International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[Red Banks]

 


I work with a butcher . he call up to the farm and does his job.

he get payed by taking a third of the cull chooks  ( I ll give him 30 out of 100. Good deal to me and to him .both happy) .I don t have to touch them strait into the freezer .I haven t bought chooks meat since I start rising the chooks. Marans chooks are the best testing chooks out there, especially the wheaten and the buff strain from western Australia. Class

we did over a 1000 chooks this year ( 2015 breeding season ) .

me I have no problem cooking them or killing them . a problem is my dogs . they don t eat fresh chicken HAS to be cooked .Guess they can smell they friends .

chooks man

I need to start asking the guy I give my culls to if he will do a few for me in return. I tend to forget about them as soon as I get rid of them, I also have some old hens that need to be culled off., can't pass up the idea of chicken and dumplings.

I have a great recipe for chicken and dumplings if you need it. It's one of my specialties.

 

[Braxton Brigade]

I have a great recipe for chicken and dumplings if you need it. It's one of my specialties.

Being southerners we have made dumpling for my entire life. Nobody beats my grandmothers, however we have never made it with a fresh chicken. But you can PM the recipe, I am sure to give it a go.

 

[KF0002]

Too bad..... he is a handsome boy.

Yeah if he didnt have the vulture hocks he would be a keeper.

 

[Braxton Brigade]

@Chooks man

I am full of new questions after setting up a few new breeding pens, and I am glad I set them up now because I see a few problems associated with the locations right now. I will have to fidget with location once the weekend rolls around.

Do you like to have a general number of birds per group?

I was thinking of having a coop with my group of over melanized hens (already present) and over colored roos (future birds).

Another pen for well marked, well balanced, generally nice looking birds. (future birds)

I will keep my 2 other pens for juveniles, roosters and the likes.

I have a smaller coop that I want to use as general needs (tracking a hens production, egg color, medical care, quarantine)


Bonus question!

Do you ever cull a bird because of temperament? This question is rather important because my family helps tend to my birds and are quite skittish of rude birds.

 

[Chooks man]

I have just got back from athens. the 8 eggs are resting and tomorrow will be put under a broody. I hope they will hatch (1 silver cuckoo, 3-4 good ones bcm and the rest we shall see what happens.

each egg was perfectly wrapped, poor monique must have spent hours to do that. but the biggest problem is that 24 eggs arrived whole but gone bad. I still don't believe it.

Shame to hear all this sort of stuff . post peoples they should start to care more is karma will catch up with them latter on they life.

they have no clue on how much trouble we go through.

Don t worry we are going to flood they Airport with marans eggs next breeding season .

nothing they can do about t.

here a pack of eggs I received from the post man 2 years ago . cost me $500 for 4 dozens . POST MAN DOESN T CARE HOW MUCH COST ME. HE SAID NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT.




we have to be strong to go through this sort of stuff.

chooks man

PS ; good luck with the rest maybe some thing will come out.

 

[Chooks man]

I have been trying to find my way around the French Marans Aspirans forum. I have to copy and paste into a translator everything that google doesn't translate. The other day I was reading one of the posts and I said "Mon Dieu" out loud to myself instead of OMG. It is funny...... I am starting to think in French. I was terrible at High School French. I only remember where is the library and chocolate ice cream. Very important things to know if you are ever in France. Zut alors...... I will be fluent in French before long!

passion and practice will get you there. doesn t come over night. is like breeding take time. one step at the time.is fun .

English was my weakest point at college .

chooks man

 

[chickengr]

It kept telling me I had a fatal error and I had visions of blue screens and a new computer. I finally shut down the computer and so far everything has been okay. BYC goes on the blink a lot.

I went to sleep without knowing if I posted my comment or not.

 

[chickengr]

Those pullets are 5 months old and have been chunky since day one. They have wide heads very solid. I don't feed them a lot. They have mostly free ranged. I will work on more food control. They are locked up right not so easier to control.

my opinion: let them free range as much as they can. that way you will have happier and healthier birds. if you have to reduce their weight just feed them less.

I wonder if they get proteins from free ranging maybe we should feed them less protein feed. anyone any opinion? in winter my chickens find a lot of worms and flies and I did an experiment, fed them whole corn only + some greens and they laid a lot of eggs.

 

[Chooks man]

Thanks Redbanks! And thank u Chooksman for posting my eggs here.

These are the eggs from my oldest group that I got from a breeder in Louisiana. The breeder is a very nice man and breeds his birds to SOP while maintaining good egg color. He sent me the eggs free of charge to help me get some good starter stock. I was humbled by his kindness. He otained his main parent stock from Bev Davis herself. I have actually talked to Bev on facebook and she is brilliant and she is one of the best Marans breeders in the United States. He also purchased some stock from Debbie Little of Little Peddlers Marans and infused them into his Bev Davis stock. He regrets infusing the LP due to the occasional cropping up of vulture hock in a small percentage of his offspring now where he never encountered it before. One of my cockerels has mild vulture hock. He is tagged to cull. Anyhoo.. long story short he sent me eggs from two different pens so I could line breed the two. Strangely all of my pullets hatched from one set and the cockerels all hatched from the other set so it worked out okay. Here is a pic the breeder sent me of the parent stock of my cockerels.



It was never my intention to obtain BCM Marans from two sources. He offered to start collecting eggs to send to me after I had already arranged to purchase hatching eggs from Feels Right Farm (GFF/LP bloodlines).

Now I am trying to decide how to breed my two groups from two different sources. Do I breed them into each other (best cockerel from one group with pullets of the other group and vice versa) or would it be best to breed the two groups separately and not mix the two? I hope that isnt horribly confusing.

Guess is your lucky year. you have been chosen to breed BCM .your destiny as a future marans breeders, embrace it . is fun.

The best way to work with 2 different line is to keep them separately and pure as line A and line B than create a new one from them ( your future line ) by crossing the best progeny from both lines to form a new one line C and D .
work with the new line C and D by adding to them what they need from A or B to fix the desired trait and breed out the fault . if some things goes wrong with the new line you still have both original line A and B pure you can restart again .
when you see your line is taking shape and you are happy about it get ready of line A and B and concentrate in your new line . Because you will need space to breed it properly afterward.

chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

my opinion: let them free range as much as they can. that way you will have happier and healthier birds. if you have to reduce their weight just feed them less.

I wonder if they get proteins from free ranging maybe we should feed them less protein feed. anyone any opinion? in winter my chickens find a lot of worms and flies and I did an experiment, fed them whole corn only + some greens and they laid a lot of eggs.

you are absolutely right Chickengr . i agree with you

humid and wet climate maybe a lot of bugs around and your chooks are having a time off they life.

put them on the scale = how much they weight ? at 5 months old. they shouldn t passe 2.6 Kg at that age.

chooks man