Lavender Birchen Marans Genetics and Breeding: The Birchen vs. Silver Debate and How to Build on the Right Foundation

Over the last several years, I've fielded a ton of questions about Lavender Birchen Marans genetics. Questions about chest lacing, about the difference between Silver and Birchen, and more recently, about whether breeders working with my line should move away from Birchen altogether in favor of a cleaner-looking bird that some are calling "Silver Marans."

I've answered these questions individually more times than I can count, so I thought it was time to put it all in one place. This post explains why I still recommend that breeders working with my line stay the course, why the push toward "Silver" misunderstands what Birchen actually is genetically, what the Silver alternative actually involves, and what building a predictable line actually requires.

What Breeders Mean by "Silver Marans" and Why the Genetics Tell a Different Story

Before we get into the genetics of Birchen, it's worth being clear about what the opposing argument is actually proposing, because "Silver" means something very specific genetically and it isn't simply a cleaner version of Birchen.

The faction pushing toward "Silver" is generally advocating for birds built on the Extended Black allele (E) combined with the Silver gene (S), producing a dark-bodied bird with silver expression in the hackle area, sometimes called Black Silver. The argument is that these birds look cleaner, carry less chest lacing, and may be easier to standardize. That sounds reasonable on the surface, but the genetic foundation of the argument doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

Extended Black (E) and Birchen (ER) are two separate, distinct alleles at the same location in the chicken's DNA, called the E-locus. They aren't variations of the same thing. They produce different pattern outcomes, breed differently, and build toward different genetic foundations. Choosing between them isn't a styling decision. It's a fundamental choice about what kind of bird you're actually building, and that choice has consequences that show up across generations, not just in the appearance of individual birds.

Any silver expression that appears on a true Extended Black bird is leakage — pigment bleeding through without following an organized pattern map. It isn't the same as the organized, placement-specific silver expression that comes from a genuine ER Birchen base. Those two things can look similar in photos or in young birds that haven't fully matured, but they breed very differently and they build toward very different lines.

Birchen and Extended Black Are Not the Same Foundation

The Birchen allele (ER) and the Extended Black allele (E) are genetically distinct alternatives at the E-locus. ER isn't something layered on top of Extended Black, and the two aren't interchangeable. A bird carries one or the other, or one of each if it's heterozygous, and which one it carries determines the pattern structure underneath everything else you're looking at.

When we talk about preserving Birchen, we're talking about maintaining a specific genetic foundation, not simply maintaining a certain amount of chest lacing on individual birds. The lacing is a visible clue to what's underneath, but the lacing and the ER allele are not the same thing, and confusing them is where most of this debate goes sideways.

Extended Black floods the body with black pigment and suppresses most organized patterning. Any lighter color that appears on an Extended Black bird tends to show up randomly, without following a consistent pattern map, which is what geneticists call leakage.

Birchen, on the other hand, produces contrasting lighter color in specific, organized locations - hackles, saddle, breast lacing, and throat markings that all follow a predictable pattern that holds across multiple birds, and passes reliably to offspring. That organized, consistent placement is what defines ER, and it's what gives a Birchen-based line a reliable foundation to select within, something an Extended Black line with silver leakage simply can't offer. The existence of ER and E as separate, distinct alleles at the E-locus has been verified in peer-reviewed research — notably by Moore and Smyth (1972) and Campo and Alvarez (1993), both published in Poultry Science.

Does ER Even Exist in American Marans?

A claim that surfaces regularly in Marans breeder circles, sometimes stated outright and sometimes just implied, is that ER Birchen simply doesn't exist in American lines, and that any bird being labeled Birchen in the US is really just an Extended Black bird with silver expression being called something it isn't. It's worth addressing directly, because a claim repeated often enough can start to sound like established fact even when the evidence says otherwise.

Genetic claims need to be backed by evidence, not just repeated with confidence, and in this case, the evidence is there. When evaluating whether a line carries ER, there are several things worth looking at together rather than in isolation.

Chick down at hatch is a useful early indicator. ER Birchen chicks typically hatch mostly solid black with dark heads and shanks, while Extended Black chicks often show white or creamy bellies. It isn't a definitive test on its own, since modifier genes can influence down color in both types, but when it's consistent across multiple hatches, it's worth noting.

