Let's talk Golden Cuckoo Marans!

[buckabucka]

Here is one of my cockrels that is 5 months old and two of my pullets that are 3 months old.

The pullets are pretty! I only have cockerels. Two of them look just like yours, the other 5 are a little darker (some shown in post 71).

Mine are 17 weeks old and beginning to do battle. I thought I would keep the cockerel with the best cuckoo patterning. Only two have perfectly striped tail feathers with no solid gray. The one I like has no blade on his comb, because the others ate it off!

I put the three top cockerels in a cage to protect my bladeless guy, and soon after, Bladeless became the top dog and was terrorizing. Now Bladeless has his own cage, and a poor gentle Ameraucana got a solo cage too, because everyone was after him. There are 7 cockerels now without cages: 3 cuckoos, 3 Basque, and one mutt. I'm afraid I may have to create more cages before their October 4th butchering date, but for now, recent fights have been bloodless. Maybe I can update photos soon, at least of the ones that are captive.

 

[Theegoliath]

I'm a bit north of Bellingham and have a bunch of 2.5 month old GCM and GCM crosses that I will be sorting this weekend to decide which I'm keeping. I am mostly breeding olive eggers, and tend to do crosses of all my best hens with different roos to get a nice pool of birds to choose from. The GCM roo I got locally, no idea where he came from originally other than the gal who sold him was breeding her own. The cockerels from this batch are getting some nice color, but I won't know until I sort them how many are GCM x blue or black copper crosses. Not sure if you'd be interested in Marans mutts though

I'll take some pics as I sort, and some of the roo too, and post them up here.

Please do post pics, or private message me. We are not allowed cockerels due to our suburban rules : / We are only allowed hens. We have 3 hens, and 5 pullets so far. One pullet is a black copper marans, so we are not really interested in marans mutts. Just a true GCM if possible. Keep us all informed as I am sure someone would jump on getting a GCM cockerel, or mutts. They are very popular birds.

 

[seventreesfarm]

I'm not sure if this will work, but I started a flickr album with all the chicks from my cuckoo roo, plus some of the hens involved. I haven't added descriptions of them all yet, but 11 of them are from a blue copper and a black copper hen, 4 are from a black Ameraucana hen, 3 are from an oliver x welsummer hen, and the rest are from 3 different oliver hens.

Blaine isn't the best looking guy, but it's been fun seeing how the barring expresses itself with the different crosses. I'm selecting for a certain conformation, plus potential egg colors, and hoping to make barred hens a steady part of my mostly BBS flock.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127436338@N08/sets/72157646751372748

 

[Theegoliath]

The photo collection worked great. Thanks for taking the time to post them. What do you think you will breed back with him?

 

[seventreesfarm]

The photo collection worked great. Thanks for taking the time to post them. What do you think you will breed back with him?

I need to read more about how the genetics work with the single/double barring gene with male & female, but I will for sure take some of the blue/black marans cross pullets with good color and recross. I really like the blue cuckoo with pale gold look, even though I'm sure it's nowhere near any SOP

It looks like some of the cockerels from this batch have sharper barring than a hen, but darker than males are supposed to have. It's really fascinating to see how these crosses turn out and try to map them in the chicken calculator to see what offspring they might have.

Otherwise I'll keep weeding out pullets that don't have the look I want and cross ones that also lay eggs that are up to my color/shell structure standards. I'm planning to keep back one cockerel that has the blue cuckoo/gold spots/pea comb and see if he breeds olive-eggers.

Since I'm not really working to keep any breed standard, this year I picked a few hens that look good and laid well and penned them with each of my roos in turn. I had a black copper and a black ameraucana earlier this year and have 4 different hatches this year from them plus this golden guy. In a couple of weeks I will start sorting who gets sold, then I'll plan my breeding pens for spring.

 

[seventreesfarm]

Oh yeah!
Forgot to add that I have a spreadsheet with all these chicks mapped out by lineage, color, feather placement (feet/face), comb shape, etc. and they are all banded so I can tell them apart. I spend a lot of time watching them and taking notes about which crosses I want to try.

 

[sonew123]

Hi Bucka!!

 

[buckabucka]

Hi sonew!

Seventrees, those crosses you are trying are very pretty. And that is great that you keep track of everyone with a spreadsheet. I always think I'm going to keep track, but I never do. Next spring will be the first year I have a golden cuckoo to breed with. My first goal is to hatch some female golden cuckoos, since I didn't get any last spring, but now I am inspired to try some interesting crosses as well.

 

[Theegoliath]

Since I'm not really working to keep any breed standard, this year I picked a few hens that look good and laid well and penned them with each of my roos in turn. I had a black copper and a black ameraucana earlier this year and have 4 different hatches this year from them plus this golden guy. In a couple of weeks I will start sorting who gets sold, then I'll plan my breeding pens for spring.

Do you plan on keeping at least one GCM hen to breed back to the GCM roo for more chicks? Or just keep things mixed up and breed off your spreadsheet?

 

[seventreesfarm]

Do you plan on keeping at least one GCM hen to breed back to the GCM roo for more chicks? Or just keep things mixed up and breed off your spreadsheet?

Oh yeah, I always keep some purebreds of each parent breed (Ameraucana & assorted Marans) to maintain good olive-eggers. No one has figured out the genes to make a self-replicating one yet, so one of those two breeds has to be crossed back in at some point. I like the Marans tail and body shape, so it's important to me to use the best I can in my crazy experiments. I'm also raising some Ameraucana chicks to replace a roo that wasn't up to par.

It's a lot to keep track of, but fun now that I'm finally getting better birds.