Black Copper Marans discussion thread

[Chooks man]

Hi Wildcracted nice BCM pullet you got there,nice hackle ,nice type, well feathered shanks,large comb ( hard to tell she keep moving her head) ,long back, tail nicely placed and on the right angle.nice black body color no white feathers Very good.she is large pullet.
Problem I see with her is her white ears lobes ( they should be red)
I can t tell what color are her eyes ?
Can you please take a few photos of her head , top of her back and from the rear to see if her tail if is open or not and we want to see the width of her rear( she should be wide ).

I like her a lot. what egg color she hatched from?
hope some body else have another opinion .
chooks man

 

[Bejammie]

Crappy photos but photos nonetheless...

 

[Chooks man]

Hi Bejammie your BCM rooster has a pretty face i m impressed with his comb well serrated . nice eyes ,well colored ears down feathers. nice coppery color.
we need to see him from different angles to evaluate him well.
photos of his hole body, his back ,from the front and rear,

chooks man

 

[wildcrafted]

Hi Wildcracted nice BCM pullet you got there,nice hackle ,nice type, well feathered shanks,large comb ( hard to tell she keep moving her head) ,long back, tail nicely placed and on the right angle.nice black body color no white feathers Very good.she is large pullet.
Problem I see with her is her white ears lobes ( they should be red)
I can t tell what color are her eyes ?
Can you please take a few photos of her head , top of her back and from the rear to see if her tail if is open or not and we want to see the width of her rear( she should be wide ).

I like her a lot. what egg color she hatched from?
hope some body else have another opinion .
chooks man

THANKS SO MUCH!!! What a great detailed response Chooks man. I'll take all the photos you suggested tomorrow and post them. She has pretty amber-colored eyes. She came out of a dark brown egg. It wasn't as dark as I'd hoped but dark nonetheless. I wish I had measured it on the color scale before hatch. So far she lays the darkest eggs out of my three BCM pullets. I'll try to get a picture of that too as she's in the coop working on one as I type.

In the meantime you can also see her from the top and behind in this video if you fast-forward to 0:38 :

The rooster has been yanking on all the girls combs until they bleed when he mates them. Two of the BCMS seem like their combs are slightly bent and I'm not sure if it is from all the abuse or just genetic.

 

[wildcrafted]

ChooksMan. Here are some egg pics. Her egg is the spotted one. I think the first pic is a more accurate representation of the color as the last was slightly shadowed. This is in comparison to an Australorp, Leghorn and Easter Egger egg.

 

[Chooks man]

Hi Wildcrafted .She is sound from behind wide enough.her eggs are nice . when she start laying. you have to watch the first 20 eggs she lay.they are the one ho tell you how dark her eggs are going to be.
Nice Rooster and nice a small healthy flock of chooks you have. you should be proud .

hope this detail was help full.

 

[ChickNHeels]

Hi all BCM lovers! I am new to chicken keeping and after much research, we built a coop over the summer and purchased 9 day-old FBCM chicks this summer, hatched at the end of July. They are the GFF new French imports line. Out of the 9, I ended up with 6 cockerels and 3 pullets. So far, I've been impressed with the size, personality, and productiveness of the birds. They all have very correct shank and eye color. One of my pullets laid her first egg yesterday at 21 weeks old and she laid another gorgeous egg this morning! However, I've seen quite a few different faults pop up on most all of the cockerels. We processed the two smallest cockerels last weekend. Our decision to cull those two was based on the fact that they were the two smallest birds; one was very overly copper colored on the breast; the other was extremely slow to feather, probably at least 3-4 weeks behind the rest of the flock.

Now we are left with 4 cockerels. I am trying to decide on 2 to keep for the sake of genetic diversity, and because they are free ranged daily and do a good job of watching over the girls. My main goal is to raise healthy birds that produce beautiful eggs and to use my culls for meat birds. Although I do not necessarily plan on showing any of my birds, I may eventually try to sell excess eggs as hatching eggs. Of course, I would ideally produce productive birds that did their best to exhibit the standard of perfection. However, good body type, hardiness, and egg laying capacity is my first priority at this point. As I said, I am very green to raising chickens, let alone breeding them. We may purchase a small coop to keep the cockerels in for a while, so we can possibly put one cockerel at a time in with the girls to get fertilized eggs from them. So I am not against growing out my current boys for a little while longer to do some test mating.