Split offspring are one of the clearest windows into what a line is actually carrying. Splits carry one copy of lavender but don't express it visually, so the underlying birchen pattern shows without dilution softening it. When splits consistently display organized hackle expression and breast lacing, that's strong evidence that ER is present and functioning in the parent line.

Breast lacing on roosters is another telling indicator. Organized breast lacing in males is characteristic of the birchen pattern and is not a feature of Extended Black birds. When it appears consistently across multiple roosters in a flock, that's not coincidence. It's the ER pattern map doing what it's supposed to do.

Test crosses provide the most definitive confirmation of all, and when those results align with the visual evidence above, the picture becomes very clear. A line that produces consistent black chick down, organized lacing in split offspring, breast lacing on roosters, and the expected results in test crosses isn't producing all of that by accident. That pattern of evidence points to ER, not to Extended Black with unusually well-placed leakage.

If someone makes the claim that ER doesn't exist in a specific line, the right response is to ask for the genetic evidence behind that claim rather than accepting it as authoritative because it was stated with confidence. Assertion isn't evidence. What birds produce across generations is evidence. My first blog post on Lavender Birchen Marans genetics covers the specific evidence from my own flock in detail, including foundation stock, chick down, split offspring, and test cross results. I'd encourage anyone with questions about whether ER is genuinely present in my line to read that post alongside this one.

Does a Birchen Bird Have to Show Chest Lacing?

No, and this is one of the most important points in this whole discussion. How visibly a Birchen bird expresses its pattern depends not just on ER, but on a collection of other genes called modifier genes that can increase, reduce, or rearrange how strongly that pattern shows up in the feathers. One of the most well-documented examples is the Melanotic gene (Ml), which extends black pigmentation into areas that would otherwise show lighter color. In certain genetic combinations, Ml can suppress Birchen expression so dramatically that a bird carrying ER genetically appears nearly or entirely solid black. This interaction between ER and Ml — where Ml produces a self-black plumage pattern in an otherwise Birchen bird — was specifically documented by Campo and Alvarez (1993) in their study of Birchen Leonesa chickens.

So a bird can carry the Birchen allele underneath and still show very little visible lacing. That's not a contradiction. It's just the difference between genotype (what a bird is carrying genetically) and phenotype (what the bird actually looks like). In a line with active melanizing modifiers, those two things can look very different from each other. Selecting away from visible lacing changes what you see. It does not necessarily change what your birds are carrying underneath.

Reducing the Lacing Does Not Remove the ER Allele

This is where I think a lot of the current conversation is leading breeders in the wrong direction. Some breeders want to "breed out the Birchen" by selecting birds with less and less chest lacing generation after generation, assuming that if you select away from the visible trait, you're selecting away from the genetics underneath it. But that's not how this works.

ER is the allele. Chest lacing is part of what that allele can look like under the right conditions, but they aren't the same thing and you can't reliably remove one by selecting against the other. If a population is entirely ER-based, those birds will continue producing ER offspring even when breeders select consistently for the cleanest-breasted individuals. What may actually be changing as you select for clean breasts is the modifier background, the surrounding genes that control how strongly the Birchen pattern is expressed. You could, over time, produce birds that look less and less Birchen on the outside while still carrying ER underneath.

In other words, you can breed away the visible clues without breeding away ER at all, and that creates a real problem. Once those visible clues are gone, it becomes much harder to know from appearance alone what your birds are actually carrying genetically. A clean-breasted bird in a Birchen line might be ER with stronger melanizing modifiers suppressing the pattern, or, if other E-locus alleles have entered the population, it might genuinely be on a different genetic base. Those two birds can look identical in the pen, but what they produce in the next generation will be very different.

This is also the answer to the "muddying the genetics" argument, the claim that ER Birchen lines are somehow genetically messier or harder to develop than Extended Black Silver lines. The opposite is actually true. A clearly documented ER foundation with a known modifier background is more transparent and more workable than an Extended Black line where silver expression appears through uncharacterized leakage. With ER, the pattern structure is organized and readable. You know where the lighter areas are supposed to appear, you can evaluate whether they're appearing correctly, and you can select within that structure deliberately. With leakage on an Extended Black base, the lighter areas show up without a consistent map, which makes selecting toward a specific, repeatable appearance significantly harder across generations.

