How do I decide?

[rancher hicks]

Ok so I bought some Birchen Marans. However they have some red in them. See pic. I'll post more later if they hold still.
Now there are 4 roos and 4 hens. One roo matured very quickly and was crowing at 5 wks. He is a big guy. Two are smaller and not and the third is somewhere in between not crowing either.

I will not be showing but want them for the eggs, and meat if they are up to it. However how do I decide of the roos who to keep. They are supposed to be Silver/ Black Birchens. I can't afford to scrap these guys, but I don't want to breed the unacceptable roos either. I want to pick two and go with those. Which two. The early maturing guy and the next in line in size?


Thanks, Rancher

 

[qball53]

We had similar problems ordering Silver Birchen Marans and it is quite disappointing. We purchased a pair of juvenile birds. The hen is huge but she is way over melanized, black eyes and does not have the correct body type at all, her tail and round body looks like a cochin to me. We are going to use her to make olive eggers she won't be contributing to our Marans. The cock is acceptable his coloring is pretty good but not great the saddle feathers tend towards straw and not rich silver. His tail is too high and the breeder shiping these birds could see this fault as well as the faults of the hen before he shipped them, it is a shame. Of course we will never buy another bird from him. We also got 10 eggs from the same source, six hatched, one hen. The hen is reasonably acceptable but of the five roos we can only use one with good consience. The others all have varying degrees of copper/red like the one you are showing. I understand not wanting to waste money by discarding the bird. But if you really want nice silver, how much more money will you waste over the years trying to achieve that if you start with the copper faults? There are those however that seem to like that coloring and are trying to achieve it even though it does not meet standard. We have located another source of birds that we believe we will be much happier with. On another note we also started with some splash and we are struggling with keeping the copper out of these birds. It seems to me that folks too often breed the BCM into their birds for egg color or some other reason and then or plagued with the copper for many generations often passing the porblem to new breeders like us. Good Luck.

 

[rancher hicks]

I didn't intend to breed them but thought I was getting better. I did pay less than Green Fire, but this is why we go to auctions isn't it?

I really just wanted the dark eggs and thought why not get these, since Green Fire has them too. I like many of what GF has but I'm hearing bad things about them too.

I could have gotten two BCM's here for the price one of these.

The seller did offer me to return them and a refund but Lord have mercy, I've fed them and taken care of them and we both know that isn't cheap. Not to mention the stress on the birds in shipping.