Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[math ace]

Quote:
So, maybe your friend could work with us to import some REAL FRENCH BCM . . . .

Maybe they have ones without white feathers, with the five point comb, tail feathers at 45 degree or less, AND AND AND lays a really dark egg . . . .

HOW MUCH DOES YOUR FRIEND LIKE YA ? ? ? ?

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
Congrats on your hatch criker!

I don't know what this chick is but it is neither a Barnevelder nor a Welsummer, now with that said I would venture to say that the "V" on the top of the head that goes down the back of the head to the neck resembles that of a Welsummer, but on your chick it is very faint and it is the only thing that I see on your bird that suggests a possible out cross. Is there a chance that the person you purchased birds from has Welsummers?

For reference:

Welsummer Chicks

With the recent crash of my computer I have lost many photos but here are the 2 photos that I have of one of my Barnevelder roos next to a Welsummer cross Barnevelder chick. The pure Barnie in the 1st photo is the one on top, the same boy in the second photo is on the left.

 

[haTHOR]

Quote:
thanks geebs, and for the pm too. made my day and i am taking notes!

i do have 30 birds but only ten FCBMs, soon to be a reduced to a breeding quartet. total in the pen will be 16 (EEs, OEs, CMs, and FCBMs) and there will be 2 EE roos, 1 FCBM roo, and 13 ladies. since i am just going for eggs, i don't need to separate out yet, but will do so a month before i start collect eggs to brood or incubate to add to my FCBM flock. the lady i got my stock from continues to raise FCBMs and said she'd let me have one of parent stock when she got ready to make changes, as you recommended! so i am not as worried about not having an extra FCBM as i am about my black javas--gotta hatch a new roo in the spring for that flock no matter what!

once i cull the 2 older FCBMs, keeping 1 20 wk old, i'll still have 4 16 wk FCBMs to keep my eye on, watching especialy for the stuff you noted--eyes and shanks--to make sure i have kept the best roo i have so far.

thanks again!

 

[Wynette]

Quote:
What I mean is I haven't "worked" my line. I bought what I thought was a great line and they lay nice eggs and were representative of the French standards. That's all I was interested in at the time I bought the birds. So I've sold hatching eggs and I've sold chicks. Sometimes I have a few chicks left over after an order is filled and they are turned loose to run the farm. I haven't added them back to breeder pens.

I just bought leg bands and separated my birds into two pens so far - what I call Best of the Best, and the "Project" pen. I will further separate and actually start to "work" the line and record outcome of matings soon and legband the offspring and put them back in the breeder program. Because, as you said, my original flock will eventually get too old to lay and I will need new hatches. But I want to make sure I know which birds produced which offspring and document outcome. For example, right now my "Project" pen is a great body/type/comb roo but he has too much red on his breast. I have him in with hens that don't have much copper around the neck. I personally like lots of copper. So I'm waiting to find out if their offspring really will produce hens with more copper.

I also have a few hens with too much color going down their chest and I'm not sure who to mate them with. I'm guessing I'll put them with a roo with a solid black breast and record the outcome.

But thus far, my breeder pens have only been the original pure birds. I didn't want to add one that was running around the farm just because it looked pure when I do have lots of "mutts" running around as well. When I start adding birds back to the breeder pens I want to be sure they are pure and to know "who da daddy".

I think my case is a little different because I started with over 40 hens and 10 roosters and they were in 6 pens so I had a BIG line to start with. I'll start keeping some of my own hatches from this point forward and document results and actually start "working" the line for APA standards AND egg color/shape.

I've learned so much from all of you that I feel ready, willing and able to TRY and try again......

Gotcha, Ruth! So nutshell (as I see it): You're at the FUN stage! All the recording & experimenting on what breeds well with what...that stuff is just SO much fun to me! Even if the outcome is not as great as you are hoping, you learn so much from it. That, coupled with what we're all learning from each other will SOOO help us all move forward with this fine breed! I find this stuff so exciting, and I'm so grateful to you all for being so open with what you're doing! I have eggs in the bator now that are somewhat one of the things you're wondering about, Ruth - I've got a girl that's somewhat mossy (not bad, only on her breast, she's probably got 30% copper feathering instead of the solid black that I breed fo, so she was a cull from my breeding program), but lays a gorgeous egg that keeps its color better than some of my breed pen gals. I have a good friend who has a roo with too much melanizer; so, I "pimped her out" to my friend for a month, and we collected a few eggs to see what the cross would look like. The rooster is a mix of lines, the hen is pure W. Jeane. I'm amped to see how they look as juveniles, but I guess I ought to just focus on getting them hatched first!