Can ER Actually Be Lost From a Line?

Yes, but that requires a different set of conditions than simply selecting for cleaner-breasted birds. For ER to be genuinely lost from a breeding population, another E-locus allele has to be present in that population and selection has to actively shift the birds toward that different allele over time. That's a deliberate, multi-generational genetic shift, not something that happens automatically just because you stopped selecting for chest lacing.

Simply deciding not to select for the visible Birchen phenotype does not make ER disappear. If the birds are ER-based and no other E-locus allele is being introduced or selected for, ER can persist in the population indefinitely, even in birds that show very little lacing on the surface. So there are really two separate breeding goals that often get conflated in these conversations: breeding out visible Birchen expression (reducing how strongly the pattern shows on individual birds), and breeding out the ER allele itself (genuinely shifting the population's genetic foundation to a different E-locus base). They aren't the same project.

The first is relatively straightforward. Select for clean breasts consistently, and the visible pattern will reduce over time. The second requires introducing or selecting toward a different E-locus base, and confirming through test crosses and offspring evaluation that the shift has actually happened. Producing a bird that looks clean-breasted is not confirmation that ER has been removed. It may simply mean ER is still there with its expression suppressed.

For anyone seriously considering that second path, it's worth understanding what it actually involves. Genuinely shifting a population away from ER and toward Extended Black isn't a matter of selecting clean-breasted birds for a few generations and calling it done. Outside genetics have to come in, which means introducing an Extended Black bird and everything that comes with it. Test crosses are needed to confirm which offspring have actually shifted E-locus base rather than simply suppressed their ER expression. The modifier background has to be rebuilt around a different pattern foundation, which can take many generations to stabilize. And along the way, the line will produce birds that look nothing like what you started with while you sort through the genetic noise of the transition. That's not an argument against doing it, if that's genuinely the goal. It's just an honest description of what the work actually looks like, so that breeders go in with eyes open and make a deliberate choice rather than an accidental one.

Which Foundation Is More Predictable to Breed?

Most of the debate focuses on appearance, but the more compelling argument is about predictability. When you build on ER Birchen, you're building on a pattern structure that's organized, consistent, and selectable. When you build on Extended Black with silver leakage, you're chasing an appearance without a stable genetic structure underneath it.

With a true ER foundation, the lighter areas appear in consistent locations across multiple birds because the pattern map is stable. Hackles, saddle, breast, those are where ER instructs lighter color to appear, and that instruction passes reliably to offspring. You can select within that structure for more or less expression, for darker or lighter contrast, for tighter or broader lacing, and the line responds in a predictable direction because the underlying map is consistent. With Extended Black and silver leakage, the lighter areas don't follow a consistent pattern map. They appear where pigment has bled through, which varies from bird to bird and doesn't necessarily pass in a predictable way. Selecting for a specific look in one generation doesn't guarantee that look in the next, because there's no stable pattern map underneath it driving the expression.

For anyone working toward future variety recognition, whether through the APA or any other standard, a predictable, stable genetic foundation isn't optional. It's what the entire long-term project is built on.

What About APA Recognition and What Does "Breeding to the SOP" Actually Mean?

The APA (American Poultry Association) argument comes up often, and the language around it can sound more official than it actually is, especially to newer breeders who are still learning how the recognition process works. So let's be clear about the facts. As of now, neither Birchen nor Silver Marans is APA recognized in the United States. The currently recognized Marans varieties in the APA Standard of Perfection (SOP, the official breed standards book published by the APA) are Black Copper, Wheaten, White, and Black.

Neither camp has a recognized variety in America right now, but that's where the equal footing ends. Birchen is recognized in the French standard, and France is where Marans originated. The Marans Club of France, the original breed authority, includes Birchen as an accepted variety in their standard. That's not a technicality or a regional preference. The breed began in France, the standard was written in France, and Birchen has a place in it. Questioning whether Birchen is a valid direction for Marans development means questioning the judgment of the people who developed the breed.

