Black Silver Marans... Who has them?

mandelyn

Crowing
14 Years
Aug 30, 2009
2,498
1,233
451
Mt Repose, OH
My Coop
My Coop
There's something about the contrast between the black and the silver that makes it my favorite chicken color. Especially when the color is clean and correct and it took me 5 years to breed my group towards better feather color. This year a couple sprouted up pretty decent!

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There's so many different things to breed for in Marans, it's quite the balancing act. Between their type, function, feathered legs and egg color, it's a long list of traits to keep intact and moving forward down the line. There's always room for improvement! I spent the 1st 2 years on type/size/growth. Then I went after tails, combs and leg feathering. Then I went after feather color. The whole time, not neglecting that egg color.

Next all of those things need to keep moving forward while I work on tightening the feathers and some other details. These birds hardly look anything like the birds I started with!

The line I'm working with carries Blue and Splash, I'm trying to work them towards just the Black Silver but I keep finding good stock in the other colors so they persist. I just need more time to get there, it'll come!
 
Curious why you're calling them Black Silvers?
Everywhere ive seen just call them Birchens.
 
Curious why you're calling them Black Silvers?
Everywhere ive seen just call them Birchens.

That's what the Marans people call them because the desired look is a clean chest (on the cock bird) without leakage, much like the desired look for a Black Copper, just in silver. Birchen implies that there is silver on the chest, so from a color standpoint if they have Silver on the chest, then they would be called a Birchen.
 
Silver black and Birchen are one and the same. silver black is in reference to its genetics of being a black bird with the silver gene, but Birchen is the official name of the pattern/colour variety.
 

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