Good blue starter material?

[zchickens]

I have some 8+ week blue copper marans, and I wanted your opinions on if you think that the birds that I have a worthwhile (or good enough quality) to start a breeding program with. I have only owned chickens for about 4 months now, so I am still very new to this. I have four chickens of this type currently (two blue copper roos, one splash hen, one black hen). Also if they are worthwhile to breed, which should hen should I pair the roos with (the splash or the black?)

one of the blue coppper roos

closer view of the lacing

group photo (with two wheaten and one black amerucanas that I got from Jean

, sadly I didn't get any roos though....

Thanks!!

Z

 

[ticks]

Your birds are beautiful!

 

[zchickens]

Thanks! Hopefully that means I am off to a decent start

One thing however, the darkness of the eggs that I incuabated seem kind of inconsistent (some darker, some not so much), so even if the bird appearance is good, the color aspect of the eggs will need work

.....

Z

 

[speckledhen]

I can't comment much on the quality of that breed, but they are certainly handsome youngsters!

 

[onthespot]

I hear that the blue marans are not that far along in egg color yet. Do you know which blue rooster hatched from the darkest egg, or were they all about the same? Compare the overall egg color they hatched from to the Marans egg color chart. If the eggs they hatched from are a little on the lighter side, you might even be better off getting a copper black roo from really dark lines too breed to your blue girls, save your blue roo from the darkest egg to cross on the offspring of the hens and the copper black roo.

Keep the blue roo that came from the lightest egg in reserve (in case something happens to your other blue roo.) That is what I think I would do... The good thing with that sort of blue gene is you know if you got it or not, and the worst case scenario is you end up with copper blacks, which are a hot comodity themselves, for crossing back on your blue or splash roos.

If the eggs hatch out blues, you will have darkened your egg color genes hopefully, and you will have blues that lay darker than the ones you origiallly got. Hope this makes sense, and you have room for three roos, or two at the very least. Now you start to see how complicated marans breeding can get, and why they are not cheap birds!

 

[zchickens]

Thanks for the all the advice

Sadly, I don't remember which roo came from a darker egg, since I am new to this I didn't think of tracking it (was more concerned about getting a few to hatch). I will definitely look into getting some black copper marans to help with the egg color. I will see which of the hens (splash or the black) consistently lays the more darker eggs and start breeding from that point to get a couple of blue hens. Then I will try to get a black copper roo to cross with the resulting hens (or with my current splash hen).

Z

 

[pips&peeps]

I've got one nice wheaten and one nice blue wheaten cockerel just hangin out here......

 

[Kanchii]

They are lovely. The blues have very nice color and lacing! If you are breeding for the best blues, crossing blacks to splashes will get you all blues but not as good of lacing. if you breed blues to black you'll get half of each, with the blues having the better darker and more laced color.

 

[zchickens]

Thanks for the tip on the lacing Kanchii

.

Jean, as much as I would love to get a blue/wheaten or wheaten roo from you, I think am much too far away from you here in South Dakota to go pickup a rooster or have one shipped to me

Oh well, maybe I can order some eggs from you again next spring (my DW would kill me if I ordered more eggs this year..."I wanted only 3 or 4 chickens, but nooo you had to get 40 !!!!"

)

Z