International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[Red Banks]

This is Gabby's first egg. Well...... the first egg I have found.

 

[KF0002]

the egg color is the most complex .
if you don t have t in your flock NO genetic planing or selective breeding going to get them dark. you have to have the genes needed, after that is the breeding and the selection .

type could be achieved by crossing the no related chooks together to produce the next generation  . that will give  a hybrid vigor , bigger chook and better.. if we do that few generation we ll get the type
type could be made BUT the dark egg must have the genes ( we can not make a leghorn hen to lay a number 4/5 colored egg .doesn t matter ho elaborate and complex are our breeding programs.)

For me eggs first .
I do no show and I ll never show my marans tell the marans hen is exhibited with her egg ( type and egg  together ) .is like the dairy cow can not be exhibited without her lactation ( yield of her milk production over one year) except if she is a heifer than the lactation of her mother should be known .

that is a problem I m facing with the show organizer . what this story with this pretty hens ho can not lay dark egg.

I m breeding them to restore what they lost . so I m taking every trait seriously . one day I ll have all the marans varieties fully restored to they full glory .FRENCH MARANS HEN la poule de marans.

chooks man

Of course egg color is the most important, and without egg color Marans are not Marans. I guess I assumed that was a given. I can only imagine how difficult egg color would be to correct in a line of Marans. I am a newbie to Marans but when I start selecting chickens that go and chickens that stay egg color will always be a major factor. I took Chooksman's advice and have kept meticulous records of what color egg each chick hatched from and use zip ties to keep track. Each keeper will be wing banded so I know what color egg, parent stock/bloodline, and DOB. I am just a sucker for those lovely dark eggs.

 

[Red Banks]

Quote: I admire your record keeping. I need some improvement in that department. Starting now I will keep better records!

I am like you..... all other breeds have lost their appeal..... they can't lay those dark eggs!

 

[KF0002]

You can see he was standing in the bright sun so it looks lighter than it is but....... it is not a good copper, not what I want to see. It is going to rain today so I took pictures with no bright sun. He has a halo. A lot of us have been told our birds are no good, just a total dismissal without much of an explanation or a plan to correct what is wrong. Perhaps some of them were way past fixing. We can't learn without good examples of how it applies to the SOP. That is why I am always so quick to dismiss a bird. I like that we are looking at what we have. Is the bird fixable or a cull, how do we fix it and what does the SOP read. That is why I posted pictures of good birds, like the LP roosters. We will learn to be breeders. We can't keep discouraging everyone. They come with good intentions, they (me too) just don't know what to do. We don't understand how the words convey to an actual bird, the visual. We are all spread across the country and can't help each other except in correspondence. This is a tough breed for many reasons. I have been discouraged and I have gone thru a lot of BCMs.

We all start somewhere and it takes time to learn how to breed, especially with a breed as difficult as BCM. My husband and I have bred American Games as long as we've been together (10 years) and he bred them long before that. I can safely say Marans have been the most frustrating and difficult chickens I have ever owned. I too have went through poor quality Marans, from 2 different places, raised them up to several months old, only to end up culling th entire bunch.. twice! Im not talking minor faults. The Marans I grew out had yellow feet/skin, poor to no leg feathering, black eyes, little copper and horribly overmelanized, wry tails, squirril tails, ect. There wasnt one keeper in the first 2 sets of Marans I started with back in the winter. I was advised they werent worth breeding and to cut and run, so they were sold as meat birds/layer quality and I started all over again. This time I knew more about what to look for in good BCM because I have gradually learned from my unfortunate experiences and seasoned Marans breeders on BYC like Chooksman and a network of Marans friends I have met on facebook. It has been a learning experience and I am glad to have threads like this one to share pics and learn.

 

[KF0002]

I admire your record keeping.  I need some improvement in that department.  Starting now I will keep better records!     I am like you..... all other breeds have lost their appeal..... they can't lay those dark eggs!

I first started out wanting Marans solely to add to my layer flock to add some color to my egg basket but the more I read about Marans the more fascinated I became. They are now my mission.. to breed good quality Marans to SOP. I would love to have good enough Marans to show someday.

As for the marking and record keeping, there are many ways to go about it. You just have to find what works for you and go with it. Luckily my husband taught me long ago about marking and record keeping so I have just implemented the same practices we use with our Games in marking my Sussex and Marans.

Zip ties are good for chicks or older grow outs as a temporary marking band. They come in a good variety of colors and sizes and theyre cheap.

Chicks are toe punched when they come out of the incubator or as late as a week or so old. With heavier breeds dont wait too long to toe punch or the webbing will be too thick. You can probably find a how to video on youtube. Examples of toe punch markings are : right in, left in, right out, left out, in and in, out and out, right in/left out, right in/double left, etc.

Each breed/mating has their own toe punch marking and is recorded on a document I typed up on the computer.

We wing band our breeders for more accurate documentation of each individual bird. The wing bands are applied with a special pair of pliers you purchase when u but your bands. They are punched through the wing and clamped with the pliers. There are 2 types we have used: zip and jiffy but we prefer jiffy bands because we have never had a jiffy band to come out.

There are many sizes and types of leg bands. We dont tend to use leg bands long term because we have had them to come off. The best leg bands we have used are the aluminum leg bands that clamp on with pliers like the wing bands.

Hope that helps.

 

[Red Banks]

Quote: This is great! I think I can handle everything but the toe punch!

 

[Braxton Brigade]

she s a good type nice and long NOT square . need a little mass .she should be 2.8 Kg at minimum to be a breeder. put her on the scale . i need to know. please.
nice long flat back
great tail well formed /shaped and great Angle . Solid at the base .
deep chest
Great feathers type well tight to the body free from any fluff.
Great Black color . shinny only on the upper body .
under feathers or down . nice pure black .

Faults = none of them is not fixable . just matter of time and the right rooster .
Comb .bad shape and form
eyes ,green . they should be orange
ears lobe is pale ,should be nice red
shanks ,should be feathered
mass if she is under 2.8 Kg

chooks man

About her eyes, by green you mean they are too dark colored? I am not sure if you saw the pictures I posted of her head, to me her eyes look dark brown.

I will get a weight on her and let you known, I shall post her weight in Kg and Lb so everyone won't have to convert it over haha. I am glad to see that you explained how you would breed her if you were using red banks rooster, that helped me be a bit more insightful.

 

[Red Banks]

Quote:
Yes...... Chooks Man has our future planned! It is helpful isn't it?

 

[KF0002]

This is great!  I think I can handle everything but the toe punch!  

Lol it isnt as bad as it sounds. Its like a hole punch for paper. You place the the toe punch so the webbing is in the punch. You firmly clamp the punch together and you hear a pop as the punch makes a hole in the webbing. There is a scant amount of bleeding but nothing the chicks cant handle and they do cry out because it does hurt. But only for a second like getting your ears pierced. They forget about it the second you put them in the brooder. I do recommend making sure the hole is cleared of the punched piece of skin to prevent the hole from growing back up. The hole will scab and when the scab falls off there is a nic little permanent hole.

See the nice little hole? This chick is marked right in.

 

[Red Banks]

Quote: Very nice job!