International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[BlueTheBrahma]

in my place white chickens would be a lunch invitation for hawks, eagles, etc.

That’s something I’ve never thought about. So you need your birds to be as camouflaged as possible?

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

Could you explain further on this?
So Poppy x BCM....we don't know if he's hiding Black or Blue.

Will just his daughters show Silver leakage or both?

And then what?
Just keep back crossing BCM x BCM til Silver is gone?
Any idea how long this takes?
Let's say I do eliminate the Silver in a certain hatch, (they all hatch Pure, males and females. Is it possible for the Silver to still pop up in later progeny? Like its recessive?

Edit...oops, one more. What about if he's hiding blue also or would that just throw 50/50 blue black into it?

And what about the recessive white, where would that play into all of this?

Sorry for so many questions.

It’s alright, I’ll put step by step posts now and use the good old Chicken Calculator for a visual. Sorry I forgot to talk about blue alleles, but they don’t really matter to the process of getting coppers out of them, you’d just end up with some blue coppers maybe.

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

These would be your first cross, Poppy and (your best) BCM hens. (I’m assuming Poppy is black rather than blue, as it doesn’t matter for my point so would only add more phenotypes to be confusing.)

this is the result, silver hens and golden cocks. Neither of these will be SOP birds, but their children can be. These birds are no good to your silver flock, but may be good to improve the faults in your coppers.

I’ll explain how next

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

Option 1: breed F1 to F1

here you breed your best cock and hens from F1

as you can see, there is a lot of variety, and non of the cockerels are copper (the golden can be used like the F1 cockerel has here), but you have copper hens. These hens have the best chance of the improved tail and type, but as you can see you need to hatch out larger numbers to get some. These hens can be put into your BCM flock and treated like new BCMs.

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

Option 2: breed F1 cock to F0 hens

here, you breed the best F1 cock to either its mother or an unrelated hen of equal quality.

as you can see, half the offspring are silver/golden, half copper. These coppers are ready to go into the BCM flock, but bear in mind their copper MIGHT be paler than your existing BCMs. This increased the chances of the high tails coming back, but may be a quicker way fix it than working only with the genes you have in your BCM flock.

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

Option 3: breed BCM cock to F1 hens here, you breed Kong or his descendent rooster to the silver hens from F1.

as you can see, all the pullets are coppers, ready to go. Again may not be as effective at improving type as option 1, but gives you the most consistent results. These cocks are culls or can be used like in options 1 and 2.

 

[BlueTheBrahma]

Overall, there are a few ways and they are all two steps (breeding Poppy to BCMs then one of the 3 options). You can always do all the options, but that might be a handful. Options 1 and 2 could be done together as the hens can be kept with the same cockerel, though keeping track of who’s who might be beneficial.

Any later crosses may through out recessive white again, so you can either test mate to cull it out or just have is as a feature of your flock (maybe start a white marans project? ).

If Poppy is blue, you will get blues and splashes also, but the same patterns with ground colour (gold vs silver) occur.

Feel free to ask any more questions, but I hope the diagrams help.

 

[wrathsfarm]

@BlueTheBrahma thank you very much. Wow, this is a lot to take in but I'll get it into my notes and mull it over.

One question that quickly caught my curious tho was, how would I get Splash if he's hiding Blue?
This cross would produce 50% black, 50% blue.... No splash.

Or is it because he's recessive white?

Color me confused....

 

[wrathsfarm]

I haven't gotten a chance yet to get some proper pics of her but a customer that purchased 5 bcm pullets wanted a pic of Solo so I snapped a few quick and thought I would post it here also.

She's so pretty....chunky and a low rider at 26 weeks.

 

[chickengr]

That’s something I’ve never thought about. So you need your birds to be as camouflaged as possible?

black birds probably look like ravens so they are ignored. red/buff and similar are well camouflaged. having geese and turkeys around is a great help.