Wheaten and Blue wheaten Marans Discussion Thread

[Bangarang64]

A new crop of Wheatens for 2014 in my house! Here's the first one out of the egg as of 5 mins ago:

Looks like I got 5 out of this go round. I hope thy're not 4 Males and one Female like last time!

 

[berkeleysprings]

I think blackcopper then comes blue then splash than blue wheaten than wheaten as far as darkness of egg color

Ok, sorry to just keep with the questions.. but do you think blue wheaten marans are generally darker layers than non-blue wheaten? Do you think darker layers produce fewer eggs?

 

[WHmarans]

I think blackcopper then comes blue then splash than blue wheaten than wheaten.

It is interesting that Wheaten have so many differences from black coppers. I thought they came from black copper sports.

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

Happy New Year, everyone! One of my wheaten hens has begun to lay again. Her eggs are probably only a 4 but she's matured nicely and has a tidy comb. I've put my two Fitzgerald cockerels in that pen (there are some EEs and Jersey Giants & JG mixes in that pen, so it will be easy to pick the Marans eggs from the line-up) so that in a few weeks I can start saving a few eggs to hatch. They might need a little time to "learn the ropes" since they've just been hanging out in the cockerel pen 'til now. My goal with that breeding will be to produce a few pullets with good color and conformation that will hopefully lay darker eggs than their mother and can be back-crossed to the Fitz. cocks in time. The three Fitzgerald pullets still haven't started yet but I'm looking forward to the day when they will.

I guess the cold weather has her holding out on me. She's only laid twice since this post. I guess she decided to call it quits 'til all these polar vortexes are past us!

 

[Bangarang64]

I guess the cold weather has her holding out on me. She's only laid twice since this post. I guess she decided to call it quits 'til all these polar vortexes are past us!

My First generation ladies are all but quit. Their break has lasted since November with the occasional light colored egg every now and then. Maybe one a week if I'm lucky from each of them. We're in Florida so I'm not buying their wintertime excuses lol!

My second generation mothers are doing quite well. Here's the color I've been getting from them: (posted a few weeks ago in the thread)
The one on the far right is from a Red Star (Sex Link)

 

[Bangarang64]

A bit off topic, but things are slow here so I thought I'd share this.
One of my Wheatens went broody in December, so I placed some eggs from my Red Star hens under her. The pen the Reds are in is where I keep my spare Wheaten Roo. I have no idea what the result will end up like, although I have read that a RIR (which red stars share 1/2 linage) covered by a Marans male results in a Blue Belle or Blue Ranger. That would be cool. Really though, I have no idea.

Tomorrow (Jan 16th) they will be one week old.

Okay, here is an update on my Wheaten x Red Star (Sex Link) project.
It's week two and the results aren't what I thought they'd be. There really isn't much uniformity at all.

chick #1:





It looks a lot like My Red Stars when they were young, but there are some differences. It's showing small traces of brown, and has quite a few white feathers so far.

Chick #2:



This one looks a lot like chick #1, but has no brown in her wing feathers. also, her wings are lacking the length of the first chick. They are much shorter.

chick #3:





Here we see chick #3 has the look of what I'd expect of one of my Wheatens at 2 weeks. It is completely lacking in the black feathers and if this was a full blood Wheatie I would declare it a female without hesitation. However, with the Red Stars it is the darker feathered ones that are male so it's anyone's guess. If it continues to look so much like the dad's linage I'm gonna have to band her or something so I won't get her mixed up with my other truebloods.

Well, I hope that was interesting for ya, I was asked to keep an update in the thread. If these turn out to be the ugliest birds in the world we'll find out why someone hasn't proceeded with this direction in the past!

 

[WHmarans]

I think the first two are female and the third one male. That's my wild guess.

 

[Bangarang64]

A bit off topic, but things are slow here so I thought I'd share this.
One of my Wheatens went broody in December, so I placed some eggs from my Red Star hens under her. The pen the Reds are in is where I keep my spare Wheaten Roo. I have no idea what the result will end up like, although I have read that a RIR (which red stars share 1/2 linage) covered by a Marans male results in a Blue Belle or Blue Ranger. That would be cool. Really though, I have no idea.

Tomorrow (Jan 16th) they will be one week old.

Quote:

Okay, I'm ready to give an update on this. The chicks are just over three weeks at the time these pictures below were taken.

Chick #1 is filling out nicely, but not looking anything like a bluebell. My prediction is she will look more like a golden version of a Red Star or Cinnamon Link. She is more yellow than reddish as well as having more yellowish legs compared to my Wheatens,



#2, the one with the short wings posted last week, looks like he's going to be a male. Notice his comb compared to the others. He is still mostly white, but is closer to looking like # 1. He also has yellow legs.



And as before, # 3 is the one looking the most Wheaten-ish. She's still showing female-like color, but if you put her next to a true Wheaten chick you could tell a drastic difference. She is the most shy of all three.



Well, there you have it. We are curious to see what kind of birds they will make. It's a bit interesting, but I know this isn't truly Wheaten Maran thread worthy and for next week I think I will simply post a link to a new thread that just deals with this project.

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

Time for the test hatch! My hen started back up towards the end of last week and I've set aside three eggs. I plan to start incubating them this Saturday. Neither of my Fitzgerald cockerels got any frostbite but two of my Swedish Flower cockerels did, so I'll be including a few eggs from that pen as a test. It was just the tips of their combs that blackened so I'm hoping it's not severe enough to impact fertility. Goodness knows they've been keeping at the pullets regardless!

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

5 Marans eggs went into the incubator over the weekend. Here's hoping for a positive test hatch result. I'll let everyone know when I candle.