International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[Tiegrsi]

Is there a way (other than test breeding) to determine what colors a splash will lend to the next generation as far as mossiness/leakage/over coloring? This girl is the one and only bird I kept from a hatch of Copper Blue and Splash Marans, In the hopes that I can use her to start adding some blue and splash coppers into my flock. I know she came from a light egg, so I already know I will have to work to correct that; and I know she's a bit crow-faced and I will have to work on that, too.

Would anyone lend any other critiques on her? She's quite large, and at 6 months old she is now as large as my 18 month old Black Copper hens.

Couple of pictures:

 

[kfelton0002]

This is one of the reason I like the guy with the white in his ear lobes. He’s only 4 months old but has a great temperament and watches over his girls like a mature rooster.

Both roosters I kept to work with last year were "culls" by many breeders' standards. Cooper, my original LA cock bird had tons of parasitic white under his hackles. Mud, my original FRF cock bird had a horribly high tail and short back. They were my best choices as breeders for each line from what I had to pick through. You do what you have to do. Now I have their offspring that are better birds to breed from this upcoming breeding season. And hopefully I will end up with better birds the year after that, and the year after that. You can work with what you have, that's what all of us have to do. White earlobes is just one part of the equation. You have to look at the bird as a whole and weigh the benefits vs the drawbacks of the bird. Without this group, I wouldn't have had the support or the encouragement to work with the Marans I had.

 

[Red Banks]

I will hatch them and hold them dear. We will work on them together.

I wonder if some of the eggs that aren't developing aren't fertilized. I know Antonio has his favorites.

 

[kfelton0002]

I wonder if some of the eggs that aren't developing aren't fertilized. I know Antonio has his favorites.

They probably just suffered cellular damage during shipping, it happens. It usually isn't because of infertility with shipped eggs that cause some to develop while others don't, its about how much damage they endure during the shipping process. They are thumped and bumped, tossed, dropped, and handled plain rough in the mail. Despite even your amazing bullet proof packing, they endure damage. It's a thousand wonders any of them survive really. The cells inside the egg can't sustain life if everything is scrambled up. The fact that 14 are developing is amazing to me. Also, hatchability decreases quite a bit after they are past a week old, but I have set eggs 2-3 weeks old with decent hatch rates. Eggs being stored for the incubator should be turned daily also too keep everything centered within the egg, and to keep the contents from shifting, settling, and sticking to one side. I have a spare auto-turner I use to store eggs in so I don't have to remember to turn them.

 

[Red Banks]

They probably just suffered cellular damage during shipping, it happens. It usually isn't because of infertility with shipped eggs that cause some to develop while others don't, its about how much damage they endure during the shipping process. They are thumped and bumped, tossed, dropped, and handled plain rough in the mail. Despite even your amazing bullet proof packing, they endure damage. It's a thousand wonders any of them survive really. The cells inside the egg can't sustain life if everything is scrambled up. The fact that 14 are developing is amazing to me. Also, hatchability decreases quite a bit after they are past a week old, but I have set eggs 2-3 weeks old with decent hatch rates. Eggs being stored for the incubator should be turned daily also too keep everything centered within the egg, and to keep the contents from shifting, settling, and sticking to one side. I have a spare auto-turner I use to store eggs in so I don't have to remember to turn them.

I read somewhere that people hatch Trader Joe eggs.

 

[kfelton0002]

Is there a way (other than test breeding) to determine what colors a splash will lend to the next generation as far as mossiness/leakage/over coloring? This girl is the one and only bird I kept from a hatch of Copper Blue and Splash Marans, In the hopes that I can use her to start adding some blue and splash coppers into my flock. I know she came from a light egg, so I already know I will have to work to correct that; and I know she's a bit crow-faced and I will have to work on that, too.

Would anyone lend any other critiques on her? She's quite large, and at 6 months old she is now as large as my 18 month old Black Copper hens.

Couple of pictures:View attachment 1173454
View attachment 1173431

Other than test mating, I'm afraid there is no other way to tell what she is "hiding" underneath that splash color that I know of. The splash color conceals the actual color of the bird, so there is no way to know if she is "over-colored", or will throw over-colored (mossy or with copper leakage) offspring. Her tail is nice and low for now, so her offspring should have decent tail angle. Her earlobes will be nice and red as she nears point of lay. Her eye color looks good best I can tell. Her legs look like they are a light slate. The fact that she is a big pullet is good, and will put good mass on her offspring. I would breed them and grow out the chicks to see what you get.

