Marans Sometimes lays lighter egg?

[BlindLemonChicken]

I free range mine every other day and its kinda hilariously funny how bad they are at it

This is exactly why I’m moving away from them. They manage but they certainly don’t excel at it.

 

[Chicken_overlord]

It generally takes about 25 hours to produce an egg, so I think it's highly unlikely any of your hens are laying two a day with any regularity. Occasionally it happens but it's very rare. More often if a hen ovulates twice in a day, she's having a reproductive issue (not good) and the second egg will be soft-shell, no shell or yolk only.

I have one hen that will lay two if she skips a day and they're always perfect eggs, but I agree, that it would be highly unlikely my marans is laying two eggs. One can hope, though. My plan is to try and catch her in the nest box, if not, then I'll just have to separate the splash and blue. I may be able to block off a section and give her a box to shelter in for a few days until she lays so I don't have to completely separate her from her current flock. Hopefully that doesn't throw her off laying. Gotta love chickens, they're always throwing me a curveball, haha.

 

[Chicken_overlord]

Here's a picture of all of my marans eggs in the marans pen laid by day. I have 5.
The top three are all my BCM. The top egg was from my BCM hen. The two middle eggs were laid on the same day by the BCM pullets. The bottom two would be from the blue and splash pullets laid on the same day. This was over 3 days of laying. This is why Im having a heck of a time figuring out who is laying the random plain brown egg! Just to clarify, I 100% know its not my top BCM hen, as she was just removed from my olive egger group and added to the marans group a week ago and her eggs are very constant in size, shape and and color.

The washed-out picture makes them look lighter than they are. That bottom left egg is my darkest yet and it matches close to an 8!

 

[Ridgerunner]

The timing just stinks with it being hatching season,

Are you aware that a hen typically continues to lay fertile eggs for at least a week and usually for two weeks or more after a mating. You could separate one or two of those hens from the rooster for a week and still get fertile eggs for hatching.

Or put food coloring in the vent of one hen (or different colors in different hens vents) each night and look for colored streaks on the eggs the next day. Just keep good records of which colors go with which hens. I'd suggest doing it at night so you can catch them when they are in the roosts.

Good luck! This can be frustrating.

 

[Chicken_overlord]

Are you aware that a hen typically continues to lay fertile eggs for at least a week and usually for two weeks or more after a mating. You could separate one or two of those hens from the rooster for a week and still get fertile eggs for hatching.

Or put food coloring in the vent of one hen (or different colors in different hens vents) each night and look for colored streaks on the eggs the next day. Just keep good records of which colors go with which hens. I'd suggest doing it at night so you can catch them when they are in the roosts.

Good luck! This can be frustrating.

I've never heard of the food coloring trick. I'll have to try that, thank you for the suggestion!