Black Copper Marans discussion thread

[sabella]

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No one commented so I got nervous.

 

[sewandgrow]

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I am sure I am not the only one on this forum that doesn't respond because they just don't feel qualified to. My uninformed opinion would not be helpful to you.......Alot of us are varying degrees of beginners ourselves. Don't be discouraged from asking. If you get no response at the speed of the threads you may have just been overlooked....................Ask again. There are many out there willing to help.

 

[geebs]

Lensters... He has a pair of my blues... full siblings to the newnan number one blue coppers...

okay... Blue bird.. to young to comment yet...

 

[math ace]

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They are too to young to say anything about. . .

BCM's having white primaries happens - - and some do grow out of it and some do not. Some grow out of it QUICKLY and some take a WHOLE YEAR for the white to become painted by the black. . . .

As far as it being a Wade trait - - I would have to disagree !

When your birds get a little older - - - wait until they are 3 - 4 months . . . repost pictures. I have posted pictures that show how much they change in the first month. . . Hackle color takes time to develop. EYE color takes time to reach the appropriate color. Body statue takes time too. At this young age, the only things we can elvaulate is - - - comb deformaties and inappropriate shank / foot coloring.

When you take those pictures - - - try to get one shot from the front / chest view and once shot from the side for each bird.

 

[geebs]

HI Math Ace!!!

You are alone on here...

I have been off my game lately.. I need to go back and do evaluations... You got the page numbers??
It is quiet around here for a change... OHSET season is CCCCRRRAAAAZZZZYYY.... Only 5 more weeks lest we go to state..then is it 9 weeks till things quiet down..

 

[math ace]

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Page 94 and starts at post 938. There should be 9 posts for 9 chicks.

CLEARLY, feather sexing is not working in my group. .. I don't understand why not BECAUSE the person I got the hens from correctly feather sexed them all by 1 week of age with 100% accuracy . . . Perhaps, my roo is messing this sexing magic up for me

ANYTHING with a pink band is something that I origanally thought was a pullet!

ALSO, it looks like my BCM hen produces male chicks only or mostly!

I am looking at 7 / 9 chicks being cockerels. . . 6 / 9 of those chicks are from the BCM hen. The other three are from my blue copper marans hens. . . . I have three more chicks from the blues that I did not include in the study because I thought they were cockerels. Turns out 2/3 are pullets.

REMEMBER my first hatch - - - 4 / 4 were cockerels. So, next hatch - - - I am only hatching the blue copper marans.

The up side is that I have a lot of possibilities for replacement roos for my main guy. I can see already that the chicks have a longer back than their daddy has. Tail angle needs improvement too - - - so I am watching for that.

As far as being alone - - - I know I hit the forum at odd times.

 

[VillageChicken]

The feather sexing thing only works with one generation. Your breeder had the right configuration of slow feathering hens, fast feathering roo. So all of the offspring will be feather sexable. But the offspring's offspring will not. Slow is dominant, and rooster offspring will have both slow and fast genes. All hens will be fast. It doesn't work with offspring from either one.

You have to maintain the correct slow hen/fast roo parentage for it to work consistently. And even then you get some crossover.

Your roo may not be the culprit. The hens are definitely not going to allow you to feather sex, if they themselves were feather sexable.

That's why it's not a consistent way to know hen or roo in any chicken variety. Sometimes a popular breeder will have a breeding pen that's set up just right with slow hens and fast roo. So then it seems their "line" is feather sexable. But I don't think there are any lines that are feather sexable consistently. Otherwise the "hen or roo" thread would not exist!

 

[geebs]

Feather sexing is achieved over many generations of breeding.. using only slow feathering males over fast feathering females.....

It is a difficult thing.. I don't use a rooster that was marked like a hen at birth.. Those I cull early and don't even wait for the pattern...It doesn't matter how good they would look if I can't have a fairly good guess... but that is 3 generations in doing this and I still am not there yet.. but getting closer...

There are breeds such as cochins whos lines have been feather sexed so long that it is very doable to feather sex them... They are remarkably easy to discern but it was selective breeding that got them there.. I believe that is possible with marans as well but it is a deliberate act with active culling to get there... Anything that is a maybe it is or isn't would be culled. Only the quick feathering ones are acceptable for hens and the slow feathering ones for males... any time you add a new bird you are starting over with it's chicks...

Sorry, I got wrapped up agian... Sheesh.. I have so much to catch up on... Working on my case studies for Navicular horses in my clinic... I am going through and writing their year end progress reports... and one coffin bone rotation/protrusion that is at it's quarterly mark also.... Too much stuff too little time...

I wonder if there is a good use of thermography with chickens... We often talk about the incubator with a higher temperature producing more males... I wonder if there is a temperature difference in hens and roos and if a thermographic series would reveal it in egg form?? wouldn't that be cool!!!

I will get to the chick thing now.. THanks Math Ace

 

[VillageChicken]

Hey Geebs,
I think we're talking about two different sources of feather sexing. The most common is with the k+ fast feathering gene in Mediterranean varieties crossed with the K slow feathering gene in Asian varieties, e.g. your Cochins.

Both K and k+ exist in most varieties of chickens, and it works like barring. Your hen has to have the dominant form: K or slow feathering for it to work for sex-linked gender determination.

Probably within certain Cochin lines the k+ gene has been eliminated or maybe even never entered the picture if the lines are pure. In the case of these cochins only, the presence of two slow feathering genes in the roosters KK would cause them to feather more slowly than the hens that can only carry only one K. That is why you would have slow feathering roosters and hens that feather faster. I believe that it's really just that you have all slow feathering offspring, and the roos have a double dose of slow feathering and are distinguishable from hens as a result. Does that make sense?

I hatched 3 wheaten marans recently that displayed textbook feathering configurations that were obvious at day 3. One hen was k+ and feathered out super fast. At 3 weeks she already had head feathers coming in. One hen was K and she's still in with my newly hatched because her feathers are coming in really slow. I have a rooster that is somewhere in between the two, so he must be Kk.

Somewhere along the way, Marans (at least here in Europe) have picked up the fast feathering gene. I can't remember offhand which of the ancestral breeds would be fast feathering, maybe the OEG? So I don't think it will ever be a consistent way to determine gender unless the fast feathering gene is eliminated from marans, which isn't likely since we have so many other things to select for.


On the incubator temperature and gender of chicks - I know that after fertilization with reptiles that temp influences gender. That's an interesting theory about whether gender could be determined before hatch by egg temp. They generate their own heat after like day 14 or something don't they? They'd have to be purely experimental eggs I didn't care about - I'd be too paranoid to let them cool to their ambient temp to thermograph them if they were eggs I cared about.

 

[math ace]

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Village Chicken - - - You are ALWAYS raining on my parade !

So, MOST of these roos are FAST feathering . . . . if one of the two hens I hatched were Slow feathering THEN I would be all set on that pair !

On the negative side of this situation - - - I would have to ignore what the hen looks like since I only had two girls from the batch.

It doesn't work in reverse - - right? A slow feathering roo and fast feathering hens would not work - - Right?


Villiage Chicken = = I am so ignorant of genetics. Did I miss that class in school ? ?

Why don't I have this knowledge that everyone else seems to have? ? How do I get it? Clearly with my math degree, I should be able to wrap my head around theis tuff. . . . Do you have a book you recommend for beginners or where do you go to learn this stuff? Do they offer college classes in it? REALLY, I hate being ignorant.