Black Copper Marans discussion thread

[maryhysong]

Unfortunately, if you want to breed to the SOP, it takes many months before you can really tell quality. Some things you can cull for early on, like insufficient leg feathering, sprigs on the comb sometimes show up in a few months on the males, incorrect breast color (too much) can show up early on in the males, deformities in their legs (knock-kneed). But in general, best to kept them until at least after their first adult molt at 5-6 months, but even then, some things don't show themselves until the birds are close to a year old or more. Their tail set can continue to change, for instance, and one with good angle on their tail when young can end up squirrel tail when mature. You cannot rush these birds. IMO, that is one reason it is difficult to get good ones. People breed them young, before they have a chance to really mature and show their faults. If everybody could determine quality at a young age, there would not be any challenge in breeding quality birds. But such is not the case. The successful breeders raise up many, many birds and only keep a few. It can be difficult, depending on your situation, to keep a lot of males once those hormones start kicking in and they start squabbling with each other.

I agree with desertmarcy. Our first culls are around 3 months and we are looking for the really obvious DQ. At 4-5 months it really is observation, we cull anyone who doesn't look as good as the others- usually to good homes. We ultimately cull to our top 5 roos at 5-6 months. All the others we move along, just for space reasons. Again we compare them against each other, breeding records, dark egg hatches, parents, needed traits, etc. We will only end up keeping our very best 2 roos with a combinations of parents, dark egg hatches, looks, and what we need to pair our pullets/ hens with being the deciding factors. We first see our best judge of adulthood traits at 7-8 months. We have very few surprises after that. BCM are tough because they develop so slowly. You have to plan to be in it for the long haul and not second guess yourself if you decide to move younger along ones due to looks, space, etc.

If you just have a few to select from, try to keep your best 3 for as long as possible. Look for hackle color, body shape & size (knowing they will fill out more)- long/ short necks, tail/ wing proportions, size of feet/ legs are a good indication how big they will get (like a puppy growing into his paws), feather color, etc. Do take into account the darkness of the egg your roo hatched from as the dark color of eggs is further improved with males that have hatched from dark eggs- they will pass along this gene and it can be the difference between a 6, 7, or 8 color in next years pullets.

Hope that helps!

I got my first BCM chicks in Dec 2012 and made my first culls about 4 months for males with too much color on their chest. I ended up culling everyone of them by 9 months for different reasons, after too much color was not enough color and very poor body type along with incorrect hackle color.

this year I am growing out my first crop of my own breeding. I am culling heavy and culling early. My first cull was at 2-3 weeks for lack of leg feathering. My next culling, on birds 8-12 weeks old, which will get rid of most of the males I have will be for too much color on the chest and poor hackle color, along with signs of poor body type like pinched tails, too long of a tail, squirrel tails. That will cut me down to about 4 babies, plus the two older ones I showed this morning. By fall I should be down to 2 or 3, along with my older cock. After some test hatches I'll cull down to the best one bird from 2014 to go forward with along with the older cock bird.

I hatched from 4 pullets this year. After looking at the results I will pick only the one or two hens that gave me the most good looking chicks to breed from this fall.

For what it's worth I've been reviewing the pen of early culled birds that lacked leg feathering. Everyone one of them also has other issues showing up now, like poor hackle color, pinched tails, long tail, all chest & no butt. So I feel like I made a good decision there.

 

[IrishAcreFarm]

Thank you both so much!! You both have been incredibly helpful!!

 

[Chicken Tenders]

No problem. I find that I have become addicted and I need a fellow chickeneer to help me unload some of this experimentation and observations :0) Have a great day & good luck with your roo plucking.

 

[Chicken Tenders]

Hey, I was just thinking . . . A friend of mine offered this little treat- DNA testing of chicks to find out who is female/ male. I know for our BCM it is the longest time before we know and when we start to sell off non-sq pullets/ cockerels at 3 month, it would be a nice guarantee. I was reading up on it and it appears that you can test up to 9 birds by plucking chest feathers and sending them in for testing- supposed to be $10 plus postage. I think we are going to give it a try. Any thoughts or experience?

 

[maryhysong]

Hey, I was just thinking . . . A friend of mine offered this little treat- DNA testing of chicks to find out who is female/ male. I know for our BCM it is the longest time before we know and when we start to sell off non-sq pullets/ cockerels at 3 month, it would be a nice guarantee. I was reading up on it and it appears that you can test up to 9 birds by plucking chest feathers and sending them in for testing- supposed to be $10 plus postage. I think we are going to give it a try. Any thoughts or experience?

that would be interesting but most of my BCM cockerels are showing themselves by 4-6 weeks and some are crowing at 9-12. Now purebred Ameraucana are a different story.....

