Blue Copper and Splash Copper Marans Discussion

[Runawaylobster]

Just a baby! My understanding is that if you have blues and blacks it's not a good idea to mix them up with the coppers...or did you mean put him with BCM and blue coppers? He looks substantial for 5 months.

I have heard this too... and so i do actually keep everyone numbered so i know the parentage. I mix my blacks and blues in the same pen often, but if i want to make strictly black coppers then i just sort them out and only use the ones without blue parentage. I'm assuming he came from a blue copper line because of the copper leakage. I am really interested in seeing what shade of copper i get on the offspring, I love my blues right now but i would like to have a darker shade of copper on them. I really need to work on the black coppers right now but who could resist experimenting with him LOL!!!

 

[DMRippy]

Quote:
Just try him. Watch his tail.... not sure I like his tail angle. If he has copper he is a copper. He will NOT darken the copper on your blues. If you want a darker copper find you a really dark black copper and work with that in your blues. Blue tends to wash the copper some so you may have a hard time getting them as dark as you can blacks.

 

[desertmarcy]

Hi all, I haven't been posting much lately. But sad to report, my one and only Blue Copper Marans cockerel that I held back from last year died...from mites! So I have been dealing with treating all my birds, cleaning and dusting everywhere. I had not really decided if or how I was going to use that male, so he was by himself and I didn't pay him much attention other than feeding in the morning, but I had another bird (not a Marans) brought here from out of state that turned out to be infested, so now I am suspecting that bird came in with the mites since I had never had them in my flocks before. I had isolated that bird, he had even been washed and taken to a show and he did seem okay, so if he had a few, it took a while for the numbers to build. The crazy thing is, I had received two males from this one person: the other one arrived sick and we thought from stress of the trip and he seemed to recover, then went downhill fast and died. I buried him and never thought to check for mites. Really had no experience with them!! Now I wonder if that is what killed him. Let me tell you, this whole problem has really soured me on getting any more adult birds from anyone. I am "down" to 149 chickens and multiple pens, and treating them all has been a real chore, I haven't done anything else but take care of chickens, chicken pens, etc. for weeks. Fortunately, it looks like the problem was isolated to just a few males, and the Sevin dust wipes them out rapidly. That Blue Copper cockerel went from eating and looking normal to dead in a matter of two days. Of course, he was NOT "normal", he was being sucked dry by mites and I just didn't know it

until I started going through ALL the birds to dust them, then discovered he was loaded.

So this year I am using two main Black Copper Marans over my Blue Coppers. I have my cock with two hens and his son with the same 4 hens I used last year but with a different male. Due to space, I have the Black Copper hens and pullets I want to breed also in with the Blues. I "think" I will be able to tell which eggs come from the Blue Coppers, since they lay really large eggs, but if this gets confusing and doesn't work, I will have to find space somewhere in individual pens to set the Blues up individually, like I did last year.
Don't really want to do that since it is more work feeding and cleaning those extra pens, but I want to make sure I know which eggs came from Blue and which from Black.

 

[Ihilani Coffee]

Here are photos of this chick as day-old, and new ones today at 4.5 weeks. It's pure snow white (except that little bit of BluKote on the shoulder there). Now what?

Remember the wheaten (not) recessive white pullet? She's two months now and starting to splash out with blue on her back, just like the WC blue splash Polish I had. Apparently I have a slow-splashing line. Zanna, you can relax (for now)...no recessive white. She is the nicest chick I've kept so far, type-wise.

Edited for Retraction: I am an idiot. I was looking at her in the nighttime with just barn lights. In the daylight today I took her outside to discover that the "splashing" is really just the leftover Blu-Kote I spilled several weeks ago, faded to a splash blue. So I'm human/fallible. Still a recessive white. I hope I am able to identify the hen that is making these...I think I may have another just hatched today but need to wait until I take them out to be sure. Another one hatched from my eggs in another flock and the woman is thrilled.

 

[jphendrix]

Remember the wheaten (not) recessive white pullet? She's two months now and starting to splash out with blue on her back, just like the WC blue splash Polish I had. Apparently I have a slow-splashing line. Zanna, you can relax (for now)...no recessive white. She is the nicest chick I've kept so far, type-wise.

Beautiful bird! I hope I end up with some splash in my hatch!

 

[pinkchick]

My one and only surviving Blue Copper hen has started to lay. Here are her 1st three eggs. Took her long enough. She is from my last hatch late last spring.
I am sure you can figure out which is which by the color progression.
Makes me wonder what her siblings eggs would have been like had it not been for the mountain lion.

A few of the babies. So far, I only see 4 males, 3 blue and 1 black.

 

[Runawaylobster]

My one and only surviving Blue Copper hen has started to lay. Here are her 1st three eggs. Took her long enough. She is from my last hatch late last spring.
I am sure you can figure out which is which by the color progression.
Makes me wonder what her siblings eggs would have been like had it not been for the mountain lion.


A few of the babies. So far, I only see 4 males, 3 blue and 1 black.

Hopefully mother nature will help you to hatch more soon since boys mature earlier than girls do. My blue roo was making fertile eggs at 4 months. I didn't believe it so i put some in the incubator and they hatched!!

 

[AandAranch]

My one and only surviving Blue Copper hen has started to lay. Here are her 1st three eggs. Took her long enough. She is from my last hatch late last spring.
I am sure you can figure out which is which by the color progression.
Makes me wonder what her siblings eggs would have been like had it not been for the mountain lion.

A few of the babies. So far, I only see 4 males, 3 blue and 1 black.

So sorry about your birds. It's so hard losing them, especially like that. I just lost 1 guinea and my favorite buff cochin hen to a mink. I was wondering how can you tell that you have 4 males in that group? I would love to know because I'm going to start hatching out some blue coppers from a black copper roo and splash copper hen. And if I can tell gender at that age it would be great.

 

[pinkchick]

So sorry about your birds. It's so hard losing them, especially like that. I just lost 1 guinea and my favorite buff cochin hen to a mink. I was wondering how can you tell that you have 4 males in that group? I would love to know because I'm going to start hatching out some blue coppers from a black copper roo and splash copper hen. And if I can tell gender at that age it would be great.

Thanks.
Sorry, should have said that they are now about 10+ days old, so figuring out who is who is pretty easy at this age. However, I have been breeding them for just over 5 years, so I have learned to spot the little buggers early. I also rely on naturally occurring differences in feathering characteristics between males and females as the chicks mature and feather out. Also, at this point the males are starting to show their lovely little combs as well.

 

[chicken pickin]

I have 4 newly hatched Blue Copper babies in my incubator, they hatched today. I set 6, the first 2 were infertile and the other 4 made it into lockdown, of which all 4 hatched. They came from a Blue Copper hen covered by Black Copper Roo, I was happily surprised to see that all 4 were blue. I will take pics later today once I get them in a brooder.