Black Copper Marans discussion thread

[sideWing]

I need to order a chart. I tried a few sites but could not locate one. Any leads?

You can get a couple for $5 here:

Marans Chicken Club USA
maranschickenclubusa.com

 

[scflock]

I love posting pics of birds to get praise, but I want to be honest here and post pics of my birds that started faulty and are breeding faulty, just in case anyone new to this thread thinks the experienced breeders are being harsh when they critique birds.
Several members of this thread critiqued my original birds, and told me it would be best to start over. My wife would have killed me if I bought more birds this year, so I kept them and bred them to see what would happen. My rooster has a severe comb fault, and the chicks that hatched were very dark. Don told me those chicks would be mossy. Most of them are beyond mossy, showing way too much color at 7-8 weeks, and all 4 cockerels are carrying the exact same comb fault. I am still going to grow the pullets out to check egg color, but I will have to start over with a new flock next year if I want to raise quality BCM. Anyone new to this... please do your research, order your birds from a reputable breeder, and pay more for quality birds up front. I have lost a year and a couple hundred dollars starting with poor stock

 

[sideWing]

I love posting pics of birds to get praise, but I want to be honest here and post pics of my birds that started faulty and are breeding faulty, just in case anyone new to this thread thinks the experienced breeders are being harsh when they critique birds.
Several members of this thread critiqued my original birds, and told me it would be best to start over. My wife would have killed me if I bought more birds this year, so I kept them and bred them to see what would happen. My rooster has a severe comb fault, and the chicks that hatched were very dark. Don told me those chicks would be mossy. Most of them are beyond mossy, showing way too much color at 7-8 weeks, and all 4 cockerels are carrying the exact same comb fault. I am still going to grow the pullets out to check egg color, but I will have to start over with a new flock next year if I want to raise quality BCM. Anyone new to this... please do your research, order your birds from a reputable breeder, and pay more for quality birds up front. I have lost a year and a couple hundred dollars starting with poor stock

Great advice and

 

[TakenBackBre]

This is the cockerel I intend to keep. He's about 16 wks in the photo. I need to post some pics of mine on here so someone with some sense can shred them to pieces for me. I have a mix of whatnot with no idea what lines they are. I really only want them for the dark eggs but I'm sure that will morph into needing them to also be "pretty".

 

[GaryDean26]

I love posting pics of birds to get praise, but I want to be honest here and post pics of my birds that started faulty and are breeding faulty, just in case anyone new to this thread thinks the experienced breeders are being harsh when they critique birds.
Several members of this thread critiqued my original birds, and told me it would be best to start over. My wife would have killed me if I bought more birds this year, so I kept them and bred them to see what would happen. My rooster has a severe comb fault, and the chicks that hatched were very dark. Don told me those chicks would be mossy. Most of them are beyond mossy, showing way too much color at 7-8 weeks, and all 4 cockerels are carrying the exact same comb fault. I am still going to grow the pullets out to check egg color, but I will have to start over with a new flock next year if I want to raise quality BCM. Anyone new to this... please do your research, order your birds from a reputable breeder, and pay more for quality birds up front. I have lost a year and a couple hundred dollars starting with poor stock

Great post!

My first Marans were breeders culls. They all had very visible faults. At the time I intended to keep a personal flock and breed them for Hobby to keep our laying flock full. So I paired our cockerel with an distantly related hen and hatched as many as I could hoping to find one that would be better than the parent stock to move foreward with. Well they were great layers but we got 100% of the cockerel with side springs the first year (I think that has to be some type of a record), got 50% of the pullets that were mossy, 100% of the cockerels had excessive copper on the breast, 50% of the pullets got white lacing on their breast during the juvenile development, etc. We didn't get anything that was as good as the parent stock. We culled everything but a few pullets to fill out our laying flock. The following year we tried our cock with one of his sisters (rather than the hen a few generation removed from him we used the first year) and tried again. We had problems with low hatchability and only ended up with a single cockerel that we could work with. He didn't have side sprigs, didn't have excessive copper on his breast and despite being a lighter cockerel than we were hoping for was actually quite vigorous. Then we bred the F1 cockerel back to the bred the first year, then we breed and F2 cockerel to 2 year old hens. This year we had our best group yet. About 75% of the flock was better than the foundation stock that we started with. It took four generations more than a hundred culls. With the money we spend feeding culls we could have bought better stock, but we really didn't want better stock. We wanted to breed for hobby and learn as we went and have eggs on the side to eat. We actually ended up bringing in Marans stock from 6 other breeders over that time and did have some that were better quality and did produce some big wins at poultry shows in both the bird judging and the egg judging, but we kept the original line because it was educational and rewarding for us to see it improve.

