Anyone know if white is usually dominant or recessive in marans? I was wondering if it was dominant, and the chick that hatched that looks white to me... if I crossed it with a copper black, I should be able to get red pyle marans.... how cool would that be???
Anyone know if white is usually dominant or recessive in marans? I was wondering if it was dominant, and the chick that hatched that looks white to me... if I crossed it with a copper black, I should be able to get red pyle marans.... how cool would that be???
The white Marans are typically recessive white. One can usually tell the colour underneath the white as when copper black underneath the legs are frequently darker.
Dominant white on copper black wouldn't make pyle; pyle is on a wild type or duckwing patterned bird. Copper black is on birchen.
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Chicken color genetics is just sooooooo complicated, it makes my head hurt.
I have two recessive white bantam araucana chicks. None of the possible parents are white, but most of them do have yellow or white legs. The white offspring, though, have WILLOW legs.
Figures -- the one color where yellow legs would be APPROPRIATE in araucanas, and these guys gotta get WILLOW.
So today is Day 10 for the Cuckoo Marans...Candling Party time!
6 of 36 appear to be duds, but since they don't stink I went ahead and left them in the 'bator. Even the lightest of them are very difficult to candle.
Each of the three dozen has now lost 6%, 5.6% and 5.7% of its average egg weight.
I sometimes read about people taking some drastic measures when incubating Marans eggs (lower humidity, sanding the big end, etc.), but it seems as though everything is cruising along nicely.
I've been running the humidity at 35-40% (actually, 45% at times...oops) and allowing it to drop to 25 before adding water. All vents open.
Am I on the right track? Do Marans really "require" any of that special hokus-pokus that some folks on the internets like to talk about? Or are they really just chickens?
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I've heard about all that too... around here it it pretty much eggs in chicks out... I do follow the dry hatch method because we live in a subtropical climate and it is humid enough without any help until hatch.
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Chicken color genetics is just sooooooo complicated, it makes my head hurt.
I have two recessive white bantam araucana chicks. None of the possible parents are white, but most of them do have yellow or white legs. The white offspring, though, have WILLOW legs.
Figures -- the one color where yellow legs would be APPROPRIATE in araucanas, and these guys gotta get WILLOW.
LOL back to what I said this morning - if it can go wrong with poultry it will go wrong. You get perfectly good white araucanas and willow legs. I get a turkey hen who has to lay her eggs in poison ivy to be happy.
And of course my near perfectly laying PR hen is stippled instead of pencilled. Good dark eggs, every day like clockwork, bigger than the other eggs... And they're all dinner eggs.
Murphy's Laws were written by someone in poultry or livestock.
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All I can relate is my own experience, which is that my Marans eggs make it to hatching time with no problem, and then I lose close to half of them during the hatching process. When I open eggs after a hatch, without fail every Marans egg that didn't hatch will have a perfectly, fully developed, dead chick inside. It's like they just can't get out. I've heard various theories about this, from the shells being tougher, to lack of evaporation due to less-porous dark shells, to the size of the chicks relative to the eggs. I have no idea what it is, but I do know that it's a real issue. Hatched side-by-side with other breeds, the difference is notable.
I have incubated my own eggs and eggs from other folks, and one other anecdotal observation I'll make is this: If I can see into the shell at ALL during candling, that egg has a much better chance of becoming a chick, at least at my house, than does the super-dark, highly glossy egg that I can't candle.