Black Copper Marans discussion thread

[DMRippy]

Quote: Breeding stock is still a very high quality bird. If it is a Marans that is not laying a dark enough egg she is just a dark egg layer and be honest.

Breeding stock is about the same as SQ. SQ is about 1 in 10 from good stock. Breeders are about the same... maybe a little more but you have to cull your breeders as hard as you do for SQ birds. AND SQ birds don't equal SQ chicks.....

 

[bwalden]

This is my juvenile BCM i'm thinking of using for my breeder roo. Any thoughts/comments on how he looks would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Zanna]

haha, my dad didn't have a good technical response, but talked about his experiences with breeding purple sheened birds. He said he did notice that he had more color issues when breeding with the purple sheen, so ran green and purples separate for an experiment and said that he decided after doing both for a couple generations, he would never use purples again. I've noticed on birds, both ones I've grown out here from shipped eggs, that those with the purple sheen in the marans have a stronger likelyhood of having brown underfluff. When I first started in the Marans, I noticed that those in the following generation with the purple sheen did not have a true deep black, and still had the brown undertone. Mostly it was a curiosity thing, but once I saw that, every last birds was sold off as layers, and the males processed.
I just stay away from them. I believe that's one of the factors in my being able to make good advancements on my stock from year to year.

Thank you! Added to my cull list Someone had also mentioned on the other thread to wait until after juvenile molt to make the cull. What do you think? Would you cull a 8 - 12 week old that had purple sheen or wait and she if they changed to green sheen with the adult plumage?

 

[gilavina]

Thank you! Added to my cull list Someone had also mentioned on the other thread to wait until after juvenile molt to make the cull. What do you think? Would you cull a 8 - 12 week old that had purple sheen or wait and she if they changed to green sheen with the adult plumage?

sometimes its pretty easy to see when you have a bird that is younger that you have a color problem that won't be fixed by a molt. This is how I handle culling in my birds, I cull first and foremost for type the whole way thru, once you've been doing it for a while, you can tell when you have younger stock that just will never get the width or body type you need. I cull immediately for any odd coloration as well, luckily I don't have many of those, mostly its in other breeds I'm working on that I face that. As I am culling for type, then I will start to focus on what's left and begin to make notes to myself and take photos of them so that I can keep track of how they develop. Finer details like color, comb, leg color, etc become more of a focus. If I have a bird I really, really like, but has a quality I don't like, for example sheen, they get to make it past the juvie molt. If they lose it, great, but if not, they go.

 

[ellymayRans]

Breeding stock is still a very high quality bird.  If it is a Marans that is not laying a dark enough egg she is just a dark egg layer and be honest. 

Breeding stock is about the same as SQ.  SQ is about 1 in 10. rom good stock.  Breeders are about the same... maybe a little more but you have to cull your breeders as hard as you do for SQ birds.  AND SQ birds don't equal SQ chicks.....

Yes, I agree not to sell as Marans without appropriate egg color. If you do meet that average egg color above as scaled (#4 or above) then how do they classify as breeder stock? I would expect as long as they do not show major dq's, if you have a bird that was going to bring improvement to my stock with SOP goals in mind then I would consider that "breeder stock". However I respect the true definition of what these terms mean to my audience. Is there a BYC buyers sellers guide for dummies. Lol. No, but seriously. . .

Otherwise keep it coming. I love the knowledge!

 

[ellymayRans]

Ok. Found a good link with detailed explanation.

Animal breeding begins with breeding stock, a group of animals used for purpose of planned breeding. When individuals are looking to breed animals, they look for certain valuable traits in purebred stock for a certain purpose, or may intend to use some type of crossbreeding to produce a new type of stock with different, and presumably superior abilities.
Such animals can be recorded with a breed registry, the organization that maintains pedigrees and /or stud books. 

 

[Turkeytruff]

don't be worried, just make the change now, they may catch up. and keep weighing them and adjust humidity accordingly. you have 10 days left to help them catch up.

