BCM Chicks, color questions.

[Kathyb2]

Hi,

My shipped BCM eggs hatched last week (too cute!). Many of the chicks have white tips on their wings. Does this mean they will not be BC? Can someone tell me what a good example of a BCM chick would look like?

Thanks,

Kathy

 

[onthespot]

Most have white wing tips at hatch and lose it with later moults. i would not worry about excess white on CBM until they have moulted a couple of times. Some lines carry more white than others. White feathers in the bend of the wing seem to not disappear like the white on the tips. Copper Black Marans are a work in progress and there are still a lot of faults in the small gene pool, including white tinged ear lobes, fused outer toes and side sprigs on combs.

 

[rockyspringsfarm]

I had some of this white tips in the wing feathers, etc in some young BCM. It does seem to be moulting out How big a fault is the white tinged ear lobe ? I have heard that fault indicated impurity and birds showing it were crossed with something else. Can you use a hen with the white tinged ear lobe and select away from the problem in offspring ?

 

[Henk69]

Bcm?

 

[briarpatchfarms]

I'm lost too! BCM is what exactly

 

[Knight Hawk Ranch]

In this case I beleive they mean BCM= Black Copper Marans

I have a question. How about white in the tail (fault wise)? My roo started with some white on the wings which he molted out of, however, about 3-4 of his tail feathers have white on them. Not sure of the correct term but they are the longest feathers at the frontside of the tail and sweep over the top of the rest of the feathers.

 

[onthespot]

Sometimes if there was any butt pecking when they were younger the feathers can grow out with white defects. I would just pull those faulty feathers and see if they grow back white again. If they do, and you have access to another rooster, I'd use a different rooster for breeding.

 

[Knight Hawk Ranch]

At this point he is my only available roo. He was also hatched from a very dark egg, so I want to keep his genes. How hard it it to pull tail feathers from a 6 month old roo? I may just wait till he molts them himself.

 

[millebantam]

In my opinion, there are more and more of these faults popping up because many breeders are/were selecting breeding birds based on egg color over overall type. Egg color is what SELLS, so forget about breeding to the standard as long as the badly faulted golden chickens keep layin' them "golden eggs".

I've seen some pretty rangy looking, off colored birds laying nice dark eggs. Some of them almost look like game chickens. It's pretty hard to find a BCM with excellent type AND lays the really dark eggs. So much damage was done to the breed during the "Gold Rush" era, that it may take decades to get the nationwide population of BCM's to look somewhat uniform, and conform to the standard.

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

Quote:
You are soooooooooooo right. There has been so much mixing and matching that is hard to get a Marans that breeds true any more. It's really sad what has been done to a nice breed of chicken. Just look at the pictures and video of the APA qualifing show that was held in Ill. The birds were of such poor quality that there isn't another qualifing show scheduled until 2011.

Steve in NC