 

[Wynette]

Quote:
Christine, I'm totally with you, and this is what I've been breeding toward. If I had the room, however, I'd have a pen that is ONLY for dark egg layers, and I'd throw conformation & breeding toward the (proposed) standard right out the window, because I have a few girls that lay an awesome egg, but are not acceptable breeders. The biggest problems with this breed began when a few folks had some super dark layers and just bred them indiscriminantly - just for egg color. If you read back in this thread and the older Marans thread that is now closed but still online here, you'll find a ton of info. on this. I think this happened mostly because there was no standard to follow; now, there is a proposed standard (which I and others have posted a few times in this thread and the other, but if you can't find it, PM me and I can direct you to it - it's posted on the MCC site on the web), I for one feel like the type is getting better and better, and "most" folks are breeding to type AND egg color. I still, personally, don't find a thing wrong with breeding just for a pretty egg, but that's not something that I do - I simply don't have the space.

 

[snowbird]

Quote:
What I mean is I haven't "worked" my line. I bought what I thought was a great line and they lay nice eggs and were representative of the French standards. That's all I was interested in at the time I bought the birds. So I've sold hatching eggs and I've sold chicks. Sometimes I have a few chicks left over after an order is filled and they are turned loose to run the farm. I haven't added them back to breeder pens.

I just bought leg bands and separated my birds into two pens so far - what I call Best of the Best, and the "Project" pen. I will further separate and actually start to "work" the line and record outcome of matings soon and legband the offspring and put them back in the breeder program. Because, as you said, my original flock will eventually get too old to lay and I will need new hatches. But I want to make sure I know which birds produced which offspring and document outcome. For example, right now my "Project" pen is a great body/type/comb roo but he has too much red on his breast. I have him in with hens that don't have much copper around the neck. I personally like lots of copper. So I'm waiting to find out if their offspring really will produce hens with more copper.

I also have a few hens with too much color going down their chest and I'm not sure who to mate them with. I'm guessing I'll put them with a roo with a solid black breast and record the outcome.

But thus far, my breeder pens have only been the original pure birds. I didn't want to add one that was running around the farm just because it looked pure when I do have lots of "mutts" running around as well. When I start adding birds back to the breeder pens I want to be sure they are pure and to know "who da daddy".

I think my case is a little different because I started with over 40 hens and 10 roosters and they were in 6 pens so I had a BIG line to start with. I'll start keeping some of my own hatches from this point forward and document results and actually start "working" the line for APA standards AND egg color/shape.

I've learned so much from all of you that I feel ready, willing and able to TRY and try again......

Gotcha, Ruth! So nutshell (as I see it): You're at the FUN stage! All the recording & experimenting on what breeds well with what...that stuff is just SO much fun to me! Even if the outcome is not as great as you are hoping, you learn so much from it. That, coupled with what we're all learning from each other will SOOO help us all move forward with this fine breed! I find this stuff so exciting, and I'm so grateful to you all for being so open with what you're doing! I have eggs in the bator now that are somewhat one of the things you're wondering about, Ruth - I've got a girl that's somewhat mossy (not bad, only on her breast, she's probably got 30% copper feathering instead of the solid black that I breed fo, so she was a cull from my breeding program), but lays a gorgeous egg that keeps its color better than some of my breed pen gals. I have a good friend who has a roo with too much melanizer; so, I "pimped her out" to my friend for a month, and we collected a few eggs to see what the cross would look like. The rooster is a mix of lines, the hen is pure W. Jeane. I'm amped to see how they look as juveniles, but I guess I ought to just focus on getting them hatched first!

Wynette, If I am reading what you mean, the female with extra color would not be Mossy but just an extension of neck lacing. This would be something different than Mossy.

 

[pinkchick]

Blue................



