Wheaten and Blue wheaten Marans Discussion Thread

[OldChurchEggery1]

So I was out looking at my wheaten chicks and there is one cockerel that is extremely slow to feather. His frame seems to be the same size if not bigger than his hatchmates but my goodness, I feel like he's still mostly fuzz! These hatched in late July. We're starting to get temperatures down in the 50s at night so he'd better hurry up with those feathers.

 

[picanins]

For the last 2 years I have grown my backyard bunch from 6 hens + a magnificent RIR (or so we were told) Roo too a staggering 30+ chickens as well as, through endless, but extremely delightful, incubating we have provided chickens (for free - coz it's just so fun) and eggs to countless friends .... it was not until a couple months ago that I realized that I was populating the world with more and more mutts and could have the same amount of fun populating friends and families egg/chicken supply and help keep the breed somewhat in-tact. Sooooooooooooo in come the Marans ... we found an amazing local breeder and got our first baby Marans chicks. Now I have to find out exactly what I've got, because it's our first time round it's a little confusing. The following chickens : Donald & Miss Bertha are both Wheatens, my question is what? Blue, black, splash, white???

Here are some photies of when they were younger and some photies taken a couple days ago. I know its probably a complete pain when you get a newbie post like this, but would LOVE your input, or if there's a better thread to post recommendations welcome

This is Miss Bertha when she was a couple weeks old


This was taken on the 7th Sept (around 8 weeks old)



Here's Donald as a baby (we were sure of a black wheaten ... and then all the blue fluff



Here's Donald at 8 weeks


Anybody out there with an opinion?

 

[tom e]

Hey all. Hope everyone is doing well!
I have put up most of my culls in the freezer- 5 roosters, but I decided to keep 3 to watch them grow and choose my keeper from. I'm only interested in keeping one of these guys.
Thought I might post a few pictures here and see what you guys think.

Any of these three look strikingly better or worse than the others? What faults do you see?

I'm tempted to go with the guy that has very little cotton fluff, but he's the smallest one too. Looks like my biggest one here has too much red, the others that I slaughtered already were almost all red and brown.










Let me get them out in the sun. Tomato should work!

 

[Bigfamily4me]

Hi... I'll go out on a limb here and say she is a splash wheaten. He is a blue wheaten. If you breed those together you will get more blue Wheatens. Hope this helps!

 

[picanins]

Hi... I'll go out on a limb here and say she is a splash wheaten. He is a blue wheaten. If you breed those together you will get more blue Wheatens. Hope this helps!

Thank you sooooooooo much!! I was starting to get that nervous, ignored feeling - LOL!!! Jesting aside, because BYC is so new to me, is there a better place to post stuff like this??

 

[halo]

The male looks wheaten, Im not sure about the female, maybe splash. She's not splash wheaten.

The more I look, the more she looks like she has some columbian going on there. Maybe be a mix of some sort.

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

Hey all. Hope everyone is doing well!
I have put up most of my culls in the freezer- 5 roosters, but I decided to keep 3 to watch them grow and choose my keeper from. I'm only interested in keeping one of these guys.
Thought I might post a few pictures here and see what you guys think.

How old are these? They look like they're still growing. If they're all from the same hatch, I would suggest weighing them. See how on track they are to fall within the standard weight range. It's better to go for type first and then color, so if your smallest (but nicest looking) cockerel isn't going to reach the standard for size and looks too gangly, you could keep him as a back-up but I wouldn't use him for your main breeder.

 

[picanins]

The male looks wheaten, Im not sure about the female, maybe splash. She's not splash wheaten.

The more I look, the more she looks like she has some columbian going on there. Maybe be a mix of some sort.

Wowsers!!! Thats exactly what I was thinking about Miss Bertha coz she has that slight gray 'fringe' (excuse the lack of correct wording) around her neck. I know the breeder I got them from does not have any Columbians at all and has separate breeding pens for all the Marans, so there's just wheatens in the wheaten pen. Oh, and she's huge, with the softest feathers - it's crazy, she feels like a soft pillow - lol. She does have the blue feathers in her tail (well, blueish grayish).

 

[Bigfamily4me]

The grayish is your blue. A blue wheaten hen will just have gray tips on her tail feathers. The blue wheaten male will be blue where the standard male has black. I have both standard and blue wheaten birds from Bev Davis. I'm going to be naive and say trust the person you got them from. If they say they are both whetens, then she is a splash. Remember, these two birds are still very young. Their coloring is going to change a lot yet. And she may show Colombia typing but that will change if she's a wheaten. It's a huge pain waiting for them to grow out and see what they turn into!

And when you have a very breed specific question, you are right to post it in a breed specific thread. We go in spurts here. Sometimes thre is a wait for a response. But in general all very nice folks here without the nastiness that can appear when discussing breeds.

 

[snowbird]

For the last 2 years I have grown my backyard bunch from 6 hens + a magnificent RIR (or so we were told) Roo too a staggering 30+ chickens as well as, through endless, but extremely delightful, incubating we have provided chickens (for free - coz it's just so fun) and eggs to countless friends .... it was not until a couple months ago that I realized that I was populating the world with more and more mutts and could have the same amount of fun populating friends and families egg/chicken supply and help keep the breed somewhat in-tact. Sooooooooooooo in come the Marans ... we found an amazing local breeder and got our first baby Marans chicks. Now I have to find out exactly what I've got, because it's our first time round it's a little confusing. The following chickens : Donald & Miss Bertha are both Wheatens, my question is what? Blue, black, splash, white???

Here are some photies of when they were younger and some photies taken a couple days ago. I know its probably a complete pain when you get a newbie post like this, but would LOVE your input, or if there's a better thread to post recommendations welcome

This is Miss Bertha when she was a couple weeks old


This was taken on the 7th Sept (around 8 weeks old)



Here's Donald as a baby (we were sure of a black wheaten ... and then all the blue fluff



Here's Donald at 8 weeks


Anybody out there with an opinion?

The male is just a Wheaten male and for the age he looks to be pretty nice. Take more pictures after the Juve molt.


The female is a White, did the breeder have White Marans also.