International Black Copper Marans Thread - Breeding to the SOP

[Tiegrsi]

Hey y'all. Can I get some opinions on this girl? Would you use her for a breeder? I am on the fence because of her mossiness, but of the pullets I grew out from last year, I think she may have the best type. Her eggs are a #5...so not the darkest, either, BUT, Ugh I can't decide if she should go in the laying pen or not. I have her under a more correct colored rooster, if that makes a difference. She is 7 months old.
She has nicely feathered feet.


Her comb is a little floppy in the front.


She has a nice, open tail...a few of my girls have pinched tails which I don't love.


She is the one in the back in this pic. She has her head a bit tucked here, but it was the best side shot I could find.


This is the mossiness, which you really can't see in the other pics. You have to be close and in bright light to notice it really...but it seems like a LOT to me.

 

[Red Banks]

Hey y'all. Can I get some opinions on this girl? Would you use her for a breeder? I am on the fence because of her mossiness, but of the pullets I grew out from last year, I think she may have the best type. Her eggs are a #5...so not the darkest, either, BUT, Ugh I can't decide if she should go in the laying pen or not. I have her under a more correct colored rooster, if that makes a difference. She is 7 months old.
She has nicely feathered feet.
View attachment 1407668

Her comb is a little floppy in the front.
View attachment 1407670

She has a nice, open tail...a few of my girls have pinched tails which I don't love.
View attachment 1407671

She is the one in the back in this pic. She has her head a bit tucked here, but it was the best side shot I could find.
View attachment 1407672

This is the mossiness, which you really can't see in the other pics. You have to be close and in bright light to notice it really...but it seems like a LOT to me.
View attachment 1407673

I would use her as a breeder. She has some very nice qualities and you have nothing to lose.

 

[chickengr]

Hey y'all. Can I get some opinions on this girl? Would you use her for a breeder? I am on the fence because of her mossiness, but of the pullets I grew out from last year, I think she may have the best type. Her eggs are a #5...so not the darkest, either, BUT, Ugh I can't decide if she should go in the laying pen or not. I have her under a more correct colored rooster, if that makes a difference. She is 7 months old.
She has nicely feathered feet.
View attachment 1407668

Her comb is a little floppy in the front.
View attachment 1407670

She has a nice, open tail...a few of my girls have pinched tails which I don't love.
View attachment 1407671

She is the one in the back in this pic. She has her head a bit tucked here, but it was the best side shot I could find.
View attachment 1407672

This is the mossiness, which you really can't see in the other pics. You have to be close and in bright light to notice it really...but it seems like a LOT to me.
View attachment 1407673

she is nice. I would use her as a breeder. no bird is perfect.

 

[Magnolia Hill]

Hey y'all. Can I get some opinions on this girl? Would you use her for a breeder? I am on the fence because of her mossiness, but of the pullets I grew out from last year, I think she may have the best type. Her eggs are a #5...so not the darkest, either, BUT, Ugh I can't decide if she should go in the laying pen or not. I have her under a more correct colored rooster, if that makes a difference. She is 7 months old.
She has nicely feathered feet.
View attachment 1407668

Her comb is a little floppy in the front.
View attachment 1407670

She has a nice, open tail...a few of my girls have pinched tails which I don't love.
View attachment 1407671

She is the one in the back in this pic. She has her head a bit tucked here, but it was the best side shot I could find.
View attachment 1407672

This is the mossiness, which you really can't see in the other pics. You have to be close and in bright light to notice it really...but it seems like a LOT to me.
View attachment 1407673

I would not breed from a mossy bird, but that's just me. And your not the only one having to make this hard decision. I pulled all my birds out for thier 2 month evaluation yesterday and took notes and I'll be sending 12 mossy birds to the layers pen. It will just cause problems in the future progeny.

 

[Magnolia Hill]

And that's just pullets, that's not counting the mossy cockerels.

 

[Magnolia Hill]

74% hatch rate 14 new chicks..... I had 19 eggs in that incubator not 18 as I thought. I put the chicks in the brooder and moved the eggs that haven't pipped from the other incubator to the good one. I will wait on all those eggs until tomorrow. Three chicks tried to hatch and died in the still air. The dry hatch was good for me.

Congrats redbanks!

 

[Red Banks]

I would not breed from a mossy bird, but that's just me. And your not the only one having to make this hard decision. I pulled all my birds out for thier 2 month evaluation yesterday and took notes and I'll be sending 12 mossy birds to the layers pen. It will just cause problems in the future progeny.

Mossy birds are a fault just like birds with wrong tail angle, bad comb, no feathers on legs, etc. I breed birds with faults because I don't have any birds that don't have them. I would rather have an over colored bird than a bird that is not a good representative of the breed. I like Kfelton0002s hen. She has nice type and good qualities. I would try it at least once. I think straw colored hackles and halo's are worse than mossy but that is just me.

 

[Red Banks]

Congrats redbanks!

Thanks.... it was an experience!

 

[Magnolia Hill]

I

Mossy birds are a fault just like birds with wrong tail angle, bad comb, no feathers on legs, etc. I breed birds with faults because I don't have any birds that don't have them. I would rather have an over colored bird than a bird that is not a good representative of the breed. I like Kfelton0002s hen. She has nice type and good qualities. I would try it at least once. I think straw colored hackles and halo's are worse than mossy but that is just me.

In my experience i think the straw colored hackels and halos go hand and hand with mossiness, to much color. It's a balance, everyone has their preferences. I personally will absolutely not breed from mossy birds. I guess if you have nothing else than you do what you gotta do, but if you keep breeding from them then you'll constantly get over colored birds. But to each his own.

 

[Tiegrsi]

Thanks, everyone. To address some of what a few people said/mentioned...

Her sire was an over-colored roo who had good type but an overlarge comb and a little shafting on his front. Her mother is a decent type with only a tiny bit of mossiness on the tips of primaries, and very little feathering on shanks or toes.

Even if I could breed her back to her sire (I lost him last winter to a possum), I wouldn't because it would mean breeding too much color to too much color. The boy I have all of my girls with now has better coloring, if not lacking just a little bit. I was hoping that might correct the mossiness but wasn't sure if it would actually help.

Tbh I'm a bit disheartened with breeding right now. I've been having HORRIBLE hatch rates since I got my new incubator (like 15% at most), and my Splash Copper pullet that took me so long to get and whom I raised for a year and a half now, it turns out I can't even use her to start my blues. She's always been mean, but I was hoping my nicely mannered rooster would tame down her chicks...turns out not to be the case, as I currently have a brooder full of 5 week old blues who prefer to eat my fingers and a brooder of week olds who are already starting to show the same behavior. :/ I'd heard meaness could carry through generations but I didn't think it would carry through like it does in her progeny's case.

So I've been doing a lot of thonking about what I want to do about all that.