Black Copper Marans discussion thread

[Bravo]

Just curious--do any of your birds have problems with ingrown toe feathers? LOL

I noticed a few birds had these little bulges on their toes and when I lightly scraped them POOF out came a feather. Please don't tell me I need to start doing pedicures on them

 

[seabreeze]

Question. Is this eye color acceptable in juvenile birds? (learning question, thank you!) I have a bunch like that as well, about 3-4 months old so needing to know if they are freezer fodder or not

 

[seabreeze]

Wow Bravo, that's interesting! Is the bump real noticeable or just a small one? Wow, a feather pops out? I guess better than something gross....EWWWW!

 

[Bravo]

Quote:
That is a little young--I'd wait a few more months.

I've noticed my parent stock's eyes changed by 5-6 months but my F1's are taking about 7-8 months to get that pumpkin orange color to their eyes. Not sure why the F1's are such slackers

This guy isnt even 2 months old yet (hatched 4/3/11) so he's got a little more time

 

[flgardengirl]

Babies often have greenish or dark eyes that change to orange upon maturity. I have different lines and some have the more greenish color in the babies and some have the darker color, both turned out correctly. If it didn't change by the time they were mature it would be unacceptable.

 

[seabreeze]

Thanks Bravo! Several of my young'uns by my old roo are stilll that greenish-?? eye color but some of the birds I brought in from an outside source as chicks are a bit older and already showing the orange-ish color. Not quite pumpkin but definitely not greenish.

 

[seabreeze]

Thanks FlGirl

 

[Bravo]

Quote:
That's a really interesting point you made. Now that I thin of it, I have 2 almost 3 week old BCM chicks from another breeder and their iris's are black. I didn't even think of that until now.

 

[snowbird]

Quote:
That's a really interesting point you made. Now that I thin of it, I have 2 almost 3 week old BCM chicks from another breeder and their iris's are black. I didn't even think of that until now.

At one time we were of the opinion that the dark eye was a correlation to the marans being too dark in color, but we have found that some of the real dark BC still have the orange eye.

 

[snowbird]

Quote:
I need to say here that I have bred a few of the dark eyed females that had real good type without a problem and the male had orange eye. I believe we need to do some test matings on some of the stuff we see in print to be able to say what will happen if we breed this to this.