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

[tfpets]

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

I wonder? I am no expert, and bought him as an adult, part of a pair, from Carla Freestep. He was advertised and sold to me as a Cuckoo Marans rooster, and his legs are very white, not the yellow of the typical Black sex link Roo, which he seriously looks like too? He has some slight gold in his feathers also, which is puzzling? He is lighter than in the pics (everything is dark because of the smoke,) but he does have one longer tail feather. I have hatched several chicks by he and his hen, and they seem like Cuckoo Marans, a couple have had feathering on their legs also, not sure if that's a past gene pool thing, or what. Hopefully I get girls and they'll still have pretty eggs though. Maybe she is truly Marans and he is not? Her eggs are really dark compared to any of my other brown egg layers (Australorp, etc) What do yours look like? Hey - wouldnt that explain why he's such a nice guy though? I have Cuckoo Marans from other sources, and more from Carla, but now I'm starting to wonder....I would really like to have "True" Marans....but how can you be sure?
I dont mind hatching eggs if I know what to expect to hatch....and I wouldnt mind buying chicks either, but who can you trust?

I have more pictures of my "marans"....I should start a thread to see if they're the real deal, huh?

Whew....feel free to opinionate

 

[drom]

this is off the subject, but didn't you say you were near Butte? Is everything ok? I hear it's really bad there. I'm in Placer county and it was awful today-so dark and hot. But the fire here is in a wilderness area and no homes are threatened just now.
The heat is so awful here. It was 109 today and I have had my chickens inside for the last 3 days. I don't dare put them out in this weather. They are only 9 weeks and I think it would be way too hard on them. Hope everything is ok for you and your birds

 

[tfpets]

Quote:
Yeah, I wander off topic, if you didnt notice

I live in Forest Ranch on the very edge of Chico, on the Doe Mill Ridge. I was evacuated in the Humboldt fire a couple of weeks ago, and now we are on "alert" but the fires are across a whole town and canyon from us.

Butte County is hurting right now, the loss of homes and property is tragic, but we have been spared the loss of life so far. Many animals have been hurt or killed, there just wasnt enough time or space for everyone to escape. No one knew it was going to be this bad. A coworker adopted a hen from a friend that was the lone survivor out of 60 chickens.

The heat and smoke here is intense, it is supposed to be 112 degrees tomorrow - the air quality is "unsafe" and people are supposed to take it easy.

I am keeping my pets cool with misters, and got the suggestion of frozen veges from California Chickens. I cannot use standing water due to having loose chicks. I may try frozen water bottles too.

Thank you for your concern for our area. The fire personnel is AMAZING and they are my heroes!!!!!

 

[ninjapoodles]

There are a couple things I would like to understand better about Marans, some confusion from reading the French sites compared to what I see here.

1. Do our "cuckoo" Marans = French "silver cuckoo" Marans? They have a gold cuckoo variety that we don't seem to have here.

2. Is it "Black Copper" Marans, or "Copper Black" Marans here in the states? Is there one faction of breeders who says it one way and another who says it the other? I can't find any definitive source on this, and even on Feathersite, on the Marans page, the photo captions flip-flop back and forth between the two versions of the name of this color variety.

3. Do our "Copper Black" Marans = French "Brown Red/Red Brown" Marans? They seem to be using the "red brown" JUST to describe the copper color, separate from the black parts of the bird. By which I mean, their birds are not "brown with red heads" or anything like that.

4. Which of the American clubs that are trying to get recognized is the "real deal?" Is there a front-runner yet? And do they use the French standard or the English one?

I have similar questions about Orpingtons, but I'll start with these.

 

[Crunchie]

Quote:
I'll try to answer your questions, but bear in mind I'm not 100% positive on all of these here.

1) I believe our Cuckoo is the same as the French "silver" Cuckoo. We do have Golden Cuckoos here in the U.S. I have seen some people advertising, separately of Cuckoo, "Silver" Marans, and I'm not sure what the deal is there.

2) I see Black Copper used more often. Not sure what is really correct.

3) I think so, but I really don't know for sure on this one.

4) This, I'm sure, is purely personal opinion and probably up for a lot of debate.

But I would say the organization called the "Marans Chicken Club" is the real deal, and the one most organized and on its way to getting the breed admitted to the standard. It's also pretty new. Someone linked to the Yahoo group a bit further back in this thread, I believe. I haven't seen all of the nitty-gritty details as to the standard yet.

