International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[KF0002]

The most important lesson I have learned, is when you lock them down on day 18 leave that lid closed!! Your hatch rate will be much better. Just an OLD MANS opinion TOM

I agree Tom! You have to lock them down and dont meddle with them. Glad your hatch went well!

 

[KF0002]

Okay. So who has this complaint? I placed my straight run order. It was reduced because the Brodie's weren't cooperating. I impulse bought 4 pullets because of that. My straight run shows up and turns out the 3 welsummer I ordered were accidentally replaced with green egg layers of which I ordered 2. Now I have 5. Here's the thing. It was a straight run order and I got 88% pullet !!!

Sweet right? Except I'm a small backyard hobby type and expected more boys and had my space figured for like ...4 boys to rid of. I always planned on keeping a maran roo and thought I would have a choice with them but seems idk. I have to many pullets and just finished a coop but need to build another. What the...

You can single mate your male to the females of best type and mass and then you can choose a male or two from their offspring to replace the original male if you need to. Single mating allows you to pinpoint which pair/mating produces which chicks so you can mark them accordingly. Offspring from pair A (your male x female 1) can be mated to offspring from pair B your male x female 2) and so on and so forth. Half siblings are fine to breed as long as you arent doing it every generation. You can even mate a son back to his mother, or nephew to aunt. There are many ways you can breed within a line. If your male doesnt turn out so good Im sure you wont have trouble finding another male later on when your pullets are old enough to breed.

 

[KF0002]

Im happy with the progress my up and comers are making
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And this little fella has been catching my eye lately
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He dont like taking pictures.

They are looking good! I love the variety of colors all running together! So pretty! They seem to take forever to grow up, don't they? Its like watching grass grow!! LOL My birds are slow to mature and take their sweet time. One of my December cockerels is just now finding his voice. Two of the others around the same age still havent crowed yet.

 

[KF0002]

I would appreciate that, but right now I'm not even sure if I'm even going tto breed them. Ill probably just leave them with the layers, I'm leaning towards only breeding marans. Ive bread blue and wheaten OEGB, golden seabrights, cream legbars, speckeld Sussex, lemon cuckoo orpingtons and marans in my chicken "career", and now ive cut back to just lemon cuckoos, CLB and marans. The marans are the only ones i plan on breeding, the others are my layers. I think i will be able to produce better birds just focusing on one breed.

See you cant even give dang roosters away!

 

[KF0002]

Here is one of my potential keepers. He is the cockerel I photographed on the picnic table some time back. No white underfluff, no white in wings, good width, comb is okay but not great, wing carriage good, wide open tail that isnt too long, good copper color that isnt too light and his bottom line is nice with good chest depth I think. His eye color isnt great and his tail is too high but his back length is good and he is a well balanced bird.

This one may be spared a trip to freezer camp. Lol

Thoughts?

 

[Magnolia Hill]

Looking good mr. Tom, are those chicks off your flock? They all look like they haven't a decent hatch down and good and chunky.

That should have been have instead of haven't, freaking autocorrect always screwes me.

 

[Magnolia Hill]

That lil fella is looking good. How old are they?

2 months 1 week

 

[Old Man Tom]

That should have been have instead of haven't, freaking autocorrect always screwes me.

YES

 

[Magnolia Hill]

Here is one of my potential keepers. He is the cockerel I photographed on the picnic table some time back. No white underfluff, no white in wings, good width, comb is okay but not great, wing carriage good, wide open tail that isnt too long, good copper color that isnt too light and his bottom line is nice with good chest depth I think. His eye color isnt great and his tail is too high but his back length is good and he is a well balanced bird.

This one may be spared a trip to freezer camp. Lol

Thoughts?

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Looks good, i can see the improvement. Keep on trucking and in a couple more generations you'll have some super duper fancy birds.

 

[Magnolia Hill]

They are looking good! I love the variety of colors all running together! So pretty! They seem to take forever to grow up, don't they? Its like watching grass grow!! LOL My birds are slow to mature and take their sweet time. One of my December cockerels is just now finding his voice. Two of the others around the same age still havent crowed yet.

Ain't that the truth. I got one i heard the other morning trying his hardest to wake someone up but hasn't quite got there. Which i thought was kinda crazy because he only 9 weeks old