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Cuckoo Marans are sadly a ruined color of Marans, and often people get them from hatcheries, who are the ones to blame for the light color of egg. From there, they see the craze in Marans and sell their own, ripping customers off with their incredibly light eggs.
In reality, any color of Marans should have an egg on the scale of 4 or darker. (There's a scale of egg color, 0 being white and 9 being just about black) Most good Marans eggs should be 6-8 on the scale, a very nice dark chocolate color.
Marans are named after the place I believe, and are not named for the color. Cuckoo is the name of the color (barred) There is also Wheaten, Black Copper, Birchen, etc.