Quote: Over melanized is a black colored Black copper Marans. They do not get the copper because the black is overpowering the copper color. Probably a much more technical explanation but it just means that your black copper marans does not have copper. It does not mean they are a Black Marans. As Chooks Man was trying to explain BCM and Black Marans do not have the same genetics. Black are E/E and Black Copper Marans are ER/ER.
From French Marans Club website:
At the present time, it's above all the Brown-red Marans which is required to serve as a source of improvment of the egg color for the other varieties often less well-off.
- - the Brown-red belongs to a particular color family in which only appears these three existing sister varieties which are rarer but not official to date : the Golden-blue, the Silver-black (Birchen) and the Silver-blue.
- - for the whole Marans breed, none of the other ordinary color varieties at present official belongs to this same family.
- - paradoxically, the Plain-Black variety corresponds itself to a different mutation and belongs to another genetic family different from that of the Brown-red.
- - So in theory, the Brown-red v. is only dominating by the genes of the Marans varieties of the first family (that is to say by the Plain-Black or the Silver-Cuckoo which are born of the Plain-Black).
- - on the other hand, the Brown-red dominates all the other known varieties of the Marans. Consequently, all these colors are going to disappear at first sight in the descendance of a crossing with the Brown-red.
- - so, the Brown-red, so famous and representative of our national Marans, is theorically, genetically and directly incompatible with the other Marans varieties which are at present admitted.
Consequently, the improving crossings of present Marans varieties (Wheaten, Black-tailed-buff, white....) carried out by using the Brown-red variety can't be recommanded for lack of anything better, that is when we are forced to turn to the elite of the breeders (or which are considered to be the elite even if they were not notably because of the qualities of the extra-reedish egg color). and so, by this very fact, we naturally turn forward the valuable Brown-red breeding stock.
Nota bene : in the search of an improvment of the Silver-Cuckoo variety, it is better to choose good "Birchen" subjects laying nice eggs.
However, the improving crossings of the Silver-Cuckoo variety with the Brown-red produce good results because, in the Marans, the Silver-Cuckoo is probably born of the Brown-red variety and not of the Plain-Black's whose existance seems genetically more enigmatic...