I had 3 splash copper hens I got as hatching eggs locally from a friend. I didn't know much about them other than they were supposed to be from the Bev Davis line. They didn't have great egg color and only laid a 3 at best on the Marans egg color scale. They were bred splash to splash for too long causing the egg color to suffer I think. But I got some eggs cheap and wanted to experiment with them. I culled the splash copper cockerels, and only kept the splash pullets and bred the pullets to a BCM cockerel. Their blue copper pullet offspring I kept look good and lay a little darker than their mothers. I'm hoping for even better egg color with the next generation, breeding the blue coppers back to their black copper half brother to reinforce dark egg color genes.

Here is one of the blue copper pullets, she is the daughter of the darkest splash copper hen I had. I think that had I not paired her mother to a very well colored male, she wouldn't have thrown offspring with color in their hackles. Her mother was more melanized than the other splash hens.

Her mother was the darkest splash in the front. Sorry it isn't a great pic but it is the only one I can find on my computer.

 

[Red Banks]

Other than test mating, I'm afraid there is no other way to tell what she is "hiding" underneath that splash color that I know of. The splash color conceals the actual color of the bird, so there is no way to know if she is "over-colored", or will throw over-colored (mossy or with copper leakage) offspring. Her tail is nice and low for now, so her offspring should have decent tail angle. Her earlobes will be nice and red as she nears point of lay. Her eye color looks good best I can tell. Her legs look like they are a light slate. The fact that she is a big pullet is good, and will put good mass on her offspring. I would breed them and grow out the chicks to see what you get.

I had 3 splash copper hens I got as hatching eggs locally from a friend. I didn't know much about them other than they were supposed to be from the Bev Davis line. They didn't have great egg color and only laid a 3 at best on the Marans egg color scale. They were bred splash to splash for too long causing the egg color to suffer I think. But I got some eggs cheap and wanted to experiment with them. I culled the splash copper cockerels, and only kept the splash pullets and bred the pullets to a BCM cockerel. Their blue copper pullet offspring I kept look good and lay a little darker than their mothers. I'm hoping for even better egg color with the next generation, breeding the blue coppers back to their black copper half brother to reinforce dark egg color genes.

Here is one of the blue copper pullets, she is the daughter of the darkest splash copper hen I had. I think that had I not paired her mother to a very well colored male, she wouldn't have thrown offspring with color in their hackles. Her mother was more melanized than the other splash hens.
View attachment 1173533

Her mother was the darkest splash in the front. Sorry it isn't a great pic but it is the only one I can find on my computer.
View attachment 1173535

Love your blue pullet!

 

[kfelton0002]

I read somewhere that people hatch Trader Joe eggs.

I have heard that too, but they only get 1-2 at best to hatch out of a dozen. Those eggs are 3-4 weeks old and have been washed, but they have been refrigerated which can preserve hatchability. I was friends with an old timer that told me he stored his hatching eggs in the refrigerator for several weeks. When he gathered enough to set, he brought them up to room temp and then set them with decent hatch rates. I have set eggs out of the refrigerator many times, washed and unwashed. Way back when I first started out, I didn't know any better that you weren't supposed to wash hatching eggs. I still always had good hatch rates, despite washing them. It can be done, but hatchability does go down as the eggs age and your hatch rates won't be as good.

I have hatched many, many eggs. I get the best hatch rates when I set eggs no older than a week to 10 days old, unwashed, continuously turned or at least turned daily during storage, and kept in a room no warmer than 68 degrees or so.

 

[kfelton0002]

Love your blue pullet!

Thank you! She's a cutie, but that tail got higher once she started laying. It's a little higher than I would like now, but I think I will still use her. Her sister's tail is better, but this one's blue color is lacier looking. Her name is Dentelle, which is french for "lace." I will try to get some more recent pics of them on a day when the weather isn't so crappy.

 

[Tiegrsi]

Thank you, Kfelton002.

I hatched her from shipped eggs I got from a breeder that were all supposed to be BCM or BBS CM, and out of 18 eggs I hatched 1 pullet who appears to be a Penedesenca (in the background of the pullet I showed), 1 Splash cockerel and 3 Blue Cockerels. I culled all of the cockerels for different reasons - the splash was sickly, the largest blue was WAY over colored, and of the two darker ones (who were both too small), one had barely any leg feathering and the other just didn't suit me overall. I have been on the waiting list for Blue Copper chicks from the Davis line since late last year or early this year, (I can't recall), and gave up hope of getting any this year at this point.

Anyway, all of them were in eggs that were about a 4. I have 2 roosters I have a choice of putting her under for a test mating this coming Spring, but they are both slightly over colored. If she throws chicks with a lot of gold or mossiness, I have a cockerel growing out who is quite dark, and perhaps I can put her under him next fall. My current BCM hens have poor feathering on their shanks and are a little small, and Snow here is large and has lovely feathers, so I am hoping adding her in can lend something good to future generations.