The APA recognition process requires a minimum of five years of breeding documentation followed by five more years of showing — at least a decade of sustained, intentional work — and that timeline applies equally to any variety being developed, regardless of which E-locus allele it's built on. There's no evidence that building on Extended Black silver gets you to APA recognition any faster, and the APA has made no official recommendations regarding which E-locus foundation should be used for developing a Silver or Birchen Marans variety in the United States. There is no official posturing from the APA on either side of this debate.

Anyone claiming otherwise is speaking for themselves, not for the organization.

About the SOP language itself — you'll hear "breeding to the SOP" used frequently in these discussions, sometimes in a way that implies the speaker has access to an official standard that other breeders are failing to meet. It's worth clarifying an important distinction that often gets blurred here: there is a difference between a breed standard and a variety standard. The breed standard describes what a Marans should be regardless of color — correct body type, feathered shanks, comb, size, structure, and egg color — and that standard exists and is published in the APA Standard of Perfection for the four recognized varieties. A variety standard describes the color and pattern specifics for a particular variety within that breed, and for developing varieties like Lavender Birchen, that standard doesn't exist yet. So when breeders of unrecognized color varieties talk about "breeding to the SOP," they should first and foremost be breeding to the Marans breed standard — getting the type, conformation, and egg color right — and working toward a variety-specific color standard as a secondary layer on top of that foundation. Using SOP language in a way that implies official authority over color decisions, where none yet exists, can genuinely mislead newer breeders who are still finding their footing. For anyone wanting to study what correct Marans type looks like, the American Poultry Association publishes the Standard of Perfection, which is the reference point for breed type regardless of variety.

What actually advances a variety toward recognition is a stable, predictable genetic foundation, consistent breed type, consistent color expression across multiple breeders, and long-term documentation work. I have always put type first. Color is part of what I'm selecting for, but it has never been the only thing, or even the primary thing. The birds in my program are selected for correct Marans conformation, proper feathered shanks, egg genetics, appropriate size and structure, and the overall qualities that make a Marans a Marans, alongside their color expression. A bird can have perfect color and still have no place in my breeding program if the type isn't solid. Color is the first thing people see, but type is what you're actually building toward.

Egg Color, Laying Ability, and the Bloom

Marans without dark eggs aren't really Marans, and that's not an opinion, it's the foundation the breed was built on. Dark egg color is as much a part of the breed standard as feathered shanks or correct conformation, and buyers come to Marans specifically because of it. In my program, selection goes in order: type first, then laying ability and consistency, egg size, and egg color. A bird that checks every box visually but lays pale eggs or lays infrequently isn't moving the breed forward, no matter how beautiful it looks in the pen.

One characteristic that has become a notable trend in Lavender Birchen Marans specifically is the pink bloom. Many Lavender Birchen Marans hens produce eggs with a distinctive pinkish or rosy bloom over the darker shell. It's a beautiful and unusual characteristic that sets them apart visually from standard dark brown Marans eggs. The bloom varies across individual hens and across seasons, so not every egg from every hen will show it equally, and it shouldn't be expected as a guarantee, though it is a genuine and recurring characteristic in Lavender Birchen Marans lines that many buyers find particularly appealing.

The Lavender Birchen Marans is not just a color project. It's a variety with its own developing set of characteristics: plumage, type, egg color, and bloom that make it distinct within the Marans breed. Reducing it to a debate about whether the breast lacing is too much or too little misses the larger picture of what this variety is and where it's headed.

What Does a Good Lavender Birchen Marans Actually Look Like?

A good Lavender Birchen Marans should first and foremost look like a Marans. Strong, confident type with correct conformation, a well-structured body, proper feathered shanks, a bold upright stance, and the kind of confident, alert personality that is characteristic of the breed. Feather quality is part of that conformation picture. Birds should carry full, well-structured plumage that holds together cleanly. If you'd like to read more about feather quality in lavender lines specifically, I've covered it in depth in my post on the shredder gene in lavender chickens. These birds should carry themselves well in the pen. If the conformation isn't there, the color doesn't matter.

Laying ability and consistency throughout the season are part of what I evaluate in every breeding bird. A hen that lays infrequently or drops off early isn't serving the program regardless of egg color. On egg color specifically, I'll be straightforward: we're still working to deepen it, and it isn't yet where I want it to be. That's the honest reality of developing a line toward a standard, incremental improvement with every generation, not expecting perfection overnight. The direction is always going to be toward darker eggs, and that's not something I'm willing to compromise on as the line develops.

