Black copper marans? Sexed?

[MerazT]

Are the black chicks marans? And can you tell by these pics at 5weeks if they are roosters or not? How do you, or can you sex marans at this age?

And I think the lighter ones may be olive eggers, can anyone confirm?

Any information would be helpful. thanks!

 

[Hensndoes]

They do appear to be at least part marans. Looks like a pair - large comb gives the boy away. Where did you get them? He has a lot of white on his chest.

 

[MerazT]

They do appear to be at least part marans. Looks like a pair - large comb gives the boy away. Where did you get them? He has a lot of white on his chest.

From a local farmer, they claimed they were French copper marans but to me looks like a barnyard mix of some sort along with the light colored ones.

 

[Hensndoes]

If they were FBCM then the boy should be showing copper now or soon. Look under his hackles and in the wings for it. Girls can have varying amounts. I have 1 almost perfect FBCM hen with almost none. The white may molt out.

 

[TayInTX]

The lighter colored chicks look like they may have some Cream Legbar in them, which if crossed with a brown egg layer would produce green egg layers or if crossed with Welsummers could produce olive or brown speckled green layers. (This brown speckled green layer is often considered a type of olive Egger and is becoming very desirable thanks to this egg picture floating around Pinterest.)

The flesh colored feet on the brown chicks have me thinking that if they were bred to be olive Eggers, they are probably F1 and could be Cream Legbar x Welsummer cross. However, one of the chicks has gray feathering on her legs, which signals there may be some Maran in her. CL x Maran gives a nice olive egg! This may make the most sense if they are breeding purebred Marans & olive Eggers, obviously using a Marans rooster.