Also BTW: I just had 7 blue marans eggs in the incubator. I had them at the lower humidity then at about 60% for hatch and still only one hatched. but they were shipped eggs though.

Thanks - I have turned it down to 30%. That's too bad about the shipped eggs!

You need to lower the humidity right away. Marans lose humidity very slowly. You will drown the chicks if you keep it that high. Marans aren't texbook chickens.
I actually dry hatch, no water at all until the last 3 days. Since I started doing that, my hatches are much better

thank you; I have just lowered it to 30%. what % humidity do you use for your final 3 days? 60% like the other people here or?

Yes.... that dark coating on the egg make them TOTALLY DIFFERENT than other breeds.... ironically the other breeds do great with the lower humidity too.

Funny how a simple coating can make SO much difference....

I
.

I do think the further south one goes the more humidity needs to be watched. Even this far south I've drowned more marans than I care to think about before I lowered the humidity.

The humidity is 40% where I am keeping the incubator (in the basement next to the boiler!) How swampy does it get down south!? We have rain here in the Pacific Northwest almost every day at the moment so it's humid but cold!

Let me add...... listen to the lady,,,, she knows what she's talking about,,,,, it helped my hatches out tremendously !!!!!!!

Thanks again !

thank you I will; I am so glad there are experienced people here!

 

[gilavina]

Thanks - I have turned it down to 30%. That's too bad about the shipped eggs!
thank you; I have just lowered it to 30%. what % humidity do you use for your final 3 days? 60% like the other people here or?
Funny how a simple coating can make SO much difference....
The humidity is 40% where I am keeping the incubator (in the basement next to the boiler!) How swampy does it get down south!? We have rain here in the Pacific Northwest almost every day at the moment so it's humid but cold!

thank you I will; I am so glad there are experienced people here!

Here in Nebraska, during warm months we will get up to 90% humidity, its stifling and suffocating, and probably what I hate the most about being here. Feels like walking through clouds of cotton or something. I keep the incubators in the basement because its more regulated and during the summer the humidity will only spike a couple of degrees.

 

[ashandvine]

This is my juvenile BCM i'm thinking of using for my breeder roo. Any thoughts/comments on how he looks would be appreciated. Thanks

Can I take a stab at this?
I think (as a learning person) that he looks very good. I would guess that his tail might be a little high and IDK what color his eye is but the rest of him looks good to me. Maybe his back could be a little flatter? I admire his feathered shanks. I do have one question about his profile.... should his keel be deeper? Rounder/lower to the ground? I couldn't see a lot of brown in the chest so that is good. Right?

 

[Runawaylobster]

I am probably preaching to the choir here, but just in case I'd like to mention that Relative humidity at room temperature is not
the same as Relative Humidity in your incubator.

Humidity is the effect of the water vapour that exists in the air. The method of expressing this is most commonly Relative Humidity.
What this means is that the number you see as a percentage is the actual water vapour that is present expressed as a percentage
of the total possible water vapour that the air can hold. so if for example the air is 50% full (so to speak) you report it as 50%
RH.

Now the problem is that the hotter the air the more water vapour it can hold so for example, if the air is 50% full at room temperature
it may only be 25% full at incubator temperature because the hotter air in the incubator has the capability of holding more water vapour
than the cooler room temp air.

For this reason even if you have 80% RH in your room at say 72 degrees when it gets sucked into the incubator and heated up
to 100 degrees the RH readout will be much lower. This is why you see that number fall when you close up the incubator
after opening it. The temp of the air is increasing so the RH is decreasing.

The term Absolute Humidity simply refers to the amount of water vapour in the air and does not change with temperature.

sorry if I am boring you guys but I do think many have a misconception that the high RH at room temp is thwarting their incubator
control when really it has less influence than you might think.

i got this image from the wiki page but it kind of shows what i mean.