I recently hatched 2 sets of eggs.
One set had 5 eggs. Of them, all had the same Black Copper Marans rooster and at least 3 different hens: a Cream Legbar, a Golden-laced Wyandotte and either a Lavender or a Blue Orpington or both. They are as nearly identical at 4 weeks as they could possibly be except that the one from the Wyandotte hen has a rose comb and 2 of them have feathered legs. All of them have completely black feathers and are the same size.
The second set had 3 eggs. They were all from my only rooster, the Black Cooper Marans. They were also from my only Cream Legbar hen. These chicks are only a week old and also very dark in their baby fluff. That BCM is strong genetic stuff! BUT these chicks are quite different from the first batch and easily recognized from one another. One has a reddish head. One has a yellowish cast to the fluff on its chest. One has a silvery cast to its fluff. One is a bit smaller. They have different color beaks. One has a white spot on the top of its head. And one may have bars on it's wings (they're still so tiny I'm not sure about this yet).
I don't suspect any of this is very remarkable but I'm fascinated that the group with most limited genetic pool has more diversity than the group with different female genetics. I think this simply defies reason.
Sorry I don't have pix.
Any thoughts????
in 2011 I got a mix of eggs from a Marans Breeder near me. I knew she had pulled eggs from her Black Copper Marans pens, her Blue Copper Marans pens, her Wheaten Marans Pen, and her Gold Legbar pen (she had been creating her own line for 6 years starting with barred Plymouth rocks and single combed large fowl light brown leghorns). Oh, we also threw in a Leghorn silkie cochin mixed eggs for that hatch. Learning the tells in the chick down to determine who was what was very educational. The oddest result we got was a dominate white pullet from one of the dark Marans eggs. I was guessing a White Leghorn cross but the breed told me that wasn't possible. We were stumped. but she laid 274 XL #3 color Marans eggs her first year of laying and was one of my favorite hens I have ever kept.
As for genetics, the preferred Primary color pattern BCM is the Birchen crowing. It is dominated to all the other primary color patterns except for the Extended black. The Birchen was created by a mutation that created black plumage and the Extended black later came along as a double mutation resulting in twice as much black pigment. So crossing a black-based bird with anything and you will get a black-based bird. The Birchen based will results in colored hackles on the pullets and colored hackles wind bows and saddles on the cockerels. The BCM is gold based which is recessive the silver-based so if crossed to a gold base you will get gold hackles and if crossed to a silver base you will get a silver/gold base. Note: Silver is a sex-linked gene so if you use a silver birchen hen crossed to a gold based cock then you can get 100% silver based males and 100% gold based females.
Well that is the basics. They are color modifier genes that also work in the genetics Some of them will suppress color in certain regions (i.e. will make the hackles black instead of colored but leave the saddles and wings colored, or make the wings black but leave the hackles and saddles colored, etc). That are also genes that add color (i.e. turn silver hackles gold or gold hackles silver, etc).
So there is a lot that goes one. A pure gold based bird like a BCM should have pure black wing and body feathers. when you get across then you have the genes for a colored body and the genes for a black body. From 1st grade art we know that mixing black with about any other color results in black, but in chickens, we get what is called leakage. That is when the feathers show some red speckles through the black feathers. This is called the mossiness. The red color modifiers (i.e. autosomal red and other red enhancing genes) show through the strongest.
There are also pattern genes like lacing, penciling, double lacing, barring etc. The Cream Legbar has the sex-linked barring gene. Similar to ussing a Silver based hen to produce 100% silver pullets and 100% gold cockerels (the sex-link passed from the mother to the son) you Legbars hens are going to pass barring to all of their son's and all of their daughters are going to be non-barred. The barring gene will block the black plumage from entering the plumage in and off-on sequence. As the bird grows in will grow white feathers for a while then black feathers giving a black and white striped feather. The faster the feathers grow the wider the stripes will be the slower the feathers grow the finer the stripes will be. The gene starts at the crown of the head and day-old chicks with the barring gene will always have a white spot on its head. Your chick with the white spot on its head is a cockerel. The ones without spots on their head from the Legbar hens x to the BCM are pullets.
So basically you have a cock with dominant genes and when bred to hens without sex-linked genes the offspring takes all the looks from the father. When bred to the Legbars hens with the sex-linked genes you get a pattern gene that goes over the dominant gene of the cock giving a very different look and you get sex-linked genes to where you are getting two groups that are also going to look very different. On top of that, you appear to be getting some red color modifiers from you legbar hens that is adding even more diversity to the group.
