International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[Chooks man]

I was hoping you would agree with what I've done so far.

I have to start penning hens to find the ones laying light. This is going to take a while. Ugh. I like to do it after they have been laying for a couple of months.

No good having a dark layer in the beginning and getting very light after just a few weeks. This is why I kept BL, Love song, Judith2. They lay dark far into the season.

So I will start with egg color, check their body type.

Make it simple for your self. Now we know Jth. LS and BL lay dark eggs consistent . They are a keep . We just need some good working photos of them so we can see what other qualities they have.
The rest of the hens you don t need to pen them all to find out what eggs they are laying . That will take you long time and will be madness. What you need to do is , look at the hens with a correct body type and pen them to see what colour eggs they lay . We need body type doesn t mater what eggs they lay because we selected the 3 hens for that.
If we lucky hopefully one of the 3 selected dark eggs layer has a correct body type . That will be a gift.
Always make it simple so you can last long without getting confused .
Chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

We did exactly this. Luckily for me I only had the 3 and they all lay different eggs. Joannie our broody lays consistent, dark, shiny, regular eggs. Jett lays torpedos but the color fades off. Betty lays dark, pretty consistent, but dull sheen regular eggs.
When she went broody we shoved eggs under her. So now that the 3 pullets have been laying I'm guessing who the dams are. I did notice yesterday 2 dull eggs in the nest box so I've prolly got a Betty baby in there.
I really need to trap nest them and leg bands are a must get if I go any further. This year is a bust with the move but next year I must get serious with the program. Unless I get another broody then that ups the importance. Notebook, trap nest them and leg bands. And I really need an incubator.
Oh and Black Silvers, and more coops and pens. Ha ha.

Awesome.

Good luck to you .
Incubator will be great help for you.
Chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

Oh and just because i dont have enough to do we got this little trio saturday.

They are gorgeous .
Chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

This is what I am doing this year. 2 pens.

Cockerel pen (jr) with 10 hens with good copper,

pullet pen with good comb rooster and 10 hens with not good copper.

I am trying to find who lays what egg now. It is so confusing!

I will put it all on my notebook as I did last year.

This way will have to change from what you are telling me.
I do not plan to bring in any new lines.

We did pullets and cockerels breeding pens to boost the number and create genetic variation between cockerels and pullets. So we don t end up needing from brothers and sisters.
Now you have achieved that we need to move to the next steps : breeding the nature dark eggs laying hens with a young cockerels for dark eggs genes.
We select the best this year pullets and breed them with a different cockerels . We will see what are they best traits .
Each year we up date the breeding program to our need. It is never fix
Chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

Somewhere on this thread are pics of them when selecting last year.

I will get more photos this week.

I know but will be very hard to find out. You do have photos of them in you album ?
The other day I was chatting to my book publisher about what photo should be for my book cover , he could not believe that I have 112000 photos of my chooks in my albums since I started 10 years ago. Photos of every chooks and every trait.
Chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

I do the same.
Keepers to grow out get a wing band and recorded in my book and notes written about them. Sometimes a colored leg band too.

I don't have the mental capacity to memorize them all like chooks man does though. He has an amazing mind.

But I can refer back by looking up the wing band #.

I don t have great mind I just write every thing down . Plus you guys keeping me sharp when you ask all these sort of question . I m forced to go and look at by note book .
Chooks man

 

[Chooks man]

When checking who lays what egg color, the hen is penned, I look at her wing band #, look her up in my book which tells me egg color she hatched from, hatch down quality, sire and any other details I wrote about her.

Then I add the egg color she lays and her type/size, hackle color, any other details I find relevant.

My organization in my book is awful. Notes all over the place.
But it works for me. As the years go on, I am sure I will become more refined in how I do this. I hope.

An now that chooks man has addressed the downfalls of pen breeding, that will be my next step to madness! Haha

Pen breeding is good some time when we want to breed from a specific rooster/ s but not all the time . Bad practice
Trios breeding is my favourite and the most efficient way . We can have many small pens with trios that just 2 large pens .
With a smaller breeding pens we can create. Any different families and avoid inbreeding .
Chooks man

 

[Lady-Bird]

Is this a square type hen? She is 9 to 10 months old.

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

I have note books for every thing I do .
pedigree note books has all the chooks I m working with .what linesand breeders they come from .
incubation book has all the eggs I incubated since I started 10 years ago .
I take notes and photos of all my chicks from the day they hatch ,so I can always go back and see how they did perform or looked like as chicks .
I write everyu thing about any thing I do .
chooks man

Do you mind showing a picture of an example of the stuff you put in your book? I think I’ll try to keep my own notebook when I come to breed my trio.

 

[Lady-Bird]

I forgot to add a photo. Same as hen above. Is she a square type hen?