Marans Owners -- anything "bad" about this breed?

[Crunchie]

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I think they are fairly frequently called names like "chickasaurus rex".

In fact, somebody here on this thread may have called them that as well. I'm too tired to remember right now!

Haha, yeah, that was me....

They are chickasauras rexes!! Never seen anything like it. Makes my Polish look so petite and dainty about everything....

drom, I don't remember, but I probably just rubbed the eggs clean with a paper towel. I'm sure the flash on the camera has something to do with them looking so shiny. But when they aren't dusty from the nestboxes, they do kind of have a "glow" about them!

Yes, the color is a coating. One breeder described it to me as "the egg gets a coat of paint on it's way down the chute." You can scratch it off. This actually peeves me a little bit, when I have an exceptionally pretty egg and the hens have rolled it around and scratched it up.

I'm so OCD!!

Every couple of months or so I get an egg that I guess just literally missed it's coat of "paint". It will be dull, matte, and about the same color brown as a regular brown egg. A few times I have gotten one that has missed it's coat of paint but has some flecks of dark color that look like they were splashed on.

 

[amazondoc]

Speaking of the glossy surface --

I have read that one of the differences between Marans and Welsummer egg color is that the Marans tend to be shiny, while the Wellies tend to be more matte. I haven't had the chance to compare for myself, yet!

 

[lc33wa]

We've found Marans to be very fast growing and require more feed when growing than any other breed we've had.

We have Ameraucanas. and Marans grow considerebly faster and larger than Ameraucanas.

We've also seen more aggression between the males than some other breeds.

Nice eggs though, and a good dual purpose breed.
We're working on black coppers and blues.

Lisa Cree
Seabeck Washington
creefarm.fateback.com

 

[ruth]

Now how could anyone possibly say anything "bad" about this?

Got my batch of French Marans from Mr. Jessee this morning. They spent an extra day sitting at the Jackson, MS P.O. but all arrived alive and well and really hungry and thirsty. They haven't stopped eating yet so there may be something to that eating more reputation.

 

[Anne]

Too cute!

Ruth, do you happen to know if he is a NPIP member?

 

[greyfields]

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Wow, my Marans roosters look nothing like that. He looks like a black sex link.

 

[greyfields]

My Marans have a strange desire to go broody. It's probably my fault not collecting the eggs often enough, though.

 

[priszilla]

I too have found myself wanting a few for my layer pen, to ahve some pretty dark eggs for variety-- the downside that has stopped me- is the $$$$ they are commanding now IF I were a purist breeding them for a big project I could do it- maybe- but just to make the eggs have more oomph in the carton?

 

[Frogdogtimestwo]

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[Crunchie]

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No, it's not your fault, when one of those godzilla girls decides she wants to sit, she's made up her mind. She will sit on air and be quite happy about it. And you might lose a limb over it if you decide to try to change her mind!!

At least, this is my experience. I had one go broody this spring and she wouldn't quit. A few weeks into it I decided to give up trying to break her up, and let her have at it. She stole eggs, she bickered, she fussed, and then she sat like a statue. Hatched every single egg under her. I took the chicks and brooded them myself, as I really wasn't prepared to move her to a suitable place for her to do it herself (I doubted her commitment to the task in the beginning. Ha.) She refused to believe that she didn't have anything to sit on, and sat on air...for weeks!! I finally gave her a dozen Ameraucana and Polish eggs. She hatched a good deal of those, too. It got a little risky to get those last chicks from her, as she was on to me by that time.

She did a good job. Maybe next year I'll build her her own little maternity ward and let her do all of the work herself!