Black Copper Marans discussion thread

[chicken stalker]

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[math ace]

Mrs. AK-Bird-Brain :

I'm just curious... everything I've read about feather sexing indicates that it's a sexlinked thing... not all breeds, or even birds within a breed are sexable that way... is this something we're testing?

I understand from others that not all marans lines can be sexed this way, but I know mine can be because the person who sold me my little girls as week olds did a 100% accurate job sexing them by feathering.

Pink sexes hers this way too.

All I can advise is TRY it! Yours does look like a little girl.​

 

[math ace]

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Sonew123, how old are the little ones?

You will know soon whether it works for you.

I hope it does work for you

4 boys and 1 girl would stink. . . . . AND be noisey.

 

[upthecreek]

wow ........ those are Nice !!!



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[Mrs MIA]

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I understand from others that not all marans lines can be sexed this way, but I know mine can be because the person who sold me my little girls as week olds did a 100% accurate job sexing them by feathering.

Pink sexes hers this way too.

All I can advise is TRY it! Yours does look like a little girl.

Thank you... I will band "her" and confirm in a few weeks.

I will be most happy if this is the case, as I have an order for 20 pullets this Spring...

 

[VillageChicken]

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In had 3 females with a few males in a brooder a while back and the females did have longer tails. I can't remember how early it showed up ... maybe at one week and then the female tales continued to be longer clear up past the time that they you could verify sex by comb growth. I remember this because I didn't have to mark them in any way to tell them apart. I thought I was the founder of some great secret. ;-) However, I have hatched our batches since that don't show this difference which made me wonder why that first group was so easy to figure out so early. In later batches, I kept looking at the tails thinking that I would be able to tell the boys from the girls and I couldn't. This bugs me. I would prefer a little consistency.

My understanding is that rate of feathering is sex-linked. It crosses over to the opposite gender in the offspring, and only works if the parents are set up the right way. Parent hens must be slow feathering, and roosters must carry both genes for rapid feathering. That way all the female offspring feather rapidly and all the males slowly. The males end up carrying one slow feathering gene and one fast feathering gene, but the slow feathering is dominant and prevails.

In subsequent generations it gets all messed up because the parent stock are no longer configured right genetically. Roosters have mixed slow/rapid feathering genes that produce offspring of both types. Rapid feathering hens are not useful to produce feather sexable offspring because slow feathering is dominant, and if paired with a slow feathering rooster will produce all slow feathering offspring.

In the poultry industry, to produce consistently feather sexable offspring, they have to maintain two separate strains of parent stock, one for producing slow feathering hens, and one for producing fast feathering roosters. Only the offspring of these specially selected parent stock will produce consistent results.

If you have an understanding of how barring works, it helps to think about it that way. It works to think of barring as slow feathering. Sex-linking with barring only works if the female is barred.

It's possible that certain lines carry other genes that influence feathering speed that create more consistent results. I have not seen consistent results at the 3-day old level, just at 30-50 days.

I have a rooster that I am pretty sure carries both genes for fast feathering. His wing primaries were huge at 4 days. It will be interesting to experiment with him to see if he passes this trait on to his girls.

 

[sonew123]

Quote:
Sonew123, how old are the little ones?

You will know soon whether it works for you.

I hope it does work for you

4 boys and 1 girl would stink. . . . . AND be noisey.

3 days old:-( maybe I was too early to feather sex but I thought I read that was the best time to do it?? oh and teh 4 roos thing-yah thats to be expected when I hatch-Im known for being the roo queen

 

[VillageChicken]

Not to comment on the calibration or quality of anyone's incubator, but I have read that improper incubating temperatures, mainly large fluctuations in temperature can influence the sex ratio of a hatch. Meaning that roosters are more resistant to temperature fluctuations in the egg, and more survive. So with shipped eggs that are already stressed or damaged, incubator temperature consistency is important in order to hope for an even 50/50 ratio.

 

[pinkchick]

Morning Everyone!

 

[6littlechickies]

Morning all!

I do still owe everyone (pink especially) some more pics of my roo and I will get those posted soon, been a rough week with the big storm rolling through and I haven't brought the camera down for new shots. Will make SURE I do that this weekend.

Anyway, i wanted to post this morning to see if anyone out there might be able to assist. Yesterday we lost our 'backup' roo

such a nice boy too! He looked very similar to the boy I posted pics of but his comb wasn't as nice looking. I know there are a lot of folks following this thread and a lot of people in the Ohio, Penn, Michigan area too, thought someone out there might have an extra boy they would be willing to part with. if anyone does please either email or PM me!!