Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[jlgoinggreen]

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[jlgoinggreen]

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[pinkchick]

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Good luck with your hatch!!!!!!

 

[jlgoinggreen]

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SOO glad I'm not the only one!!!

Only one????????????????? Surely you must be kidding................I think you have a whole lot of company in that group. Thank goodness my incubator door is clear ......LOL

Yeppers! I think my whole family thinks I'm nuts when it comes to my bators and hatching eggs. My five year old son walked in on me this morning with my ear to the bator. He gave me a funny look and walked out of my room shaking his head.

 

[jlgoinggreen]

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Can't wait to see pics!

 

[Farmerboy16]

I read the proposed standard of the Marans, and I read that maran have to have feathers on their shanks. But my cuckoo maran are clean legged, but they lay very dark brown eggs. So should I find some feather legged cuckoo marans and cross with the clean legged ones, or get rid of the clean legged ones, and replace with the feather legged ones? Where can I fine them? Thanks for any help.

 

[jlgoinggreen]

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Good luck with your hatch!!!!!!

Thanks Pinkchick. In reading these posts as I try to catch up, I'm thinking I really NEED some of your eggs.

I'm all the way in PA though, so they would have to travel a pretty big distance.

 

[Lotsapaints]

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Are you wanting to show your birds? Clean legged ones are "English" several strains lay very dark eggs for some reason crossing bloodlines seems to lighten the egg color......Finding good feather legged stock seems to be difficult I know I've been growing out birds for quite a bit.....I have dark eggs and some feathered shanks but they are big and burly the way I like them ......ask me again this summer/fall when I get to see my egg color I might be having a big BBQ

there are some good birds out there just talking the owner into selling some....

 

[pinkchick]

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Marans should have feathered shanks if a person is showing them or breeding them to the proposed standard. If a person wants birds for layers and is not concerned with the standards, then a clean legged bird is fine. There are many folks that have clean legged Marans because they like them better than the feather shanked birds. If you want feathered shanks back in your birds then yes...locate some nice feather shanked Cuckoos and you can cross them back to your Cuckoos to breed shank feathering back in.....but you will still get some clean legged birds when working on breeding feathers back in so don't worry when you get chicks at hatch that are clean legged. Also....2 feather legged birds can produce clean legged offspring from time to time as well. Be careful though and look for feather shanked birds that have good or better egg color or egg color that is equal to the egg color that your birds give you now. When crossing in new blood from different lines of Marans sometimes egg color will suffer, so in my experience it is beneficial to atleast start out with egg color that is equal too or even darker than your current egg color.

 

[Debbi]

Atta girl Raven!! Of course you KNOW we'll need pics!

Hope some more get cracking for you too!