International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[Chooks man]

International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

Well, reading the title of this thread lead me to assume that you are aiming to breed to the SOP.

To my knowledge, doing so does not exclude breeding for egg colour too.



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very nice egg color , not the shape ,long tubular type .they should be oval .more rounded type .
chooks man

 

[Thomas Bright]

spotted egg in another type of marans eggs . very rare .number 9 in better if you talking about the chart . the French left the spotted eggs out of the chart I don t know why .
in the French show dark spotted eggs always win against plain dark .
deferent genes ,deferent traits to select for .

chooks man

 

[LaFleche]

very nice egg color , not the shape ,long tubular type .they should be oval .more rounded type .
chooks man

All eggs in this picture are first pullets eggs. And these slightly elongated BCM ones get the proper, more rounded shape within some days/weeks of laying activity as the pullets will lose their surplus fat pad.
As you will surely know, elongated egg shapes indicate somewhat chubby pullets/hens, which can happen even with the right feeding schedule, as they are known to be a double purpose breed.

 

[LaFleche]

This left one has become the proper shape. The pullet laying the one on the right was a sister (identical parents) to the one laying the correct egg colour and shape.

So, genetics can play quite a trick on you.

 

[LaFleche]

Every so often a breeder is successful and the offspring lays very dark and nicely rounded eggs with a beautiful shimmer like these:

 

[Chooks man]

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well dotted . love the dark ones with black spots .lovely
need to keep this trait in your flock . mate cockerels hatched from a dark egg layer to pullets hatched from spotted eggs . do that few generation and you will end up with dark spotted eggs .

chooks man

 

[LaFleche]

As far as my experience goes, with Marans it is important to keep very detailed records to reduce the inevitable setbacks. And patience is essential too.

Testing an unproved rooster (own offspring or acquisition) by pairing him up with one single Marans hen, to see how the offspring does, prior to letting him breed the half or whole of the flock.

 

[Chooks man]

All eggs in this picture are first pullets eggs. And these slightly elongated BCM ones get the proper, more rounded shape within some days/weeks of laying activity as the pullets will lose their surplus fat pad.
As you will surely know, elongated egg shapes indicate somewhat chubby pullets/hens, which can happen even with the right feeding schedule, as they are known to be a double purpose breed.

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I understand what you are saying .but long tubular dark egg will always loose again more rounded eggs in the show .
from my experience the meaty dual purpose bird come from a well bred parent stock not from the shape of the eggs .
some marans breeders found it very hard to work with rounded egg ,because they can t tell the upper and lower part of the eggs .so they start selecting for long tubular shape eggs .they kept the same conformation in they breeders stock . now we have many marans lines in Europe .America . Oz every where laying dark long eggs .

chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

As far as my experience goes, with Marans it is important to keep very detailed records to reduce the inevitable setbacks. And patience is essential too.

Testing an unproved rooster (own offspring or acquisition) by pairing him up with one single Marans hen, to see how the offspring does, prior to letting him breed the half or whole of the flock.

agree with you in this one 100% .
I will add a good camera to keep photos record of the all lines .
my marans photos album are classify by month ,started 2013 till now .month by month .
I can compare my work at any time .

chooks man

 

[LaFleche]

I understand what you are saying .but long tubular dark egg will always loose again more rounded eggs in the show .
from my experience the meaty dual purpose bird come from a well bred parent stock not from the shape of the eggs .
some marans breeders found it very hard to work with rounded egg ,because they can t tell the upper and lower part of the eggs .so they start selecting for long tubular shape eggs .they kept the same conformation in they breeders stock . now we have many marans lines in Europe .America . Oz every where laying dark long eggs .

chooks man

I am only familiar with the French, Belgian, Austrian and German Marans and their eggs and having imported several times hatching eggs from different French breeders, because here in Germany due to the quite narrow focus on only the SOP, the egg colour had been adversely affected.
So, in more than 15 years of breeding Marans, despite quite a lot of setbacks I was able to get results that meet my own personal preference, which is a dark red with spots.

Personally, I do not like the extremely dark colour as shown in my last pictures. And the hen that laid the almost black eggs did not last very long in my breeding program as all of her male offspring was very human aggressive and all of her female offspring were rather poor layers the same as she.