Genectics of Golden cuckoo marans

[steelshot]

Yes its kind of hard to tell about the mohagany, I read somewhere to use silver cuckoo to breed the mahgony out of the breast on the goldens. I have looked and can't seem to find the gene code for the golden cuckoo anywhere.
I lean more towards them being them being ER(birchen) since the colors are so stable in the ones I have. Mine breed true so I would have to say they must be ER.
I have some really nice goldens already but was interested in breeding feathered legs into them but all my golden cuckoos are clean legged. I hate to ruin my stock by accidently putting to much mohagany in them.
My plan was to use a black copper over my golden cuckoo hens to get some feather legged stock. Wondering what the outcome would be?

 

[steelshot]

Quote:
Mine are from Bill Bradens lines but they are clean legged. I would like to introduce feathered legs but hate to ruin a good line.

 

[Birch Run Farm]

Here's my clean legged cockerel:

He has a long way to go yet for growing out but seems decent so far. I have one golden pullet and several regular cuckoo hens.

I hatched a BCM X cuckoo and the cockerel is a much darker version than the guy above. Dark gold, dark barring. He has side sprigs so he is getting butchered.

I may add some BC hens someday.

 

[steelshot]

Nice looking Golden Cuckoo.

 

[Krys109uk]

You ought to be able to tell which gene they are at the e-locus. Both by down colour & by looking at the bird.
H
Birch Run's male appears to be E or ER.

I know Bill Braden's birds were not necessarily ER a few years ago. Bill didn't know about genetics (don't know if he does now) & the birds were inconsistent. He may have crossed them to copper blacks & put them onto ER now, I don't know.

As I said, I made mine from Copper Blacks & Dark Cuckoos; they have rich orange hackles. I don't have any which are homozygous for barring as I always seem to have something else I want to improve plus I think heterozygous barring looks more effective.

 

[Birch Run Farm]

I'll take a pic of the other cockerel and post him too. I believe my light colored cockerel is ER.

As a chick:

Hatchling:

He is the lightest one in the picture, in back. The darker colored cockerel chick ended up growing a leg backward and was culled. The two dark chicks are females.

 

[Krys109uk]

I'll take a pic of the other cockerel and post him too. I believe my light colored cockerel is ER.

I'm confused. The pic looks like the chicks are two chestnut coloured, one yellowish & one greyish?

Are you referring to what appears to be a yellow chick? Yellow chicks are most often eWh (or white). I've also never seen a strongly chestnut coloured ER chick. My ER chicks are usually black, sometimes with a bit of colour on the face just above the beak.​

 

[Birch Run Farm]

I was playing around with the lighting and the chicks were not cooperative for pictures. The color is off for sure but the lighter chick is the cockerel pictured above. I did not get too many photos of them uinfortunately when they hatched. Here is another pic of the darker male that was culled:

One of the pullets after zipping:

Not the best of pictures at all. The pullets do hatch darker than the males in GCM.

One of the pullets, need to get a more current photo though.

 

[Krys109uk]

and the chicks were not cooperative for pictures.

LOL I know the feeling.

To be honest I can't really see the colour properly, what with my computer screen & your lighting.

Are they grey or are they chestnut? And was the light coloured chick yellowish?​

 

[Birch Run Farm]

Yes, the light colored chick was yellowish but had the same markings of the darker cockerel chick, lighter version. The pullets were brown-red downed, more on the brown side. I suppose when I breed them next spring I will get another shot at chick pics!