Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[gilavina]

OK so there is a silver cuckoo, golden cuckoo and reg cuckoo, blue cuckoo anything else?

silver cuckoo and regular cuckoos are the same thing. There are silver marans which come from cuckoo breeding but have double recessive genes, but are not what we know as silver cuckoos here. Does that make sense?

 

[Hens and Roos]

I'm confused... I thought you had silver cuckoos and also were working on blue cuckoos as well? Or am I not understanding what you are saying?

opps my bad, I have both blue cuckoos and the regular black cuckoos(don't usually call them silver), I thought you were asking if I have ones similar to the boy you posted a few pages back.... sorry for the confusion

our household has just gotten over the flu so it has been crazy around here trying to catch up on everything that we let slide a bit....

 

[Arielle]

I didn't start this project.... I just inherited it

from Raven1. These girls are laying machines too! I think I have 10 cuckoo eggs already. Just didn't expect them to lay that well.

They need to go talk with the Blue and Black coppers

Donna et al, just trying to point out that I am not the source of the project; THe quote seemed to indicate I am working on the blue cuckoo project and I'm not. Or better said, not yet .. . .

I do have a butterscotch cuckoo mutt that I love the color of; don't know how he was made but would love to make more of him.

 

[gilavina]

opps my bad, I have both blue cuckoos and the regular black cuckoos(don't usually call them silver), I thought you were asking if I have ones similar to the boy you posted a few pages back.... sorry for the confusion

our household has just gotten over the flu so it has been crazy around here trying to catch up on everything that we let slide a bit....

haha...no problem at all! Most people refer to the silver cuckoos as black or just cuckoos...I thought maybe I was confusing people so thought I would clarify

I've been under the weather for the past few days as well, so I totally understand!

 

[Hens and Roos]

haha...no problem at all! Most people refer to the silver cuckoos as black or just cuckoos...I thought maybe I was confusing people so thought I would clarify

I've been under the weather for the past few days as well, so I totally understand!

Hope you feel better soon! It's taken me just about 2 weeks to finally feel almost back to normal, my DH and DS(10) still have coughs hanging on.

 

[BarnGoddess01]

Quote:

I believe it is important to evaluate the protein, fat, and fibre numbers when evaluating feed. Protein is required to break down fibre so a higher protein number can be somewhat misleading if the fibre number is also high. Ideally, they would provide us with a digestible energy number as they often do for horse feeds now, however, we often have to sort that sort of thing out for ourselves. The source of the protein also makes a difference. And, of course, as Debbi mentioned, any food is not of any value if they won't consume it!!

 

[BarnGoddess01]

Somebody asked a few pages back about a university website with guidelines about the duration of fertility. I just found the following:

From Genetics of the Fowl, F.B. Hutt (1949)

“After single matings that yielded fertile eggs, the average time elapsing before laying of the first fertile eggs was found to be 57.1 hours by Curtis and Lambert and 66 hours by Nicolaides. Fronda’s record of getting a fertile egg in 20 hours stood for 8 years but was finally wrested away from him by Nicolaides, who, in 68 trials, got one fertile egg 19.5 hours after mating. Since the earliest fertile egg obtained by Van Drimmelen (1945) after putting semen directly in the abdominal cavity came through 19 hours later, and since it take 26 minutes for spermatozoa to traverse the oviduct (Mimura, 1939), no one is likely to lower by more than 4 minutes this record for natural matings now held by Nicolaides. More important, perhaps, is the3 fact that fertility for a whole pen of females is likely to be sufficiently established by 6 or 7 days to warrant saving the eggs for hatching. With old males and with young ones not adequately exposed to light [12 hours was defined earlier in the chapter] a longer time may be necessary.

After removal of the male, the average duration of fertility was found to be 10.7 days by Curtis and Lambert, 14.8 days by Nicolaides. The high records here are 29 and 32 days recorded by Nicolaides and Crew, respectively. In practice, poultrymen recognize that, a week after removal of the male, fertility is declining so rapidly that only special circumstances warrant saving eggs longer than 12 or 14 days.

It is important to know how soon after one male is replaced by another the influence of the first will be lost so that all or most of the fertile eggs can be attributed to the second sire. This has a special significance for breeders who are testing two or three consecutive series of cockerels in the same pens in one breeding season, as it is desirable to reduce to a minimum the number of eggs that must be discarded between series because paternity of chicks hatched from them would be in doubt. It was found by Crew (1926) and by Warren and Kilpatrick (1929) that in such cases the influence of the first male is lost in 7 to 10 days and frequently in as little as 3 to 5 days. Furthermore, once the second male’s sperm begin to fertilize eggs of any one hen, few of them, if any, are subsequently fertilized by the first male. However, there is apparently some variation among males in persistence of their spermatozoa in competition with those of a replacing sire. Altogether, it seems clear that 7 to 10 days are ample as an interim when one male replaces another.” [With A.I. the time lost is much less than with pen matings.]

