I am so frustrated with my Marans!

[millebantam]

Thanks for the input David. I can't for the life of me understand how those split birchen mutts could have come from a blue copper to black copper cross as I was led to believe that these eggs came from. I never did confront the seller about this disaster because I assume much of the blame for buying eggs based upon a fancy website.

I am absolutley positive that the integrity of this breed has suffered because of the "gold rush" mentality, and the greed of sellers that ensued. It seems that many who purchased eggs early on for big money immediatly started selling every egg that their chickens first laid, to quickly recover their investment. This breed has become so diluted with inferior offspring over the last 2 years or so that the effect may never be reversed.

I believe that years down the road, when the dust settles, there will be a handful of quality breeders with integrity who will pick up the pieces and salvage the breed. Most of the damage has already been done, but I still doubt that there are very many omelettes being made with BCM eggs.
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[blackdotte]

Yellow legs come from the introduction of the w allele into a white legged breed. If these F1 birds,white legged but carriers of yellow, are bred back into the white shanked breed all chicks will have white shanks,but a percentage will still be carriers of w. But when in the future these carrier birds are bred together you can get chicks with two w alleles and yellow legs.

Your split gold/silver cockerels had a silver parent and a gold parent, obviously both could not have been Brown-Reds (Black Coppers).

The Splash pullet had both parents with yellow legs (not Marans!!)


David

 

[R@ndy]

There is a Really Good breeder in Maryland that has Marans and sells chicks and eggs, might want to check him out ""Whitmore Farms""


http://www.whitmorefarm.com/chickens.html

I have been to his place, awesome looking operation.

I bought some Delaware and New Hampshire's from him.. Great Birds

 

[monarc23]

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Thank you for the yellow leg info David!!!! it's great to know I will try to keep that in mind for future info!