Chicken_overlord
Chirping
- Feb 2, 2025
- 61
- 152
- 91
Hello!
I'm in the process of attempting to start my own breeding flock of blue copper marans. My rooster is a splash marans that came from Alchemist farms. I also let a hen hatch out a few chicks from a rooster and hen that my mother-in-law has that came from the same lines. These chicks hatched from beautiful dark chocolate eggs and I ended up with a blue and splash pullet to add to the breeding flock. I also purchased a five BCM chicks and lucked out with them all being female. I gifted two to my mother-in-law and kept three.
However, It became clear as they grew that they are not from high quality stock. To my untrained eye, they do seem to have decent body shape. Otherwise, one female has proper feathering down her legs, but has no copper hackles. The other two have the copper, but the leg feathering only goes mid-way down their shanks. My first bcm hen also laid her first two eggs and, unfortunately, they are a terracotta color. The guy i purchased them from showed dark eggs that he was hatching chicks out of, but he could have just selected the best eggs to show off for the ad pictures.
The splash and blue pullets are maturing well (they're only half the age of the bcm pullets), but the splash only holds her tail slightly above horizontal when excited, but usually has it pointing down.
Anyway, my new marans breeding flock clearly has some flaws. Any advice on what to do? I'd hate to start from scratch, but I can probably find a local breeder that sells hatching eggs next spring from higher quality stock. Any advice is appreciated!
I'm in the process of attempting to start my own breeding flock of blue copper marans. My rooster is a splash marans that came from Alchemist farms. I also let a hen hatch out a few chicks from a rooster and hen that my mother-in-law has that came from the same lines. These chicks hatched from beautiful dark chocolate eggs and I ended up with a blue and splash pullet to add to the breeding flock. I also purchased a five BCM chicks and lucked out with them all being female. I gifted two to my mother-in-law and kept three.
However, It became clear as they grew that they are not from high quality stock. To my untrained eye, they do seem to have decent body shape. Otherwise, one female has proper feathering down her legs, but has no copper hackles. The other two have the copper, but the leg feathering only goes mid-way down their shanks. My first bcm hen also laid her first two eggs and, unfortunately, they are a terracotta color. The guy i purchased them from showed dark eggs that he was hatching chicks out of, but he could have just selected the best eggs to show off for the ad pictures.
The splash and blue pullets are maturing well (they're only half the age of the bcm pullets), but the splash only holds her tail slightly above horizontal when excited, but usually has it pointing down.
Anyway, my new marans breeding flock clearly has some flaws. Any advice on what to do? I'd hate to start from scratch, but I can probably find a local breeder that sells hatching eggs next spring from higher quality stock. Any advice is appreciated!
