Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Debbi]

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Oh, I hear you on the fingers! I'm done once my fingers get cold! I had dual carpal tunnel surgery done in '95-'96, and now when my hands get cold, both of my middle fingers turn WHITE!!! White, like a dead body's white! Scared the crap outta me the first time it happened!!

 

[gilavina]

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yeah...just coming in from tryin to get pics...man its WAAAAAYYYY colder and windier than it looks. I'm like an icicle right now. We'll see if I got anything worth saving...I'm not gonna bet on in.

 

[Cadeau]

I'll take 31 any day, it was -1 this morning with the wind chill and planned to be -8 wind chill tomorrow.

I got birdbath heaters for my nipple waterers, so that is AWESOME!
The less water I have to carry in this weather, the better!!

I'm working on building a heat plate for the layer house and one of the grower pens that is a bunny run and I'll be set for water not freezing - yeah!!


So...as for middle toe feathers - do you guys cull everyone with more than a feather or two?

Gilavina, would that count for you as a cull b/c DQ or 1 out of 3 faults??

I've read on this thread (snowbird?) that the white chick fuzz often falls out and doesn't come back as feathering - what are you guys seeing? If a peep has middle toe fuzz, do they, generally, feather in on the middle toe?

 

[flgardengirl]

The middle toe feathers can be persistant. One of my favorite blue dark layers has them. I bred her to an unrelated feather legged roo with no middle toe feathers. Most of the babies had toe feathers. I bred her to an unrelated non feather legged roo and only 1/3 of the babies had middle toe feathers. You can get rid ot the middle toe feathers but I would not breed them to any relatives of the bird with the middle toe feathers.

Good idea on the birdbath de-icer. I would probably use something like that if it froze often enough to use it. Automatic waterers are something we are working on though we already have the pipes out there by the runs just haven't completed the whole project yet. Maybe this spring. I really hate hauling water too.

 

[Debbi]

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That's a problem I've not had here yet!

I have noticed when the chicks hatch with white/yellowish shank fluff, they end up being clean legged here.

 

[gilavina]

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For me its about the whole bird...if a bird already had something else going that I'm not liking...like they don't measure up to some of the other prospects I have growing out or already in the breeding pen..and they gotta go. Now...if I'm working on a pen that needs work and I have smaller options, I will evaluate a bit differently and say for instance I had two birds that look pretty similar and one has something like a comb defect....and I have only these two to pick from, I will keep the one with the middle toe feathering. This doesn't mean I won't rigorously work on culling for it in successive generations, but sometimes it does come down to what you can and can't live with and what you can deal with and what resources you have already available. In a perfect world...I would cull absolutely everything that doesn't look perfect, but there just isn't such a thing as a perfect bird, so working toward standard takes time and sometimes it means playing it safe and sometimes means taking some risks. This is where careful breeding records and IDing birds is your best friend. It gives some leeway to take these calculated risks, because you always know who is who and if they don't pan out, out they go and on you go without having lost track of who is from who and what is in what line or group and etc.

 

[Debbi]

Quote:
For me its about the whole bird...if a bird already had something else going that I'm not liking...like they don't measure up to some of the other prospects I have growing out or already in the breeding pen..and they gotta go. Now...if I'm working on a pen that needs work and I have smaller options, I will evaluate a bit differently and say for instance I had two birds that look pretty similar and one has something like a comb defect....and I have only these two to pick from, I will keep the one with the middle toe feathering. This doesn't mean I won't rigorously work on culling for it in successive generations, but sometimes it does come down to what you can and can't live with and what you can deal with and what resources you have already available. In a perfect world...I would cull absolutely everything that doesn't look perfect, but there just isn't such a thing as a perfect bird, so working toward standard takes time and sometimes it means playing it safe and sometimes means taking some risks. This is where careful breeding records and IDing birds is your best friend. It gives some leeway to take these calculated risks, because you always know who is who and if they don't pan out, out they go and on you go without having lost track of who is from who and what is in what line or group and etc.

X2! Well said. I tend to pick and choose my battles when it comes to faults. Can't do away with everything here, or I'd have no birds! DQs that are hard(er) to get rid of go. If I have something I think I may be able to work around, test it and see. It all depends on what irks you the most...for me, it's these awful combs right now.

 

[gilavina]

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I'm curious about these bird bath heaters....are they plug in, what do they look like, how do they work? Out here in the country, I've got a bird bath, but its used in warmer months and the wee birdies are on their own during the winter months.

 

[gilavina]

Quote:
For me its about the whole bird...if a bird already had something else going that I'm not liking...like they don't measure up to some of the other prospects I have growing out or already in the breeding pen..and they gotta go. Now...if I'm working on a pen that needs work and I have smaller options, I will evaluate a bit differently and say for instance I had two birds that look pretty similar and one has something like a comb defect....and I have only these two to pick from, I will keep the one with the middle toe feathering. This doesn't mean I won't rigorously work on culling for it in successive generations, but sometimes it does come down to what you can and can't live with and what you can deal with and what resources you have already available. In a perfect world...I would cull absolutely everything that doesn't look perfect, but there just isn't such a thing as a perfect bird, so working toward standard takes time and sometimes it means playing it safe and sometimes means taking some risks. This is where careful breeding records and IDing birds is your best friend. It gives some leeway to take these calculated risks, because you always know who is who and if they don't pan out, out they go and on you go without having lost track of who is from who and what is in what line or group and etc.

X2! Well said. I tend to pick and choose my battles when it comes to faults. Can't do away with everything here, or I'd have no birds! DQs that are hard(er) to get rid of go. If I have something I think I may be able to work around, test it and see. It all depends on what irks you the most...for me, it's these awful combs right now.

yup...combs top my list by far. I do not give much leeway at all with them, never have. It serves me well for the most part. There are always issues that can pop up from time to time that were lurking, but this is where being merciless on comb issues will help!
Some things are easier to deal with than others, but as a general rule of thumb... general poultry DQs are often a bit more tenacious and are harder to get rid of...so those are the first to go for sure, like split wing, split tail, squirrel tail, comb issues, etc.

 

[gilavina]

ok....so I got a shot that I thought I'd share...its not great as they are chasing after the feed bucket and running into the wind...but it gives a rough idea. He does carry his tail better than when he was around 5 months like in the pic I posted in that progressive post of him...I'm hoping as he fills in, he will get a bit better tail placement still. We'll see...still love that insane Copper tho... :

I'm gonna still keep trying to get better shots and new shots of birds you haven't seen yet...there's a couple of girls I'm ga ga over! They still have a ton of growing to do, but they are lovely!