International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[Bantambird]

Would you consider the middle girl on the first photo ambiguous? Because I feel like it would look male in a bad line, because it’s still much paler than the others.

I guess as long as you can tell between members of the same strain it’s good autosexing.

The most important part of the autosexing feature is the white dot. Females have little to no head dot, and it's never sloppy or outside the stripe. The males always have big white spot that spills out of the stripe on the head.

 

[wrathsfarm]

The only issue with crossing silver and copper is the cleanup breeding later, otherwise they are the same breed.

I was more asking about the pullet collecting part, but the color was helpful also.

I'm willing to sacrifice color to get that fabulous type and tails in to my BCMs. I'm sure I'll have a ton more questions on this aspect for both you and @BlueTheBrahma.

@BlueTheBrahma explained it in great detail in earlier posts and I've noted it, but still haven't fully digested it all yet.

 

[Bantambird]

Would you consider the middle girl on the first photo ambiguous? Because I feel like it would look male in a bad line, because it’s still much paler than the others.

I guess as long as you can tell between members of the same strain it’s good autosexing.

Here are 4 more examples, notice the spot in each instance. I tried to pick very different looking chicks, there's a lot of variety among legbar chicks.

Male

Male

Female

Last two is the same female, but i wanted to show that the spot on top of the head isn't white, it's tan, plus it doesn't leave the boundaries of the stripe. Her stripe is wobbly but still solid and every other mark is there. Both males have big white spots, even with both boys being very different color chicks.

 

[NanaK]

I hatched CLB in 2020. 7 girls and 2 boys

Their markings were very clear but 2 of these girls layed pink eggs. The boys were very aggressive.

@Bantambird Do you see more aggression in CLB males?

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

I hatched CLB in 2020. 7 girls and 2 boys

Their markings were very clear but 2 of these girls layed pink eggs. The boys were very aggressive.
View attachment 4042242


@Bantambird Do you see more aggression in CLB males?

Are you sure they are cream legbars if they lay pink eggs? Do they have crests and are they barred?

 

[NanaK]

2 birds layed pink all others layed blue. All have crests and barring. All hatched from blue eggs.

Did some research at the time (5 years ago) there are reports of others with various reasons why.
I culled the males and just used the females as layers.

 

[NanaK]

They hatched April 2020.
We were going into lock down. I bought the eggs locally because I needed layers and they were available 10 miles from me.

2020 was a weird year.

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

2 birds layed pink all others layed blue. All have crests and barring. All hatched from blue eggs.

Did some research at the time (5 years ago) there are reports of others with various reasons why.
I culled the males and just used the females as layers.

I have some pale (basically white) eggs from my legbars, got one without a crest, so figure a silver/gold legbar was mistakenly bred in at some point before I got them. I would assume that is the case for most cream legbars that throw white (or brown) eggs.

 

[NanaK]

One of the males only had a very slight crest.
There seems to be a lot of differences in CLB. Many have a lot of gold and not enough cream.

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

A bit of an impulse buy but when I saw silver cuckoo marans for sale I couldn’t help myself. When the breeder told me the could deliver them this Wednesday, I was basically sold on them. Five hens, pricy but I got a good deal given their rarity. I’m also telling myself that now I have more marans they’ll pay it back in sold hatching eggs.

I resisted buying the cockbird because I have so many boys already, plus I didn’t want to make Napoleon obsolete! Look like they’re brilliant quality, English type but they have feathered legs (I’ll have to fix by either introducing a clean legged bird or by breeding the lightest leg feathering until it’s almost gone).

My French blood from Loki and eventually Napoleon (carrying Chanel’s genes) will add even more bulk to the English type, which is really my aim with this project: show quality in England yet pays homage to the French ancestors.

The best part is I’m not working with three gene loci to make golden cuckoos, now I only need to breed true barring and the gold allele, no extended black like I would have gotten from dark cuckoos.

Looks like the GCM project is starting sooner than I expected, F1 will probably be my first hatch this year.

Exciting this early in the year, photo dump coming Wednesday…