 

[johnderosa1]

that would be interesting but most of my BCM cockerels are showing themselves by 4-6 weeks and some are crowing at 9-12. Now purebred Ameraucana are a different story.....

interesting i breed both and find it very easy to sex the BCMs. In most cases you can tell as early as day 1 by comb and certainly by 4 weeks... Agreed regarding Ameraucanas ... I just sold a few to someone that were around 3 months old and I still couldnt tell for sure. Normally they are alot easier but not this time around . She wanted pullets so I promised i would trade them out if they turned out to be cockerels...

 

[Chicken Tenders]

Now, I couldn't say sexing at 1 day is easy. I don't think I can confidently do that across the board. However, I agree about knowing by 4-8 weeks. Sorry I didn't clarify, we have just hatched and it would be nice to know as chicks. We have had errors with late bloomers and that just makes things complicated, trading out, etc. It would be nice to sex them for sure as chicks, so you can confidently sell them as the correct sex and not have any doubts, errors, trade backs, etc at an early age. It also adds a level of confidence to your buyers, as most of our past customers are at a loss as to what to do with roosters.

I would think it could also help you plan how many hatches you want to do to get the right female/ male ratio. You would have a confident answer within 1 week of hatching and can put more eggs in if you need to, rather than piling up and hoping that after 1-2 months of hatching and grow out you have what you were hoping for. I know that is more of an issue for us towards the end of hatching season and we are only just seeing what we have and figuring out how many weeks we have left to hatch what we may still need. Hope that is clearer.

 

[maryhysong]

interesting i breed both and find it very easy to sex the BCMs. In most cases you can tell as early as day 1 by comb and certainly by 4 weeks... Agreed regarding Ameraucanas ... I just sold a few to someone that were around 3 months old and I still couldnt tell for sure. Normally they are alot easier but not this time around . She wanted pullets so I promised i would trade them out if they turned out to be cockerels...

I haven't mastered the knack of sexing that early, although some BCM will start growing combs by 2 weeks. The Ams maybe by 8 or so and then like you said sometimes you still aren't positive

 

[Ihilani Coffee]

I got my first BCM chicks in Dec 2012 and made my first culls about 4 months for males with too much color on their chest. I ended up culling everyone of them by 9 months for different reasons, after too much color was not enough color and very poor body type along with incorrect hackle color.

this year I am growing out my first crop of my own breeding. I am culling heavy and culling early. My first cull was at 2-3 weeks for lack of leg feathering. My next culling, on birds 8-12 weeks old, which will get rid of most of the males I have will be for too much color on the chest and poor hackle color, along with signs of poor body type like pinched tails, too long of a tail, squirrel tails. That will cut me down to about 4 babies, plus the two older ones I showed this morning. By fall I should be down to 2 or 3, along with my older cock. After some test hatches I'll cull down to the best one bird from 2014 to go forward with along with the older cock bird.

I hatched from 4 pullets this year. After looking at the results I will pick only the one or two hens that gave me the most good looking chicks to breed from this fall.

For what it's worth I've been reviewing the pen of early culled birds that lacked leg feathering. Everyone one of them also has other issues showing up now, like poor hackle color, pinched tails, long tail, all chest & no butt. So I feel like I made a good decision there.

The Marans culling process here is a series of evaluations at different ages starting at hatch. I just sold 60 assorted cockerels for meat (what a relief!) At the end of the day I still have not one BCM or blue copper I would keep to breed. I have one recessive white that has (so far) made the cut at 4 months. My nicest blue copper (from properly feathered shank/toe parent birds) had ZERO feathering. What's up with THAT?

We have had a lot of those chicks from one hen (who won't be in the program next year).

I find it's easier to sex the Marans chicks earlier when I'm looking at a batch of them all at once for comparison, rather than trying to sex one or two. I just separated out what I'm 95% sure are the cockerels from the 3 week old chicks. The late bloomers are embarassing, but nothing like the Ameraucanas (which I thankfully do not breed). If I did I think they would have to be wheatens or something that could be feather sexed early on!

 

[johnderosa1]

Now, I couldn't say sexing at 1 day is easy. I don't think I can confidently do that across the board. However, I agree about knowing by 4-8 weeks.  Sorry I didn't clarify, we have just hatched and it would be nice to know as chicks.   We have had errors with late bloomers and that just makes things complicated, trading out, etc.  It would be nice to sex them for sure as chicks, so you can confidently sell them as the correct sex and not have any doubts, errors, trade backs, etc at an early age.   It also adds a level of confidence to your buyers, as most of our past customers are at a loss as to what to do with roosters.

I would think it could also help you plan how many hatches you want to do to get the right female/ male ratio.  You would have a confident answer within 1 week of hatching and can put more eggs in if you need to, rather than piling up and hoping that after 1-2 months of hatching and grow out you have what you were hoping for. I know that is more of an issue for us towards the end of hatching season and we are only just seeing what we have and figuring out how many weeks we have left to hatch what we may still need. Hope that is clearer.

I agree... Sexing at 1 day is a guess but you'd be surprised how often they turn out true to form once they begin to grow out .