Many hens in this line also produce eggs with a pinkish or rosy bloom over the dark shell. This is something that draws a lot of people to Lavender Birchen Marans specifically, and that we see recurring consistently across the flock. Not every hen will produce a bloom on every egg, and the intensity shifts throughout the season, but it's a recurring characteristic in this line and one we're selecting toward, always alongside egg color, never at the expense of it.

Once those foundations are in place, then we can talk about color and pattern. Lavender is Self Blue, which means the dilution works across the entire bird, softening black into a cool purple-gray and bringing the silver areas down into a paler, muted tone within the same color family. The result is a soft, purple-gray bird with subtle tonal variation where the birchen pattern is present. That contrast is still there, and the dilution simply softens what's there into a quieter, more muted expression than you'd see on an undiluted Silver Birchen.

In roosters, look for clean, consistent pale expression in the hackle and saddle against the purple-gray body, with the fine striping or lacing of the birchen pattern visible within those feathers on closer inspection. Avoid roosters where hackle and saddle expression is patchy, blotchy, or completely absent. That's usually where pattern placement has broken down rather than simply being softened by dilution.

In hens, look for organized tonal variation in the breast and chest feathers, a subtle but consistent difference in shade that follows the lacing map, rather than a completely flat, uniform color with no variation at all. One of the things that makes Lavender Birchen Marans so visually distinctive is how the birchen pattern often expresses as lacing through the self blue, a soft, delicate detail that shows up on both sexes and is one of the more beautiful characteristics of the variety.

The target bird has it all: correct Marans conformation, properly feathered shanks, a confident presence, dark eggs with bloom where possible, and an even, rich purple-gray tone with organized, subtle birchen pattern expression in the right places. Color is what draws people in, but it's built on top of everything else, not the other way around.

If you're newer to the breed and want to understand what correct Marans type looks like before adding color evaluation on top of it, that's time well spent. Study the breed before you study the variety. The APA Standard of Perfection is the reference point for the recognized varieties, and the Marans of America Club is another resource worth exploring for breed-specific guidance. Understanding what a Marans should be structurally gives you a much clearer foundation for evaluating birds across any color variety, including developing ones like Lavender Birchen.

Selecting Silver Birchen Birds for Outcrossing

Even in a well-established line, there are legitimate reasons to outcross, to strengthen type, improve egg color, improve feather quality, reduce inbreeding, or reinforce ER expression in a line where Ml has been suppressing pattern visibility across generations. When an outcross is the right move, the question becomes what kind of bird you should be looking for and what you should be evaluating before you breed it into your lavender line.

The short answer is, not just any Silver Birchen bird. The entire point of an outcross is to bring something useful in without introducing problems that take longer to fix than whatever you were trying to improve in the first place. A Silver Birchen bird with poor type, weak egg color, or an unknown modifier background can set a lavender line back significantly as those traits will continue to show up across multiple subsequent generations.

Confirmed ER base. This is non-negotiable. The reason you're using a Silver Birchen bird for an outcross into a Lavender Birchen line is to reinforce ER, and a bird that's actually Extended Black with silver leakage introduces the wrong E-locus allele and undermines the whole project. Ask the breeder for evidence, chick down color, split offspring, test cross results. Look for organized hackle and saddle expression with fine black striping, and organized breast lacing in hens. Random silver without consistent placement is a warning sign. Do your research and make sure you're doing your best to introduce the best bird possible for the outcross. You don't want to take steps in the wrong direction, because once those genetics are placed in there, they're in there to stay.

Correct Marans type. The outcross bird should represent the breed well with correct size and structure, proper feathered shanks, correct comb, and correct conformation. Type problems introduced through an outcross are real and take generations to correct, so don't accept poor type in an outcross candidate just because the color or patterning looks right.

Strong egg color. Ask for photos of eggs from multiple hens across the flock, taken at different points throughout the laying season, not just the best egg, and not just the first ones of the year. Egg color and bloom are heaviest early in the season and naturally fade as laying continues, so what you're really looking for is consistency and longevity. A hen that starts dark and has a nice bloom and holds that color deep into her laying cycle is worth far more to a breeding program than one that peaks early and fades fast.

