Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[gilavina]

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man...I must be distracted! I meant replacer parts for my dremel so I can work on my jewelry. doh! Oh...and I got an awesome set up for working on close up work..with clamp arms and a magnifier with lights so I can do detail work much easier and free up my hands at the same time. I don't know where my mind is...I might have lost it

 

[Hens and Roos]

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Hey... we made cinnamon rolls this morning too! My wife asked for them, so I think we may have just started a tradition too. Stinkin' power company had the whole village without power from 1-4 pm, prime cooking time. Merry Christmas!

But it came on in time to finish the ham and even do a few batches of ginger bread men.
I must be getting old... I don't remember Christmas being so exhausting.




Merry Christmas VC! You are getting older, but the kids just have waaaaaaaaaay more energy than both of you put together on Christmas! I kind of miss those squeals at 4:30am...kind of!

I agree the kids have way more energy!! Ours were up at 6:15 am but that wasn't the problem...... our Irish Setter decided to start barking at 1 am and wouldn't stop so it was around 3 am when I fell back to sleep.. long story short she is having health issues which we haven't fully figured out and not sure we will

Hope everyone had a good day, we are just winding down from the day, my sis is still hanging out with us helping me clean up

 

[jeremy]

I collected these lovelies today, the dark egg on the right is from my Blue Copper girl. The other two eggs are from a Wheaten Penedesenca.

 

[bigshawn]

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Love em..........

 

[janchilds]

Beautiful.... Got to get me some!

Merry Christmas!

 

[kari_dawn]

beautiful!!! I want some of my very own!

 

[gilavina]

mornin' everyone...hope you all survived the Christmas Chaos yesterday!

There was no time at all to take pics of birds yesterday like I thought I would...the house was packed and a half with family, so will try again over the next couple of days.

I'm gonna have to go over all my birds again with a fine tooth comb as its been about a month since I last gave a good look over on my birds when I moved them. As a couple of the gals know...I had a batch of younguns growing out and had only kept the pullets from a guy in Kansas...and well...I was waiting for them to grow out some more to see who might make the breeding pens, and when I had gone out to see my birds and get a breather from the drama around here I found three of the girls I had just checked at the beginning of the month have the teeniest tiny carnation combs developing. I was soooooo mad and bummed all at the same time. So, those girls are gonna go to my mom's layers pen. I'm just glad that I caught it now before any real damage had been done. I'm still bummed, that's for sure and probably will take me some time before I am "OK" with it. So, now its time to move on and focus on the other pens I have and count my blessings I still have some great birds running around from different bloodlines to work with. I'm gonna be extra vigilent now tho, I can guarantee that!!

 

[flgardengirl]

Quote:
man...I must be distracted! I meant replacer parts for my dremel so I can work on my jewelry. doh! Oh...and I got an awesome set up for working on close up work..with clamp arms and a magnifier with lights so I can do detail work much easier and free up my hands at the same time. I don't know where my mind is...I might have lost it

Ohh I have a Dremel as well. I just love it. I used to have one with a cord then liked it so much I got a cordless one. It is MY powertool and dh is not allowed to touch it muuuhahaha!!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas.

Jeremy I love your BLUE eggs. Who laid the one on the top left? It looks really cool, like a watercolor kinda batik washed blue. I only have blue ameraucanas but they are apparently on hiatus from egg laying lol. My olive eggers, however, are laying up a storm I got 2 1/2 doz from them over the weekend!

 

[desertmarcy]

I've been mostly lurking on this thread, it is hard to keep up with it since there is a lot of chatter

but I have a question about black copper Marans. From hatching eggs, I ended up with with 9 cocks and 4 pullets and another cock and one pullet from some blue copper eggs. The good thing is I was able to pick what I thought was the best cock out of 10, I posted a pic of him a while back. I kept all 5 of the pullets since this is my first go around with this breed. They are all now around 9 months old. So the question: out of the 5 pullets, only one has copper color on her hackles, the others are all solid black. How common is this with this breed? How easy is it to breed out the solid black? Do people NOT use the solid black pullets for breeding, or is that deemed acceptable to get a start on them? They were all laying really well up until a little before Christmas, now they have quit. I set 25 eggs, only one of which candled infertile, due to hatch tomorrow

and another 13 in two other settings about a week apart. How old do the chicks need to be before you can tell the pullets will or will not have copper coloring? Thank you all for your wisdom!

 

[flgardengirl]

You can use the solid black (copper) pullets for breeding. The copper gene is there jusy not visible. We call this overmelanized. Their offspring should get better coloring with breeding to a roo with good coppering. Some people like to compliment breed use a overcolored (coppering wise) roo with a
darker female to get a better copper balance. This is why people need to close thier flocks and experiment a little bit with what they have to see what genes pop up. Then from there, you can obtain other stock depending what you need. You could do some test mating with just one or two females at a time crossed to your roo to see what happens. How are your girls eye color? Sometimes the dark ones will have too dark of eyes as well. I haven't experienced this but others have. Your girls should have normal colored eyes- orangy not black. The males should always have a more orange eye than the females but the females should not be black or dark brown.
Yes this is a common thing with the females lacking good coppering and being too dark and the males being too light in the hackles.