Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[janchilds]

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I'll need to wait for the kids to get home to help.

Pink, what is it you are looking at? I read somewhere this morning that tail feathers will start in females right away and not in males. Is that correct? What is it you are looking at when you are evaluating your chicks?

I am pretty sure I have identified one as a roo just by personality... like I have never met a bossy female before.

 

[Debbi]

Yeh, let's hope. A trip to the ER was not in my agenda!

While that heat machine they put you on to get the muscles to relax feels sooooo good, it does NOT feel good when they yank it back into the socket!

 

[pinkchick]

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I bought them as hatching eggs, they were sold as blue coppers. I did get only blue, black, and splash from the eggs. So seems like the seller was truthful.
Here's those 2 pullets:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/93512_blue_copper_hens_white_left_and_lavender_rt.jpg

Here's the cockerel. He was sick when this photo was taken, so he's not looking that good (very pale comb). I ended up culling him. He had a huge mass (tumor?) inside him

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/93512_blue_copper_marans_cockerel_9_months_old.jpg

I'll take some more pics of the little cockerel and post later. Thanks for helping

The seller was absolutely correct when you were told that you would get all three colors of blue, black and splash from the pairings of the 2 blue parents.

You posted photos of the parent birds didn't you? Did you see any brownish cinnamon color in the wing triangle of the parent birds?

Thank you for the extra photos! He sure is a cutie, but still going to stick with my original guess that he is not full Blue Copper. Possibly a cross of a Blue Copper and a Blue Wheatens or Wheatens traits or influences in the background of his lineage somewhere. Do you know the lineage of this bird? Some lines of Black Coppers are known to throw recessive Wheatens and other color varieties of Marans so perhaps this is what happened with this guy.

The little white spots on the end of the feather that you described and can be seen in his photos, the peppering of the darker grayish or blackish spots on the feathers and the pattern in which he is taking on is suggestive of partridge or duckwing, also look at the secondary flight feathers and notice the brownish color on them, this is not on a Blue Copper. This does not look like the Wheatens feathering or pattern that I am used to as I have hatched and raised some Wheatens for my best friend). This bird reminds me very much of a young Welsummer chick growing out, Welsummers are red partridge duckwings. Not saying your bird is a outcross to Welsummer just using the Welsummer as an example because of the similarities in plumage color. I am unsure of a partridge variety in the Marans but quite possibly the Salmon Variety is partridge and Wheatens based...I'm not sure as I do not work with them, just typing out loud there.

The only other thing he could possibly be is EXTREMELY OVERLY RED, but that still would not explain the feather color and the pattern and influences of another variety that is expressing on the feathers.

I am not an expert and I hope more come by to give their opinions and views.

 

[janchilds]

I just went downstairs to look at the wings of the marans chicks... two are all black, one is showing beautiful copper on the tips, but 3 have white primaries. Is that strange?

 

[Debbi]

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No white is normally present on chicks. The copper color on the wings should be where your concern is. Are they solid copper colored, or more mossy looking? Pics?

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
I'll need to wait for the kids to get home to help.

Pink, what is it you are looking at? I read somewhere this morning that tail feathers will start in females right away and not in males. Is that correct? What is it you are looking at when you are evaluating your chicks?

I am pretty sure I have identified one as a roo just by personality... like I have never met a bossy female before.

These are the natural traits I watch for and breed for: (A helper trick is to have another breed that is sexable at hatch by feather markings is a bonus, because one can watch the males and females of the already sexed breed and apply the naturally occuring traits to the others and compare.) I breed only the faster feathering females and the slower feathering males.
I watch for primary and secondary wing feather growth first and I usually make my first guess on about 3, 4 or 5 days of age, after this the primaries are usually of no help because the males will start catching up to the females. (I would say by about the age of 7 days or so, I can't really see a difference in the primaries and secondaries of the males vs the females.) At about 3-5 days the primary flights on my male chicks are longer on than the secondaries. The females will have primaries and secondaries that are almost the same length. I also watch for tail feather growth at this time as the tail feathers tend to come in on my females faster than the males.
I notice very little tail feather growth on the males until around 7-10 days.
At about 7-10 days I look for feather growth on the shoulder area of the females, again it tends to come in faster here on my females.
7-10 days on the males I start watching the comb and wattle development very closely as it starts to become noticeable in the comb by showing some thickening of the comb in width and some actually start pinking up as early as 10 days.
By about 3 weeks of age I can tell for sure.

I can say that I make mistakes and get it wrong sometimes, but for the most part....here with my chicks I am pretty spot on. I have guessed at many many chicks here in the Marans thread, but never did get a response as to how accurate I was.
Watch, now that I said that, everyone is going to come out of the woodwork and tell me that every bird I said was a pullet actually ended up being a cockerel.

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
No white is normally present on chicks. The copper color on the wings should be where your concern is. Are they solid copper colored, or more mossy looking? Pics?

 

[BarnGoddess01]

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good luck on the hatch debbi!!

X2!!!!!!! Good luck!

x3!!!!!!

Can't wait for pictures ....

 

[BarnGoddess01]

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No white is normally present on chicks. The copper color on the wings should be where your concern is. Are they solid copper colored, or more mossy looking? Pics?

One of my Christmas day babies is like 50% white. HUGE amount of white on this one. Even the head is half white. I'm curious to see how it colours out.

 

[Debbi]

Thanks! You know I'll post pics!

Will have to see if I can feather sex the Silkies like Pink does the Marans?? They do get some hard feathers in their wings..