Black copper maran x legbar

[Chuckopolis]

Hi, Anyone any info on a bcm x legbar. Egg laying, colour of eggs, temperament. Any pictures would be great.
Thanks.

 

[aart]

Some of these may also be a different cross, BCM x OE(Wellie x EE).
Also hard photograph real colors.
Pretty sure the upper right is the bird aboves egg.

 

[Chuckopolis]

Thanks for reply Aart. Lovely bird and great egg colour.

 

[GaryDean26]

I have done CLB x BMC crosses. Our Legbars are more skitish than our manrans. The marans will come right up to our feet to get treats and the legbars will stay 5-6 feet away. The legbars hens have been more bossy in the pecking order. The marans hens are more laid back and get a long with everyone in the flock. The marans cockerels are more aggressive than the Legbar cockerels. neither are a concern with our children picking up hens or collecting eggs though. Our legbar x marans hen that we kept for 3 years before she was was taken by a predator got along with everyone in the flock and was laid back but also kept a little more distance from us than the marans hens. This is just our flock. The temperament of birds is highly individual and is independent of the breed.

Below are eggs from our LegbarxMarans hen next to eggs from our Legbars and Marans. Yes, the olive eggs were huge (70-75 grams) and she laid about 225 eggs a year.

below is a photo of our Cross hen in the front next the a pure legbar male and pure marans female. Her type follow her Legbar father but she was a larger hen than a legbar (but smaller than a Marans).

 

[Chuckopolis]

Thanks for the reply. Lovely coloured eggs. I was wondering if the rooster was a maran and the legbar a hen, would it make a difference to the egg colour and offsprings appearance?

 

[GaryDean26]

I bred Black Copper Marans for many years. When I started with the breed I came across comments from people on-line saying that the egg color was sex-linked and came from the the cockerel. I did my own test mates and proved that to be wrong. You get just as dark eggs from Marans Crosses using a Marans Hen as you do using a Marans cockerel (assuming that both the cockerel and hen are equally prepotent for egg color).

With the Hen you know what color eggs she lays. We found that about one out of 8 Marans hens would lay a significantly darker egg than other hens from the same breeding. Those were the hens that you need to breed to maintain good egg color in your Marans line. Breeding the average color every years leads to the average getting lighter and lighter every year. As with the hens, about one in eight cockerels will have the genes for the darker egg color. The problem is you don't know which male it is without testing mating it to a hen of know egg color and doing a progeny test. So...breeding a Marans Hen to a cockerel of another breed is actually a better way to go than breeding a cockerel to another breed because you know what egg color the hen is producing and with the cockerel it is either a 1 in 8 guess or requires two years to progeny test. If you have a cock that had already been through the two year progeny tested and proven to be the one in eight cockerels with the darker gene potential then you can use him with equal successes to a hen with darker egg color.

As for the color, using the Legbar male will produce 100% offspring that are barred (male and female) as show with the hen above. Using a legbar hen will produce 100% barred males and 100% black mossy hens. The advantage of that is you can color sex the chicks at day old. The males will have a white dot on their head and the females will be solid black.

 

[aart]

I was wondering if the rooster was a maran and the legbar a hen, would it make a difference to the egg colour and offsprings appearance?

No and yes.
BCM x CCL will give you sexlinked chicks...females will be black and males will be barred(white spot on head at hatch).