 

[gilavina]

Hope you feel better soon! It's taken me just about 2 weeks to finally feel almost back to normal, my DH and DS(10) still have coughs hanging on.

thanks! The stuff going around this winter is particularly nasty indeed.

 

[Hens and Roos]

thanks for sharing this, this is great information to have! I am reading the book right now but haven't reached that part of the book yet!

Somebody asked a few pages back about a university website with guidelines about the duration of fertility. I just found the following:

From Genetics of the Fowl, F.B. Hutt (1949)

“After single matings that yielded fertile eggs, the average time elapsing before laying of the first fertile eggs was found to be 57.1 hours by Curtis and Lambert and 66 hours by Nicolaides. Fronda’s record of getting a fertile egg in 20 hours stood for 8 years but was finally wrested away from him by Nicolaides, who, in 68 trials, got one fertile egg 19.5 hours after mating. Since the earliest fertile egg obtained by Van Drimmelen (1945) after putting semen directly in the abdominal cavity came through 19 hours later, and since it take 26 minutes for spermatozoa to traverse the oviduct (Mimura, 1939), no one is likely to lower by more than 4 minutes this record for natural matings now held by Nicolaides. More important, perhaps, is the3 fact that fertility for a whole pen of females is likely to be sufficiently established by 6 or 7 days to warrant saving the eggs for hatching. With old males and with young ones not adequately exposed to light [12 hours was defined earlier in the chapter] a longer time may be necessary.

After removal of the male, the average duration of fertility was found to be 10.7 days by Curtis and Lambert, 14.8 days by Nicolaides. The high records here are 29 and 32 days recorded by Nicolaides and Crew, respectively. In practice, poultrymen recognize that, a week after removal of the male, fertility is declining so rapidly that only special circumstances warrant saving eggs longer than 12 or 14 days.

It is important to know how soon after one male is replaced by another the influence of the first will be lost so that all or most of the fertile eggs can be attributed to the second sire. This has a special significance for breeders who are testing two or three consecutive series of cockerels in the same pens in one breeding season, as it is desirable to reduce to a minimum the number of eggs that must be discarded between series because paternity of chicks hatched from them would be in doubt. It was found by Crew (1926) and by Warren and Kilpatrick (1929) that in such cases the influence of the first male is lost in 7 to 10 days and frequently in as little as 3 to 5 days. Furthermore, once the second male’s sperm begin to fertilize eggs of any one hen, few of them, if any, are subsequently fertilized by the first male. However, there is apparently some variation among males in persistence of their spermatozoa in competition with those of a replacing sire. Altogether, it seems clear that 7 to 10 days are ample as an interim when one male replaces another.” [With A.I. the time lost is much less than with pen matings.]

 

[DMRippy]

Somebody asked a few pages back about a university website with guidelines about the duration of fertility. I just found the following:

From Genetics of the Fowl, F.B. Hutt (1949)

“After single matings that yielded fertile eggs, the average time elapsing before laying of the first fertile eggs was found to be 57.1 hours by Curtis and Lambert and 66 hours by Nicolaides. Fronda’s record of getting a fertile egg in 20 hours stood for 8 years but was finally wrested away from him by Nicolaides, who, in 68 trials, got one fertile egg 19.5 hours after mating. Since the earliest fertile egg obtained by Van Drimmelen (1945) after putting semen directly in the abdominal cavity came through 19 hours later, and since it take 26 minutes for spermatozoa to traverse the oviduct (Mimura, 1939), no one is likely to lower by more than 4 minutes this record for natural matings now held by Nicolaides. More important, perhaps, is the3 fact that fertility for a whole pen of females is likely to be sufficiently established by 6 or 7 days to warrant saving the eggs for hatching. With old males and with young ones not adequately exposed to light [12 hours was defined earlier in the chapter] a longer time may be necessary.

After removal of the male, the average duration of fertility was found to be 10.7 days by Curtis and Lambert, 14.8 days by Nicolaides. The high records here are 29 and 32 days recorded by Nicolaides and Crew, respectively. In practice, poultrymen recognize that, a week after removal of the male, fertility is declining so rapidly that only special circumstances warrant saving eggs longer than 12 or 14 days.

It is important to know how soon after one male is replaced by another the influence of the first will be lost so that all or most of the fertile eggs can be attributed to the second sire. This has a special significance for breeders who are testing two or three consecutive series of cockerels in the same pens in one breeding season, as it is desirable to reduce to a minimum the number of eggs that must be discarded between series because paternity of chicks hatched from them would be in doubt. It was found by Crew (1926) and by Warren and Kilpatrick (1929) that in such cases the influence of the first male is lost in 7 to 10 days and frequently in as little as 3 to 5 days. Furthermore, once the second male’s sperm begin to fertilize eggs of any one hen, few of them, if any, are subsequently fertilized by the first male. However, there is apparently some variation among males in persistence of their spermatozoa in competition with those of a replacing sire. Altogether, it seems clear that 7 to 10 days are ample as an interim when one male replaces another.” [With A.I. the time lost is much less than with pen matings.]

I will post my results with the cuckoos. I will collect till they are not fertile and growing in the incubator.