Ml expression level. Silver Birchen Marans birds selected for bold, high-contrast expression frequently carry strong Ml, the Melanotic gene, a black intensifier that can flood pattern areas with dense pigment and suppress visible birchen expression in the offspring that inherit it. When that bird is crossed into a Lavender Birchen line, offspring that inherit elevated Ml can appear solid black or very dark with their birchen pattern suppressed in splits, or in successive lavender generations can sometimes appear dull or sooty, with birchen patterning often masked in hens, making them appear all lavender with no birchen patterning. Those birds still carry ER. Ml is simply covering it. Going into the cross with that expectation set correctly makes it much easier to manage. Grow the darker offspring out fully, evaluate at maturity, and breed forward before making any culling decisions.

What to expect from the cross. The offspring of a Lavender Birchen hen bred to a Silver Birchen rooster will all be splits, carrying one copy of lavender but not visually expressing it. They'll look like Silver Birchen birds rather than lavender birds, and that is correct and expected. Those split offspring are your evaluation generation, and without lavender softening the contrast, the ER pattern, or its absence, is much easier to read. Select the best splits for your next cross back into the lavender line, and you'll begin recovering lavender expression in the following generation while having reinforced the ER base and brought in whatever type or egg color improvement you were after.

Outcrossing is a tool, not a shortcut. If anything, an outcross can temporarily dilute the very genetics you've spent years line breeding to establish. When you introduce an outside bird, you're bringing in a whole new set of genes, and along with the traits you were hoping to gain comes everything else that bird is carrying. Don't be alarmed if the first generation after an outcross throws characteristics you weren't expecting. That's the nature of the cross, and it's why I cull hard after an outcross breeding. I only outcross when it's truly necessary, and I go in with realistic expectations. Used thoughtfully, with a carefully vetted Silver Birchen bird and a clear understanding of what Ml will do to the offspring, an outcross can strengthen a Lavender Birchen line in meaningful ways. Used carelessly, with an unvetted bird, poor type, or without that preparation, it may create more problems than it resolves, and it can take several generations to recover what was lost.

How Do You Confirm Your Birds Still Carry ER?

If you've been selecting for cleaner breasts for several generations, or you're working with birds from multiple sources and aren't sure what E-locus allele your line is actually carrying, here are the most reliable ways to find out.

Chick down at hatch. ER Birchen chicks generally hatch mostly solid black with dark heads and shanks, while Extended Black chicks often show white or creamy bellies. This isn't a definitive test. Both types can hatch dark depending on modifier genes, but tracking it consistently across every hatch builds a useful cumulative picture over time.

Split offspring. Birds carrying one copy of lavender but not expressing it visually, called splits, show the underlying birchen pattern without lavender dilution softening it. If your split offspring consistently show organized hackle expression and breast lacing, that's strong evidence that ER is present and functional in the parent line. Don't give up if that expression isn't immediately present, as Ml genes can often mask it. Grow them out and reevaluate, as plumage often changes over time.

Test crosses. The most definitive confirmation is a test cross, breeding a bird of uncertain E-locus status to a wild-type or duckwing bird. A true ER base will produce males with classic crow-wing pattern expression in the offspring, while Extended Black will produce a different result. One well-documented test cross can tell you more than years of visual evaluation alone.

Breed forward and observe. An all-black or heavily melanized hen that consistently produces organized birchen patterning in her offspring is confirming her own ER genetics through what she passes on. A bird that looks Birchen but doesn't breed Birchen is telling you something different. Let what the birds produce inform your selection as much as what the birds look like, because over time, the offspring don't lie.

What Should Buyers Ask Before Purchasing?

Part of why misinformation spreads in breeder communities is that buyers don't always know what questions to ask, and sellers don't always volunteer the information that matters most. If you're considering purchasing Lavender Birchen Marans from any source, here are the questions worth asking directly.

What is the E-locus foundation of your line? A breeder who genuinely understands their birds should be able to tell you whether they believe their line is ER-based, what evidence supports that, and what their foundation stock was. "I don't know" is an honest answer that tells you something. Confidence without supporting evidence tells you something else.