 

[tao chick]

I love posting pics of birds to get praise, but I want to be honest here and post pics of my birds that started faulty and are breeding faulty, just in case anyone new to this thread thinks the experienced breeders are being harsh when they critique birds.
Several members of this thread critiqued my original birds, and told me it would be best to start over. My wife would have killed me if I bought more birds this year, so I kept them and bred them to see what would happen. My rooster has a severe comb fault, and the chicks that hatched were very dark. Don told me those chicks would be mossy. Most of them are beyond mossy, showing way too much color at 7-8 weeks, and all 4 cockerels are carrying the exact same comb fault. I am still going to grow the pullets out to check egg color, but I will have to start over with a new flock next year if I want to raise quality BCM. Anyone new to this... please do your research, order your birds from a reputable breeder, and pay more for quality birds up front. I have lost a year and a couple hundred dollars starting with poor stock

Great post!

My first Marans were breeders culls. They all had very visible faults. At the time I intended to keep a personal flock and breed them for Hobby to keep our laying flock full. So I paired our cockerel with an distantly related hen and hatched as many as I could hoping to find one that would be better than the parent stock to move foreward with. Well they were great layers but we got 100% of the cockerel with side springs the first year (I think that has to be some type of a record), got 50% of the pullets that were mossy, 100% of the cockerels had excessive copper on the breast, 50% of the pullets got white lacing on their breast during the juvenile development, etc. We didn't get anything that was as good as the parent stock. We culled everything but a few pullets to fill out our laying flock. The following year we tried our cock with one of his sisters (rather than the hen a few generation removed from him we used the first year) and tried again. We had problems with low hatchability and only ended up with a single cockerel that we could work with. He didn't have side sprigs, didn't have excessive copper on his breast and despite being a lighter cockerel than we were hoping for was actually quite vigorous. Then we bred the F1 cockerel back to the bred the first year, then we breed and F2 cockerel to 2 year old hens. This year we had our best group yet. About 75% of the flock was better than the foundation stock that we started with. It took four generation and for than a few hundred. With the money we spend feeding culls we could have bough better stock, but we really didn't want better stock. We wanted to breed for hobby and learn as we went and have eggs on the side to eat. We actually ended up bringing in Marans stock from 6 other breeders over that time and did have some that were better quality and did produce some big wins at poultry shows in both the bird judging and the egg judging, but we kept the original line because it was educational and rewarding for us to see it improve.

Thank you for this both of you. I'm new to chickens. My original intention was not based on breeding, nor on preserving rare breeds. Now that my backyard birds are developing I'm learning so much about standards and genetics and quality breeds. I bought eggs from a couple different craigslist breeders. (I'm trying to keep a relatively closed flock so I'm only hatching eggs here, not buying chicks or adult birds.) The birds that hatched did not all live up to my expectations, especially when a couple were touted by the breeder as from So-And-So Lines implying quality. My BCM experience is there. The hatch rate was fine (5/7), but one was clearly splash, and all of the others have faults. Mossy is different than blue? Either way, I'm keeping an imperfect cockerel to hopefully carry on some dark brown egg genes to some mutt backyard chickens. I'm keeping a nice looking pullet that has quite a bit of white lacing. I will not be breeding BCMs. I'm going to keep following this thread as it has taught me a lot already. Again, thank you for the encouragement and for sharing information about your personal breeding experience.
My faulty BCMs (not including the splash). They are only 6 weeks old, but as this thread has said- some faults, like mossiness/blue and carnation combs/side sprigs are easy to see this early:

 

[Gremores]

He is young, however...his eye color is not anything I've ever seen before.  His chest feathers are mossy rather than copper (and you only want a few of them if they were copper instead) and his entire chest shows shafting.  He is young, yet at this age I'd want to see more substance and width.  The odd color of the corners of his mouth and top of the wattles is also something I've not seen before.  Can't tell much else from the angle of these photos, but I would not use him in a breeding program.

Thank you we are new to the breed. We will post more pictures when they get older. I can't believe how docile they are though!!

 

[Scatterknit]

Mine have grown up and here is my Roo. I know very little about the breed so I would be interested in your comments. The picture doesn't show it but he is just MASSIVE. Or bigger than the other Roos I've had like Cream Legbars. He is so big he's intimidating.

 

[GaryDean26]

Mine have grown up and here is my Roo. I know very little about the breed so I would be interested in your comments. The picture doesn't show it but he is just MASSIVE. Or bigger than the other Roos I've had like Cream Legbars. He is so big he's intimidating.

He look like a good quality Black Copper Marans to me. One of the best I have seen. I would breed him.

Yes, the Marans are bigger than Cream Legbars. We require two Cream Legbars when we do crockpot chicken for Sunday dinner. For the same meal we only require one Marans.

 

[rooboo]

Here's a couple pics of one of my blue copper marans, possibly crossed with a blue ameraucana. I don't know if there's a name for it, but I'm calling it a crown comb. Seems very unusual but I think it's really cool.

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