As a lot of my friends here know, I’m working on a project to combine the Gold allele from my French Black Copper Marans with the barring of my English Silver and Dark Cuckoo Marans, in an attempt to revive the English standard Golden Cuckoo.
Contacts in the Marans club executives have agreed...
The confusion between the US standard Cochin bantam and UK true bantam Pekin, as well as insertion of Wyandotte etc for new colours has messed many lines up. They’re fantastic little show birds when they meet the standard.
I’m hatching F1s in about 17 days. The hens won’t be golden but the...
I’ve been chasing rats around this week. We’ve been overran by massive ones. I’m not exaggerating when I say some must be 18 inches head to tail.
Mixing poisons rather than just sticking to one type works, but the mos effective way I’ve been combatting them is placing baited traps directly at...
I’ve never had pekins but my neighbour used to have about half a dozen different breeding pens of them. Little feathered footballs they look like running around. Silkies have always been my bantam of choice.
I mainly breed marans, I’m working to revive an extinct (in the UK) variety of them...
This time of year is just perfect for chicks…
I’ve certainly never experienced a lack of wanting for chickens. Very strange symptoms if you ask me.
What breeds are your hens or any past hens?
I’ve had successful hatches two weeks after a cock was removed or died. That’s the usual window, but it can be more. Nice to see the breeder was honest and cooperative about it.
Tom Wales (Thackwood Pouktry), Herber Hargreaves (Greenfield Marans), Steve Wright (Temple Marans of Bodmin Moor).
Some names I’ve got or seen class stock from. All on Facebook. I have marans eggs available for a week, but not coppers. Will have young ones ready from dark egg lines in a month...
I’ve done a terrible job of figuring out who lays which egg. I know there’s two Chanel x Wellington eggs. The five darkest and shiny ones are the same hen I’m pretty sure, not sure if it’s Joan, Belle or Esmeralda.
16 of my own English SCM x French BCM.
12 eggs I bought from a breeder. Class...
Basically I’ve done the same, just focusing on marans. Lavender isn’t a recognised variety and I assume someone had to breed Orpington in at some point, but that was so many generations ago because the breeder imported an otherwise good quality marans cock to cross to his silvers for his...
I’m from England. My own marans have always been very successful (I’m setting off a hatch this weekend so we’ll see if that holds true this year).
How are you incubating yours?
Where/who did you get yours from?
Here are some of the lavenders I’m getting eggs from (I’m hoping for tails more like that first boy).egg colour (paler because the lavender allele was probably bred in from non marans many generations ago. I’ve been told they’re better layers than most marans, so slowing production down should...
A bit of an update:
To avoid noise complaints, I sold Wellington the other day. I’m collecting eggs from my marans this week, really only want the darkest French Copper Marans eggs as these will hatch the F1 GCM stock.
I’ve also bought a dozen lavender silver marans. These are from stock from...
We got this anomaly the other day. Not had pale speckled eggs otherwise. Chanel always laid longer eggs as she got older (marans should have round eggs really, like hers used to be), so I’m wondering if this egg is hers and I missed her laying it. Going to set it anyway. Hoping for some blue...