 

[Crunchie]

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

I wonder? I am no expert, and bought him as an adult, part of a pair, from Carla Freestep. He was advertised and sold to me as a Cuckoo Marans rooster, and his legs are very white, not the yellow of the typical Black sex link Roo, which he seriously looks like too? He has some slight gold in his feathers also, which is puzzling? He is lighter than in the pics (everything is dark because of the smoke,) but he does have one longer tail feather. I have hatched several chicks by he and his hen, and they seem like Cuckoo Marans, a couple have had feathering on their legs also, not sure if that's a past gene pool thing, or what. Hopefully I get girls and they'll still have pretty eggs though. Maybe she is truly Marans and he is not? Her eggs are really dark compared to any of my other brown egg layers (Australorp, etc) What do yours look like? Hey - wouldnt that explain why he's such a nice guy though? I have Cuckoo Marans from other sources, and more from Carla, but now I'm starting to wonder....I would really like to have "True" Marans....but how can you be sure?
I dont mind hatching eggs if I know what to expect to hatch....and I wouldnt mind buying chicks either, but who can you trust?

I have more pictures of my "marans"....I should start a thread to see if they're the real deal, huh?

Whew....feel free to opinionate

I think you've got the real deal. Some lines of Cuckoos have quite a bit of gold in them. Some roosters are very light and some are darker. His legs are the right color and he sure does look like a Marans to me! There seems to be a large amount of variance in type in these birds, because breeders have mainly focused on egg color with type taking a back seat. My roosters from my birds look a lot different than roosters I hatched from another breeder this spring...

What is the color of your hen's eggs? Can you post pics? Even if a bird has pure Marans parents, if it doesn't consistently lay at least a 4 on the scale (here: http://marans-club.club.fr/echllang.htm#echelle) than it shouldn't be considered a Marans or used for breeding.

Anyway, the real test will be the egg color of his daughters. If you get egg color from his daughters that is as good (or better!) as the hen's, then he's a keeper.

 

[robbobbin]

I have one cuckoo maran hen-she has been in my flock longer than any other bird, 6+yrs, and still lays a nice darker than normal, egg. She has gone broody and hatched several clutches over the yrs but most often lives in a huge spruce tree with several other girls who refuse to coop. She lays in the coop and eats their feed-but sleeps in the tree.
She is an excellent hen, and mother-I will miss her presence in the yard soon I'm sure.

 

[amazondoc]

I can answer one of those questions

--

According to feathersite, "The French recognize 8 varieties: 1. Silver Cuckoo, 2. Golden Cuckoo, 3. White, 4. Coppered Black, 5. Black, 6. Wheat, 7. Black-tailed Fawn, and 8. Ermine"

http://feathersite.com/Poultry///CGK/Marans/BRKMarans.html

So "silver cuckoo" has got to be regular cuckoo color. I actually thought that "cuckoo" and "silver cuckoo" were different, until you asked and I looked it up!

edited to say --

Uh-oh, I take it back! Here's a quote from another page at feathersite:

"There are four recognized varieties of Marans: Black, Dark Cuckoo, Golden Cuckoo, and Silver Cuckoo. "

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGK/Marans/Marans.html

Uhhhhhhh........

 

[ninjapoodles]

Yeah, I've found several instances of Feathersite contradicting itself. It's a good place to look for pictures, though.

 

[drom]

Quote:
Yeah, I wander off topic, if you didnt notice

I live in Forest Ranch on the very edge of Chico, on the Doe Mill Ridge. I was evacuated in the Humboldt fire a couple of weeks ago, and now we are on "alert" but the fires are across a whole town and canyon from us.

Butte County is hurting right now, the loss of homes and property is tragic, but we have been spared the loss of life so far. Many animals have been hurt or killed, there just wasnt enough time or space for everyone to escape. No one knew it was going to be this bad. A coworker adopted a hen from a friend that was the lone survivor out of 60 chickens.

The heat and smoke here is intense, it is supposed to be 112 degrees tomorrow - the air quality is "unsafe" and people are supposed to take it easy.

I am keeping my pets cool with misters, and got the suggestion of frozen veges from California Chickens. I cannot use standing water due to having loose chicks. I may try frozen water bottles too.

Thank you for your concern for our area. The fire personnel is AMAZING and they are my heroes!!!!!

I'll bet they are so exhausted at this point. They've been at it for weeks.
And, the stories about the animals lost and injured are heartbreaking. I think it is going to start cooling some, thank God. Hope they get everything under control soon. :|