The gold lacing on the breast shouts midnight majesty to me. It’s rare for BCMs to have that extent of ground colour, but I suppose those genes exist in BSMs I’ve seen.
Yes, they've been weird looking since chicks. I will sell the male and add the female to the mix flock now. That works out as I only have 1 female Olive Egger I've been procrastinating about integrating into the mix flock because it's a single bird. Now she'll have a buddy. I think I'll just keep Black in with the Marans tho and either not use her or dependant on what color egg the pullet lays, I could hatch more just for the dark layer eggs and sell the males.
I'm not sure, I didn't notice this. I will get a pic tomorrow.
Thank you for your comments. The first picture was taken in August and that color is fairly accurate. I think his color was sun bleached. All summer long he seemed to get lighter in color they were very pale yellow on the feather tips just before molting.
Marans should not have pure slate legs. The genes for this are id/id, recessive genes that shouldn’t be in the gene pool of pure marans, though hatchery quality or poorly bred BCMs often have this trait because the breeders don’t understand what the SOP means by slate shading, which actually comes from the Birchen allele.
my birchen allele birds all have pink soles with their slate legs, with the pink peeking around the toe tips
That's a very pretty egg. I'm horrible at guessing color but I'd say a 6 if you made me guess. I would probably be wrong....
