From personal experience I don't know, but I had a discussion a little while ago with someone on breeding it out, and, personally I think it can be a tricky process but not too hard. The thing is - You can't just breed it out and get a solid blue/black though unless you had a solid to begin with somewhere in your flock.
Solid BBS are E/E at the e locus. Black Coppers are different, they're E^R/E^R. Sure there are Black Coppers with very little coppering but I don't think you can just keep breeding it out till you have solid colored birds who are still technically Brown-Red/Birchens (E^R) But,
on the history of the color.
Personally I had the thought Blues were created from introduction. They're almost always skinnier/more refined in build and have paler eggs, so it just seems to make sense. I'm no big Marans wiz though. I like to stick to my color(s) and help out people curious of the whole Golden Cuckoo thing. . . . There seems to be so much misconception and confusion on that.
I will say though - If you want to introduce Lavender, my last choice would be in Orpingtons. My two cents.
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Thanks. I've been trying to remember where I read that about the blues coming from coppers... I don't know if it was on a forum or where it was. What you are saying does make sense tho..and it would make sense why the egg color is harder to find as dark as the BCMs. Do you think maybe the blues weren't as popular and over time got kind of swallowed up into BCM or Blue copper flocks? I'm really wanting to find some solids and work with them, but it makes me curious if I'm just chasing a phantom of sorts, if you know what I mean?
I admit too that I don't know much about the golden cuckoos or how it works or etc.
I don't have any aspirations of lavender Marans...my pet projects are the birchens and solid blues....but if you were to work on a lavender Marans project, what would you cross them with? just curious now that you mentioned it.
Hello Illia I have a blue hen that is rather stout in build and was hoping that the little splash posted back a few pages was male so that I could propagate blue Marans flock. But most say that she is a pullet. But if I do find a splash male or even a blue wheaten...................Could I effectively breed out the wheaten to make an all blue flock after say five generations. What do you think ?