What does chick down look like across your hatches? In a Lavender Birchen Marans carrying ER, chicks typically hatch with soft gray-lavender down, darker gray or charcoal tones on the head and back, and dark shanks. The belly should be consistently darker rather than pale yellow or creamy white, which is what you'd often see in an Extended Black chick. Think of it as the same down pattern you'd expect in a Silver Birchen chick, except everywhere the dark pigment would appear, you're seeing it diluted to that characteristic gray-lavender tone by the lavender gene. Research by Moore and Smyth (1972) noted that the birchen allele eumelanizes the normally white ventral down of Extended Black chicks, which supports using chick down as an early indicator — though modifier genes can still influence down color in both types, so consistency across multiple hatches is what matters most. If you'd like to see photos of what this looks like in practice, please reference my blog post on Lavender Birchen Genetics.

What do your split offspring look like? Split offspring, birds carrying one copy of lavender, show the underlying pattern without dilution softening it, which makes the ER base much easier to evaluate. Asking to see photos of splits is one of the most useful things you can do before purchasing.

Have you done test crosses? Not every breeder has, and that's not automatically disqualifying. Test crosses take time and careful planning, but a breeder who has done them and documented the results has a stronger basis for their genetic claims than one who hasn't.

What are you selecting for beyond color? Type, egg color, conformation, feathered shanks... a breeder who is selecting for the complete Marans package will be able to answer this in detail and tell you where their flock is strong, and more importantly, where they need improvement. A breeder whose entire focus is color expression or egg bloom, without equal attention to type, conformation, and genetic foundation, may not be building the kind of bird you actually want. Pretty eggs are a wonderful bonus, but they definitely shouldn't be the whole selling point.

What do the eggs look like? Ask for photos of eggs from multiple hens across the flock, not just the best one. Consistent dark color across the flock is the goal, and if pink bloom is something you're interested in, ask about that specifically. It varies by hen and by season, and an honest breeder will tell you so rather than promising it on every egg.

These questions apply to any program, not just mine. A breeder who is doing this work seriously will welcome them, and the answers will tell you a great deal about what you're actually buying.

Why I Recommend Staying With Birchen

If your goal is to continue developing the Lavender Birchen Marans line that I built, stay within the ER Birchen foundation and select within it deliberately. Breeding away from visible Birchen expression doesn't change what the birds are carrying underneath, and shifting toward an Extended Black silver base isn't a cleaner or more achievable alternative. It's a fundamentally different foundation and a different breeding project entirely, one that comes with its own set of challenges.

Silver leakage on an Extended Black bird is unpredictable by nature, harder to standardize across a flock, and more difficult to evaluate in offspring because there's no stable pattern map driving the expression. You'd essentially be starting over, selecting toward consistency that ER already gives you.

Individual birds within any line will vary. That is not a problem, that's the material you work with. If the lacing is too heavy, select birds that show less expression and breed toward that. If the color is too dark or too light, select accordingly. The variation within a well-founded line is something to work with, not a reason to abandon the foundation. Selective breeding is incremental by nature, and the answer to any trait you want to refine is always to select within the genetics you have, not to start over with a different set.

My concern has never been that a clean-breasted ER bird is impossible to produce, because it clearly isn't. My concern is that producing a certain appearance and changing the underlying genetic foundation are two different things. Once the visible Birchen traits have been reduced, it becomes significantly harder to confirm from phenotype alone whether you've retained ER with different modifiers or shifted toward another E-locus combination entirely. Understanding what you're selecting genetically, not just visually, is what makes a breeding program predictable and buildable over time.

For breeders working with my birds as a foundation, the recommendation is straightforward, keep the Birchen foundation. Understand that ER doesn't always look the same from bird to bird, because modifiers influence how strongly the pattern expresses, and that variation is normal and expected. Work with it rather than against it. The path to a consistently beautiful Lavender Birchen Marans isn't a fast one, but the birds that come out the other side of careful, informed selection are exactly what this variety is meant to be. That is definitely worth the patience it takes to get there.

Heidi Miller and her husband Jim are the founders of Seeking Eden Permaculture, a rare breed and permaculture farm nestled in the foothills of Central California. With over two decades of hands-on experience, Heidi has dedicated herself to preserving and improving a wide variety of rare breeds and color varieties — including her carefully developed line of Lavender Birchen Marans — with a passion and patience that is reflected in every carton of hatching eggs she produces.