Cuccoo marans from Mcmurray

[animallover505]

I'm thinking about getting one, and was wondering, on a scale of 1-10 10 being darkest, how dark are y'alls from Mcmurray. Their eggs, I mean

 

[animallover505]

wow, I figured there'd be replies by now

 

[missnu01]

perhaps not a lot of people have murray cuckoos...I don't. So I have no idea how dark their eggs are. Sorry.

 

[animallover505]

ok, thanks for the reply anyways

 

[Rose66]

I wish I could help you but I just received my cuckoo marans chicks from MM this past Monday so mine are much too young to be laying yet.

I'll be watching this thread though for replies as I'd like to know the egg darkness too.

 

[Kelsie2290]

I and a friend have had 10 from MCM over the last two years, I gave mine away since I was not that happy with the way they laid. I am not sure how to rate an egg on the the 1-10 darkness scale. The eggs were slightly darker than the Red Sex links / Red Stars I have that are the same age. They CM eggs were a little darker at the beginning of their laying cycle, then were about the same color 3-4 months later. The CM eggs were slightly more "brown" brown than the Star eggs which are more "red" brown. About half the CMs laid speckled eggs with darker brown spots, especially at the beginning. Even when young they do not lay very well in my experience, maybe 2-3 eggs a week if I was lucky, they fewer eggs they laid the darker they were. The Stars lay twice as many eggs and the eggs are much larger. The CM hens themselves were good size (weighed them to worm and they all were around 6-7 pounds), their temperament was very nice, calm and quite friendly to people, they were no problem with the other chickens. They varied a fair bit in feather color also, some had almost as distinct barring as barred rocks and some had very black barring. As chicks they were also very slow to feather in.

 

[EweSheep]

A friend of mine showed me her MCM Cuckoo Marans and they were somewhere of a three shade on the Marans chart. Pretty as they are, gentle as well but poor layers. She only got three to four eggs a week out of them.

They are pretty far removed from the McGovero's stock, which MCM originally purchased them from.

 

[Arielle]

In general the darest eggs are from the balck copper marans; I got a few eggs from two sources last year, and the color on the cuckoos were more like pale milk chocolate, not nearly as dark as my black coppers. I have three roosters and a hen-- all nicely behaved. ( not from MM)

 

[missnu01]

Glad I wasn't thinking of ordering any...they don't sound very good at all.