Blue Copper can be achieved by crossing a solid blue (a bird not showing any signs of copper IMO would be considered solid blue, however, this does not mean that this bird does not carry the copper gene, so this gene that is not expressed visually can be passed onto offspring, we find this out by single mating birds and raising the offspring to see how they color out, we keep the best birds,(the closest resemblance of the particular variety of what we are looking to breed, i.e.… solid blue, blue copper , black copper, solid black, splash copper or splash. By selecting the birds that visually show desired traits and characteristics of what we want to duplicate we can then move forward to breeding those selected birds back to it’s parent/s. Say you cross a BCM rooster over a solid blue pullet or hen- the resulting offspring would be 50% black and 50% Blue……this cross will not guarantee you the perfect offspring……you may get a very correct BCM or Blue Copper(but not usually with the first cross) , or birds in both colors with not enough copper, or you may also get some birds blue and black that do not show copper at all ….(I have found that I do not get birds that are overly red, this may have to do with other things considered in Marans…eye color, lack of melanizers, the line of the bird….many other factors blah blah blah…..that is later as to not confuse where I was going)
the offspring of a BCM cross “solid” blue……depending on the color variety I want to breed and lets say I want to breed for solid blues , first I would look for a cockerel that is or will not show any signs of copper (does not mean he won’t carry the gene because after all his daddy is a bcm and it can pop up in his offspring and/or it could wait several generations and pop up in grandchildren or even further down the line), I understand that solid blue cockerels and roos can be pretty hard to come by and that there are few out there. If I can’t go that route, my next best option would be to use a cockerel that shows very little copper, the least amount as possible, and breed him back to his “solid” mother , incubate and yet again grow these chicks out to see how they mature and choose a cockerel from this mating that best represents the color I am going for and breed back again to his mother/grandmother..(again to the original “solid “ blue hen)……with continued breeding of certain dominant traits that we are looking for eventually the desired goal will be achieved. Let me say that not every bird produced is going to come out perfect or close, each one will be different, this is why we take the bird that best resembles the variety we would like to breed and breed those birds back. It will/can take more than 2 generations to get to what you are looking for and to breed out the copper/red/gold leakage because blue is a leaky gene and will allow some leakage, this is why some see what appears to be a solid blue bird with some light almost un-noticeable tan/grey/taupe ish looking color bleeding through in the hackles of them. I have noticed in these birds that after molt the leakage is darker and covers more area. This suggests to me that they carry the copper gene and tells me not to use them for breeding if I am going for solid blues. However, if it is all I have I would breed them and set my sights once again for the best representation of what I am after and start the process over.

Breeding for Blue coppers~

Blue Coppers can be achieved the same way but you would breed those that show the copper or amounts of it back to the Copper parent and continue to breed the best of the them back until the goal you set out after is achieved. IMO the best blue coppers come from copper parents, if both parents are copper then the amount of copper being given to the offspring will be greater and can be more correct. The amount of copper they get will depend on the amount of copper their parents have, they cannot lend what they do not have, so if a bird has very little copper that is all they can lend to their offspring. This is where selecting birds that compliment each other comes in to play the same as breeding for BCM’s ….example…..breeding an overly red roo to a pullet that shows little copper can improve your copper in the next generation of offspring from that cross and again getting the perfect bird may or may not happen here………..I cannot stress this enough, even breeders such as Bev can tell you that not every bird produced is a perfect example of the desired variety.

Blue is genetically a black bird that has one copy of the blue gene and its expresses itself for one to see as the color blue everywhere that the bird would normally be black…….one copy of the blue gene dilutes black to blue and two copies of the blue gene expresses itself as or dilutes to splash or “white” but it is not truly white it almost has a gray or blue tinge to it but looks white……standing next to a genetically white bird the 2 colors are different, blue being a leaky gene and with the splash variety will express itself in random feathers of light and dark blue and flecks of copper color through out the body with no uniformity usually in the females, but can happen in the splash copper variety males, i.e.….splash copper pullets or hens do not normally have a pattern like that of the copper blacks and copper blues, but a splash copper male can take on a copper shoulder pattern like that of a BCM and Bl-Cpr male and also have flecks of coppering in the saddles and hackle area.

Blue is also a gene/color that can and will express itself in different shades from light to dark and in some instances almost black. To find out if a bird that appears black is truly a blue bird simply cross it with a genetically black bird and if you get blue offspring, your bird that appears black is genetically blue.

The only way to find out what your bird/s may be carrying is to test mate them and see how the offspring grow out but this does not eliminate recessive genes that will/can pop up later.

This is just my opinion and I posted it just for reference…….if I am wrong or have made a mistake please anyone feel free to jump in and add your thoughts.

 

[Debbi]

I have a question about the BCM hen's hackles. On the French site, they say the following:

{On the other han, the coppery color of the hackle must also be present on the front part of the neck or of the throat and spread out almost down to the breast.

The hens, which are in this way correctly coppery-colored, give a very satisfactory proportion of cockerels with an ideal red mark on the breast.These two color characteristics are very correlative between these hens which have nice hackles and the cocks which have nice breasts which perfectly corresponds to them.}


"On the other han, the coppery color of the hackle must also be present on the front part of the neck or of the throat and spread out almost down to the breast." This is the part I question. I have not seen very many hens in this country with the copper coloring on the throat area. If such a hen were shown here in the USA, would it be considered a defect? As in too much coppering?

Here is the link to the actual page of the French site, scroll down about 3/4 of the page

http://marans-club.perso.neuf.fr/ncuiang.htm#NCUI

 

[fowlman01]

Quote:
So, maybe your friend could work with us to import some REAL FRENCH BCM . . . .

Maybe they have ones without white feathers, with the five point comb, tail feathers at 45 degree or less, AND AND AND lays a really dark egg . . . .

HOW MUCH DOES YOUR FRIEND LIKE YA ? ? ? ?

If you look at their web site, it would seem that they have the same problems that you have here in the US.

Walt

 

[pinkchick]

Sending out a warm WELCOME to the new peeps who have joined us here in this great thread!