Blue Copper Maran Hen crossed to Wheaten Maran Rooster

[emcook]

what should I expect from a blue copper maran hen crossed to wheaten maran rooster? If anyone has any of this cross I’d love to see pictures. My sitting maran just hatched some and I have no idea what to expect! Thank you so much!

 

[Sneebsey]

Hello there. Sorry that you didn't get a reply earlier.

Provided the parents are pure on their e-loci, the father for Wheaten, the mother for Birchen, you will get Birchen with extra leakage (from the Wheaten making itself known); each offspring will have one copy of each gene. If the mother is pure for Mahogany (which gives her neck the lovely dark red colour) then the leakage will be reddish, though maybe not as deep as her own. Around half the chicks will have blue, however, as the mother is the only one providing the lacing genes and melanisers required to produce a good laced blue, they will likely lack the nice black lacing your hen ought to have.

If you would share pictures of the parents (and chicks if you'd like), we can make a better assessment of their genetics.

 

[emcook]

Thank you so much for your reply! I am attaching pictures of the rooster, hen and the chick. The chick appears black on its back, grey on chest, yello on belly and has brown on wings. Chick is 10 days old. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have. Thank you!

 

[Stepnout]

Well I have no experience in this topic. This being my first year owning barnyard mixed chickens.
Your birds look healthy and beautiful. Good luck. It will be nice to see how the chick turns out.

 

[Sneebsey]

A lot of brown there in the wing; I'm expecting a lot of leakage to come through in this one.

Your hen appears to have a lot of red in the neck and head, which is atypical and could point to impurity of either her e-series (birchen) or melanotic, which encourages black (diluted to blue) pigment. With that said, she appears to be fairly well-laced, which also requires melanotic. If any chicks hatch with white legs rather than slate like hers, she may be hiding a second e-series, such as wheaten.

I agree with @Stepnout; nice healthy birds and they appear to be of good quality.

If you choose, the offspring of this pair may then be bred back to the parent or another of their colour to produce wheaten/blue wheaten or black/Blue copper. I'd go for the former, as the offspring will be impure for the melanising genes a good BCM ought to possess.