying more than a decade of deliberate breeding history and placed the continuation of that work in my hands.

I do not view the Neumann birds simply as foundation stock that happened to come from a particular breeder. I view the line itself as something worth maintaining.

That history is why provenance matters so much to me as this program develops. I want the Neumann line to remain identifiable for what it is, and I want the decisions I make from this point forward to be documented clearly enough that the history of the flock is not lost as new generations are produced.

As additional Silver Ameraucana genetics are incorporated into the broader JK Homegrown program in the future, their origins and purpose will be documented separately. The Neumann flock will remain the foundation of the program and the reference point from which the rest of my Silver Ameraucana work develops.

How I Am Moving the Line Forward

My goal is to preserve the original Neumann line as a distinct breeding population while continuing to improve it through careful selection. The primary Neumann line will remain closed, allowing me to continue working within the genetic population Steve developed rather than immediately blending it into other Silver Ameraucana lines.

Beginning with the spring 2027 breeding season, mature birds will be divided into a number of smaller breeding groups, primarily pairs and trios. These groups will allow me to use compensation mating, pairing birds whose strengths and weaknesses complement one another, while also giving me greater control over individual families and the ability to track what specific combinations produce. As the program develops, I intend to use these groups to establish a spiral mating system that will allow me to manage related families across generations while continuing to make purposeful selection decisions within the closed population.

A separate breeding group will be maintained for line-cross work. Outside genetics will only be introduced when there is a specific breeding objective and a clear reason for making the cross. These offspring will remain identifiable and separate from the closed Neumann population so that their ancestry and contribution can be evaluated without obscuring the provenance of the original line.

Every fall, I also plan to conduct what Steve calls a “Vigor Hatch.” Rather than using controlled pairs and trios, the mature breeders will be placed together in a large flock-breeding pen and allowed to make their own mate selections. Chicks produced through the Vigor Hatch will receive their own identifiable wing bands and will be evaluated alongside the offspring from the controlled breeding groups. Those that earn a place in the program can then be incorporated into future breeding generations. If egg production during the Vigor Hatch is sufficient to meet my own hatching needs first, additional hatching eggs may also be made available.

Every chick produced for the program will be wing banded, and detailed records will be maintained for ancestry, breeding groups, pairings, fertility, hatch results, vigor, egg color, type, and the performance of offspring over time. The purpose of those records is to allow me to evaluate more than the individual bird standing in front of me. I want to know what families consistently contribute, which matings complement one another, where problems repeat, and which birds prove valuable through the quality of the offspring they produce.

Selection will be strict. The best offspring will be retained as potential future breeders, and the strongest examples of the Standard will be conditioned and shown. Birds with serious deficiencies or characteristics that make them unsuitable for the breed will be hard culled. Birds that are healthy and useful but do not offer enough to move the breeding program forward may be placed with homesteaders as non-breeding layers.

Hatching eggs offered from this program will come from the same breeding pens and the same pool of eggs I use for my own hatches. I do not maintain a separate standard for eggs sold to someone else. If an egg is not one I would be willing to set in my own incubator, it will not be sold as a hatching egg.

The objective is not simply to produce more Silver Ameraucana. It is to preserve the history already present in this flock while creating enough documentation, structure, and selection pressure to understand what each generation contributes and make increasingly informed breeding decisions as the program develops.