Here’s the first chick out (there’s two almost three now).
Very much like a BCM or birchen Marans at this stage, with a little extra white spot on its head due to the barring allele.
Yep. Basically I’m breeding the gold into the Silver cuckoo pattern to get golden cuckoos. The cockerels from this hatch will actually be the way this happens, as they will be split for gold.Duke of Wellington, my SCM cock. I’ve sold him now, but he’s the sire of the F1 chicks.
Silver cuckoo Marans
Like the golden cuckoo but S/S based. In the English standard, separate from the dark cuckoo which is also S/S but E based rather than E^R.
Honestly, I really dislike the wording of this standard. To me, they should be golden/black with light blue (probably more likely straw in hackles) bars, not the other way around.
The standard for GCMs (UK) says light blue grey bars even in the hackle strangely. I always thought it was odd. I think the legbar standard might be a more realistic way of describing it.
Charlie started laying again, she’s 5 now and my only original chicken. A big double yolker, next to Chanel’s egg (large BCM) for comparison.plus a nice looking Wellie egg next to a Marans.
The breed standard for the Legbar. I thought the gold legbar was a good comparison because the male has very similar plumage to the GCM male.
I suppose the main difference is that they describe the light barring colour as straw rather than light blue, though that could be down to e+ vs E^R...
Esmeralda laid an egg today. I wasn’t there to collect it so I still don’t know which egg is hers!
Rules out reproductive issues but she still isn’t great. Not much worse though and eating a little.