My question is, which "faults" or "disqualifications" can be worked with in a breeding program and be bred out? From reading through the forums, I am sure most of the serious breeders on here would say to cull anything with a "disqualification." However, I have also seen breeders say not to throw away a good bird just because of that. For example, an article from Backyard Poultry magazine stated, "This Black Marans Cockerel, owned by Kathleen LaDue, is superior in type, degree of shank feathering, and color, but has a small side sprig on his comb. When developing new varieties and bloodlines in rare breeds, simple faults like this can be overcome with strategic breeding if the bird excels in other desirable traits."
http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/marans_chickens_layers_of_chocolate_brown_eggs/

I hope to post some pictures of my 4 boys for you all to evaluate and help me decide on what is worth trying to breed or not. I have one cockerel with side sprigs and one who is starting to show some white in the earlobes, both of which I believe are "disqualifications." I have another that has a small amount of white under fluff at the base of the feather under the hackle feathers (the entire feather is NOT white, just at the base of the feather where it comes out of the skin). None of them have white wing or tail feathers. They all appear to have some shafting on the copper breast feathers. Some of them have small amount of white feathers on feet (only part of the feather is white). None of them have the yellow halo. Please do not tell me to eat them all and start over. I plan on working with what I have. After all, my goal with getting chickens was to be more sustainable, for the eggs, and to provide my chickens a more humane and loving environment than factory farmed poultry.

Overview picture of the 4 boys:



Cockerel #1:
He has side sprigs. He is top of the pecking order. He is my biggest boy, with the lowest tail angle, and darkest copper hackles. Fastest growing, first crowing (a month before rest). Least amount of shank feathering. Very open tail from behind. No white anywhere. Easy to handle/hold, but recently slightly aggressive. Was the friendliest growing up until now. Can the side sprigs be bred out? Or is it not worth it to try to get some offspring from him? We can either test mate him or eat him.




Cockerel 1 is the bird on the right

Cockerel #2:
Was born with red earlobes, but has recently developed white on earlobes. Has better body type than cockerels 3 and 4. He is the widest bird in the hips. His legs are stocky and widely spaced apart. Very open tail from behind. He's the least aggressive bird and easy to pick up. He has heaviest feathered shanks of all birds. 3rd in pecking order, 3rd in weight, only an ounce less than cockerel 3. Of note, he was born with a tiny copper dot on his head. Tiny bit of white on feet feathers. Cockerels 2 and 3 have probably the most correct copper colored hackles of the 4 (cockerel 1 more mahogany, cockerel 4 slightly lighter than 2 and 3).


Cockerel 2 is the bird on the right.

View from behind, cockerel 2 is on the right, on the stairs.

Close up of cockerel 2's head/earlobes.

Cockerel #3:
This bird is 2nd in pecking order and weight, but only slightly heavier than cockerel 2 above. He has the least amount of copper on the breast, but has shafting there. He has a higher, more vertical tail angle. He has small amount of white under fluff at the base of the feather under the hackle feathers (the entire feather is NOT white, just at the base of the down feather where it comes out of the skin). No white on wings or tail or anywhere exposed. He has narrower hips than cockerel 2. Tiny bit of white on feet feathers.



Cockerel 3 is on left.

Side view of cockerel 3, behind on the left.

Back view of cockerel 3, on left. All 3 of cockerels 1, 2, and 3 have a nice wide open tail like this, with cockerel 2 probably being the widest legs.

Cockerel #4:
He is 4th in pecking order and also the smallest in weight of the 4 (but is still bigger than the 2 we already culled). He has a slightly different body type, his legs appear longer, his body taller than the rest. When looked down at from above, he "appears" narrower towards the hips compared to the wings. I say "appears" because despite all this, he has a longer back than cockerels 2 and 3, who are stockier, but also seem to have shorter backs. However, his tail is the least open and slightly pinched at the top, but still open at bottom. He has the most evenly serrated comb of them all. He has the reddest eyes of all the marans we have. He is the most aggressive of the 4. I was possibly going to cull him just because of his aggression, but I am willing to work with him on it if you think he should be bred. Or I could keep him just until I get fertilized eggs from him. He is slightly slower feathering than all the rest of the boys. He was the first boy to start mounting the pullets, long before he knew what he was doing. He has the lightest colored hackles of the 4, but still not straw colored. Although, the coloring could be due to his slower feathering? He has the most amount of copper on breast. No white that I could find.


Side view of cockerel 4 in middle of screen (bird on left).



Just for fun, and to allow you to see the type of pullets I will be working with, here is a picture of one of my pullets, the one who started laying yesterday at 21 weeks:


So there are the pictures of the 4 cockerels I have to work with. If someone can please clarify which defects (side sprigs, earlobe color, white feathers) can be worked with and bred out over time, I'd love some concrete answers. I'm unsure which characteristics are heavily passed down through genetics. I've read conflicting threads on breeders using birds with defects. And even Backyard Poultry Magazine endorsed using certain birds, despite major flaws, as cited above.

Honest and constructive criticism, delivered in a respectful and considerate manor, is highly appreciated. As a chicken newbie, I feel like I know my birds enough to describe what I see to you all. However, I don't have the experience to really know what to do with all that information at this point! I am willing to keep all 4 long enough in a separate coop to do planned breedings to see what the offspring look like if that's what some of you recommend? I'd like your opinions on which birds to definately keep, try, or cull. Please rank them as you wish and provide any explanations you see fit. Ideally, I would keep 2 for the long run, but I don't mind test breeding more of them for their offspring and then culling them. I apologize for the long post. I wanted to give you guys as much information as possible, as their fate literally rests on it.

