Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[ginasmarans]

I love reading the postings about the blues. I am really taken by the blue color and would like to get some this year. Anyone sell hatching eggs? My cuckoos have started laying again.Yipee! A comment about brooding material. I hatch small time,generally using a 50 egg Hovabater. I use the plastic totes. I line the bottom in newspaper and cover it with a couple layers of the thick paper shop towels. To clean, I simply roll it all up, clean it out and re-layer. The paper towel is soft enough and gives traction,but since it's shop towels,it's thicker and holds up.

 

[Debbi]

flgardengirl ~ Boy is he giving you the stink eye!

My baby, Pip, starts growling when I step out on the porch, and doing the ugly dance when I get near the run! He crowed when he was young, but I hadn't heard him crow since he's been out with the flock. Well, the hormones have kicked in, and he crows all day long now! Big man...but he'd better watch his step

 

[VillageChicken]

Pink and Marquisella, re: Blue Marans

Peachick has solid blue Marans doesn't she? Though I think hers are clean shanked. Here's an old egg sale post with pics

There are two things that can cause color to bleed through or copper to show up on blues.
One is that they are genetically BCM, or Red Birchen and are supposed to show color in their hackle if they are not overmelanized. There are tons of almost solid black BCM hens out there, but no one's trying to breed solid black marans (hardly anyone), so these usually just go in the laying pen, or get matched up with Roos with lots of copper. But the BLUE version of these very same hens are very easily confused as genetically solid blue Extended Black based hens. And since more folks are interested in solid blue marans, these hens are used for that purpose, to produce more solid blue marans. These will never produce genetically pure Blue Marans that breed true.


The second problem is that a pure blue Extended Black based blue Marans should be Silver based. S/S for roosters, S/- for hens. Even if someone has a pure solid blue rooster who is E/E S/S, if any of the above mentioned ER based hens that don't show copper are bred to this rooster, all of the rooster offspring from this breeding will now carry gold from the hidden BCM genes. That is how you end up with "dirty" blue roosters, even from parents that appear solid blue. Since Extended Black is dominant, it's almost impossible to know if your blues are carrying ER or gold. A correct hen that is EE based is almost impossible to test to see if she carries copper. Maybe test bred with dominant white the gold would bleed through in the roos if she's carrying it. A test breeding with a plain BCM rooster would show if she carries ER, any ER offspring would be an indicator that she carries ER.

I personally think that most of the gene pool for BBS and Blue Copper/Splash Copper is completely mixed up at this point in their development. I think Peachick's line is pure, but not feather shanked.

Does anyone know of a Marans breeder who has a quality line of feather shanked Extended Black solid BLACK Marans? I think I've seen only one or two in the hundreds of posts on this thread. So if blacks are so rare, then where are the real blues coming from? Real blues meaning not undercoppered blue copper marans.

If I lived there, I'd match Peachick's blues with Don's whites. I think you'd get good dark egg laying pure blue feather shanked Marans, as well as some good solid blacks. Though if Don's whites carry barring it won't work... you'd just get blue cuckoos.

 

[flgardengirl]

Lol Debbi he is a major little terd. He thinks he's really tough. I don't pay any attention to him I just grab him up and pet him. He does try to bite but he isn't fast enough LOL. I am trying to get him tamed down a little before I give him any girls. Maybe he needs some LOL!

ETA: Peachick does have blues. They definitely are not clean shanked, mine are from her and they have heavy feathering.

 

[VillageChicken]

I guess that's an old picture then of the clean shanked blue roos on the post.

I also guess I can't read because it says right there on the egg sale post that they're feathered. Sometimes I just look at pictures.

 

[flgardengirl]

I have a pure black hen with feathered legs that came from peachick but no black roos. I am going to try and cross her to blues this spring and see if any of the boys have coppering or whatever. I cannot seem to find any pure black males. They might be rarer than pure blue males.

ETA: I tried blowing up the photo and it looks like the bare leg is the inside of the roos leg and you can just barely see light feathering on the top of the other leg on the outside of his leg in the foreground of the photo. His feathering looks very light blue.

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
THANK YOU!!!!!!
Village....these are some of the same things that Debbi and I were just discussing amongst ourselves. LoL....I PM'd her because I didn't want to try and post what you just did and totally confuse people because I just can't word things like you can, and it can all be quite confusing at times and you always manage to put it all out there so wonderfully.

 

[marquisella]

Quote:
I took a look at the photo of peachicks blue roo, and is it the photo, because he looks like he has birchen feathers..Maybe its the light? Maybe she can clarify it.

If you have a birchen roo, with black copper background, if you bred him to a "black" hen, that was developed from bc & cuckoo breedings, could you get pure blue?

 

[pinkchick]

I think Peachick's line is pure, but not feather shanked.

In that link to her posting it says that they are all feather shanked and were made from coppers. So if made from copper at what point did they become solid and breed true or did they? Are they still coppers but the copper has been covered?​

 

[VillageChicken]

If you have a birchen roo, with black copper background, if you bred him to a "black" hen, that was developed from bc & cuckoo breedings, could you get pure blue?

Okay, so pure birchen roo, completely silver hackle, no blonde or straw in his hackle, he would be pure silver birchen.
Your black hen, if she is first generation from BC and cuckoo, she will carry birchen genes, and gold if the BC was the rooster. If they were crossed back to the cuckoo several times, then she could be pure black, if the cuckoos are true extended black based cuckoos. I've seen pictures of cuckoos that look like barred silver birchens.

So she is pure black, and he is pure birchen, then you will get pure black, or some black and some blue if the birchen roo is blue birchen.
Birchen and gold genes hide under extended black. It's hard to know the purity of a solid black until you breed it.

ETA I think that the Blue roo does not have birchen feathers in his hackle, it's just the gloss of the shinier hackle feathers. He looks like a blue version of the first black roo to me.

ETA: I guess I should clarify terms. Do you mean pure blue as in no other coloring in the feathers, or genetically pure?

Lots of different mixed breedings can produce a visually pure blue Marans, especially hens. Getting them genetically pure is the hard part. Your Birchen roo will never produce genetically pure blue offspring. Breeding his offspring back to the hen would, if she is indeed pure black.​