Is "birchen" a color or a breed?

[Olive Oil]

I have 3 birchen marans. 1 rooster and 2 hens. Can anyone tell me if "birchen" stands for their color or their breed? They lay a beautiful egg. Much darker than the Black Copper Marans eggs I've seen. I thought birchen was a color and the breed was marans, but then how could you sell eggs as being "Birchen Marans" eggs if you don't know what color the chicken will be? I have bred mine and hatched some chicks. Just wondering if I have Birchen Marans or just Marans which may or may not be birchen. Oh there's so much more to this than I thought! Love it though!! Thank you for reading!

 

[Wyandottes7]

"Birchen" is the variety (just like there are Black Copper and Blue Copper), and "Marans" is the breed.

 

[donrae]

Marans is the breed. Marans come in several color...birchen, black copper, wheaton, cuckoo, etc.

Each color is supposed to breed true, when you breed two birds of the same color variety you should get chicks of that color. If you get chicks of a different color, your parent stock wasn't quality for their color.

 

[Olive Oil]

Thank you. So in theory, I could get birchen, black coppers, and blue coppers all from these parents if my stock are not quality for their color?

 

[donrae]

No. If your birds look birchen, they'll either throw birchen chicks or mixed color chicks. You won't get a black copper from a birchen parent stock.

One thing that can happen is wheaton from black copper, I guess the wheaton genes can be very recessive and crop up in the black copper stock from time to time. But if you breed that parent stock again, all the black copper folks will hate you for it as they've been working hard to cull all those wheaton carriers from the pool.

But besides the above example, you're just going to get birds that aren't any specific color, or very poor representatives of the color.

 

[BantamFan4Life]

Birchen is a variety or "color". Birchen is the same variety as gray.