Marans - SOP discussion thread

[kathyinmo]

Quote:
It was recently brought to my attention that the SOP says "lightly feathered," rather than sparsely feathered.

Shanks -- medium length, stout, and straight; lightly feathered down the outer sides.
Toes -- four long and well-separated toes on each foot. Outer toes lightly feathered, middle toes free from feathers.

 

[Wynette]

Quote:
It was recently brought to my attention that the SOP says "lightly feathered," rather than sparsely feathered.

Shanks -- medium length, stout, and straight; lightly feathered down the outer sides.
Toes -- four long and well-separated toes on each foot. Outer toes lightly feathered, middle toes free from feathers.

In my opinion, "lightly" and "sparsley" would be the same thing. edgarmongold? What are your thoughts?

 

[kathyinmo]

Quote:
It was recently brought to my attention that the SOP says "lightly feathered," rather than sparsely feathered.

Shanks -- medium length, stout, and straight; lightly feathered down the outer sides.
Toes -- four long and well-separated toes on each foot. Outer toes lightly feathered, middle toes free from feathers.

In my opinion, "lightly" and "sparsley" would be the same thing. edgarmongold? What are your thoughts?

Well, the dictionary defines "sparsely" as ......
scattered, scarce, meagre, sporadic, few and far between, scanty

Lightly is defined as:
a small amount or degree, thinly, in a small quantity or extent

I don't know that they mean exactly the same thing.
Interesting though.

 

[marquisella]

In my mind, they are not the same. sparse denotes hardly any with spaces, while lightly to me indicates more feathers, without spaces, but not "heavily" feathered.


Quote:
In my opinion, "lightly" and "sparsley" would be the same thing. edgarmongold? What are your thoughts?

Well, the dictionary defines "sparsely" as ......
scattered, scarce, meagre, sporadic, few and far between, scanty

Lightly is defined as:
a small amount or degree, thinly, in a small quantity or extent

I don't know that they mean exactly the same thing.
Interesting though.

 

[edgarmongold]

Quote:
It was recently brought to my attention that the SOP says "lightly feathered," rather than sparsely feathered.

Shanks -- medium length, stout, and straight; lightly feathered down the outer sides.
Toes -- four long and well-separated toes on each foot. Outer toes lightly feathered, middle toes free from feathers.

I stand corrected.

Glad others are studying the SOP.

The information on shank and toe feathering remains the same though.

We do not want bare patches of scales showing on the outer leg.

 

[edgarmongold]

Quote:
Male: Shanks and Toes -- Shanks and toes light to mid-slate, showing pink between the scales. Bottoms of feet pinkish white.

Female: Shanks and Toes -- Dark slate, bottoms of feet pinkish white.

Those are the shank and toe color for the Black Copper according to the SOP.

I was asked to provide advise to people posting on this thread and to keep the posts relevant to discussion on the SOP.

If you want to impress me tell me how her chicks are better than she is according to the SOP.

I have been a judge and breeder for a long time and 5 Best of Breeds in Marans does not cover any length of time and does not a strain make. mho

 

[edgarmongold]

Quote:
Scott - What the Marans breed needs are strains of birds in the different varieties.

I can not even begin to count the number of birds that have made a big splash for 3 or 5 years and died undefeated.

All that means to me is that they could not reproduce themselves or better yet throw offspring that were an improvement from the last generation.

I am not taking anything away from a bird that has been Best of Breed 5 times.

I am only saying I have seen it happen a lot of times with no breed improvement from an outstanding exhibition bird.

Enough said on that if you want to PM me fine but this thread is about the SOP on Marans.

 

[Wynette]

Folks - maybe I made a mistake in starting this thread. Maybe this discussion is best left to the other Marans threads on here.

I opened the thread because I had so many folks e-mailing me asking for a place to go that wasn't chit-chatty, that spoke only to the SOP, where they would quickly get answers to the "small print" questions they had with the SOP. Thus, the intention of this thread was to discuss the SOP only.

HOWEVERr, I do see where beginning to discuss the SOP leads to other questions and even breeding strategies to get us closer to an SOP bird and, as edgarmongold states, one with reproducible results. Speaking personally, this is many years down the road (at least for me).

For me, this thread has been super helpful - even just the definition of "sparse" as opposed to "light" (thank you marquisella and kathyinmo!!) has been appreciated.

I was informed that edgarmongold, a new member, was an ABA poultry judge, and so I approached him to be our "go to" person about how a judge would interpret our standard and apply it to our birds. Folks, please don't beat this member up - he's kindly offering his educated feedback per my request. I take it he is a man of few words, and not a "chit chatty" sort of person - this is exactly what I wanted for this thread. Information.

To those of you with winning birds - congrats to you - keep on doing what your doing, and do it better all the time! If you have feedback directly related to the SOP, or wish to show pictures of your winning birds so that we all may have an example of what seems to be winning - that would be great!

What I'd like to see now are some pics of specific examples of SOP questions/issues and discuss them. I want to convey that I could care less what breed the pictures come from. If we want to talk feathered shanks and the perfect example of how much we'd be looking for in the show ring, I don't care if you post a cochin pic - let's just get some pics going here of feathered shanks (angle of topline, color of eye, angle of tail, etc.) and choose a few that are super good examples of what we're looking for, then let's ask edgarmongold for feeback on the pics.

Thoughts? Should we continue here, or should this thread be closed & discussion taken back to the variety threads & the main Marans thread?

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
DEFINITELY CONTINUE THIS THREAD!!!!!!!!!! I am very excited to see it and I follow with out posting...okay I posted once, but I am learning tons here just reading it and following.

EDGAR and WYNETTE~ THANK YOU BOTH VERY MUCH! Wynette Thank you for starting this thread and Edgar, THANK YOU for taking the time to answer and explain, you don't know how much I appreciate it and how much it has helped me understand some things that I was a confused with. Please don't change this thread.

 

[youngbiddy]

I'm excited about the premise of this thread, please don't close it!
I've been trying to get some decent pictures of my young breeding stock, but it's very hard to get a natural pose. Here's the best I could do so far, this is the Davis cockerel I plan on using...

And a head shot...

Here he is standing next to the gal I plan on making his main squeeze..

Okay, the problem with my guy is that he's got far too much color on his chest. I've got two other cockerels with much more correct coloring, but this guy has the best of everything else. His eye color is perfect (been gradually turning pumpkin from greenish, it's just about there), good comb, he's the biggest overall, broad shoulders, long back, the tail angle is perfect (he's holding it just a tad low in the pics, it was a very hot afternoon), good shank feathering and color, no soft brown under the vent, no tail break, and most definitely no side sprigs.
My plan is to put him over all three hens, but with an emphasis on the darkest. Then I'll breed the biggest, best males back to the darkest female to work on the coloring and keep the type.

I'll try to get some more shots of him from the front, above, and behind and some pics of the ladies. They're all 2 and a half months old; they hatched on March 21st.