Thank you for sticking with me through this long and informative post. I look forward from learning from you all!

 

[GaryDean26]

....please clarify which defects (side sprigs, earlobe color, white feathers) can be worked with and bred out over time, I'd love some concrete answers. I'm unsure which characteristics are heavily passed down through genetics. I've read conflicting threads on breeders using birds with defects. And even Backyard Poultry Magazine endorsed using certain birds, despite major flaws, as cited above.

ALL defects can be worked with, but to "work with" some defect means to cull for them every year with never being able to get rig of them completely from the flock, others can be breed out but require extensive test mating, and some can be breed out through culling alone in just a few generations.

The worst example of something that I know of for "culling every year but never being able get it out of your flock" is a man that has been working with a line of Columbian Wyandotts for about 35 years. Twenty years ago he brought in some hatchery Columbian Wyandotts but they had inverted points on there comb and so he wasn't going to breed any of them and just cull the whole group. He was leaving town and instructed his care giver to collect and set eggs from pens 1-5 but the care giver didn't understand and also set eggs from the hatchery stock in pens 6 & 7. Oops...all the offspring got mixed together. He had never seen a single inverted point in the 10 years prior to that but now, even after culling for it for 20 years he said he still gets a few birds with the inverted points every year. It is such a shame that something like that got into his line.

I don't envy the task ahead of you with your Marans Flock. The side sprigs, white lobes, and white feathers all are things that you don't want to ever see in your flock, but you have them all so you are forced to work with all of them. I think the white feathers will be the hardest to breed out. They can skip generations and birds that don't show them can be carriers of the genes so getting them out will require strict culling over a long time. Many of these lines with white feathers have recessive color patterns (i.e. the partridge or brown color patterns) so testing the line for recessives may be a good place to start when working out the white feathers. You could start with the white feathers first or you can save it for last to work on easier goals first.

The next hardest to breed out will likely be the side springs. It is a double dominate gene so if you have a carrier for both of the genes then the sprig will show. The bad thing about breeding a bird with a sprig is that the offspring can get both of the genes from the parent with the sprig as well as one from a parent with out the sprig to where they get two copies of of of the genes and only one copy is required to produce the side sprig. When you breed out the sprigs what you essentially do is breed out of the two genes and so you never see springs again after that but they continue to carrier the other gene in the line. When you cross Marans lines sprigs are common because there is a 50% chance that the other line is carrying the other gene.

I don't like so see white lobes on a cockerel. I had a Basque Hen pullet that had white lobes and when she came into lay she was laying eggs that were almost white. Not good because the Basque Hens are a brown egg layer. The rest of the flock all laid brown eggs so I quickly changed my thoughts on wether or not the white lobes are linked to the white eggs. I wasn't convinced before now I am convinced that white lobes and light eggs have a close linkage. The white lobes in the Basque Hens and your Marans probably both came from out crosses to Penedenseca. The Penes are dark egg layers, but I still feel that a Marans cockerel with a white lobe is going to much more likly to pass light egg color to his offspring that one with red lobes. I would never want to be in a situation where my options we so limited that I had to use a cockerel with white lobes. It had one pullet and cockerel in my first batch of Basque hens. I culled them both and never saw white lobes (or eggs) again so I would assume that it would be easier to breed out than sprigs or white feathers. So again you can either start with white lobes (get the easy things taken care of first) or save it for last.

I wouldn't use the narrow body/tall one. Good body type is really important when starting your flock.

I think I personally would use cockerel #1 and plan on spending a few generation working issues out of my flock before I was willing to let anything that came out of the flock leave the property.

For me, when it come to culling and selection, I look at flock tendencies. If I had a group of 20 birds in my starter group and 18 of them had side sprigs. It would be a huge problems in the flock and I would work on it first because if I didn't if might be 20 out of 20 ever year after that. Same with white feathers, white lobes, humps on the back right in front of the junction of the tail, clean shanks, sharp tail angles, etc. If everyone in the flock except two or three birds have a common defect I would work with the two or three that don't show the defect. Also never pair two birds with the same defect. If you only have 2 out of 20 birds with poor feathering on the shanks, then using one is going to be okay, but using two paired together is not going to be okay. Work away from defects and try to get fewer and fewer to show up in the flock every year. You have a lot in this flock to work on starting out with so don't get in a hurry. Take your time and you will have the breeder quality flock that everyone is wants to have. Get in a hurry and you will be passing on the same mess year after year and never be happy with what you have.

 

[snowbird]

Crappy photos but photos nonetheless...

Crappy photos but photos nonetheless...

The copper on this male is very nice color. Tail is a little high though and can be worked with.

 

[wava1vaughn]