Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Hens and Roos]

Oh...Hens! I went out and checked for eggs and guess what I found?! I got my first egg from my F1 cuckoo girl crossed with my original cuckoo boy. So, in the bator its going! Its got a decent layer of bloom but I'm still gonna hoping for a hatch from it.

Also, Kim...you remember me mentioning that black girl of mine that is really shy and I can't seem to hardly find her and have never gotten a pic of her? Well...I also had never seen any eggs from her, but today I caught her coming out from between the building and the pen's side where a bush leans over towards the pen....so I went around and craned my neck and I found a nest of three eggies...all nice and dark! I'm so excited! She's definitely one that is going to be used for test mating!

Cool, that is exciting- I'm still waiting on my 4 girls to start laying, 2 are almost 6 months old and 2 are almost 5 months old..... guess they will lay when they are good and ready

the rooster they are with is very much a gentleman and haven't seen any love going on!

BTW-Pink I put 1 egg from the blue copper marans girl in the incubator just to see what hatches out- she is in a pen with a trio of Andalusians so the chick would be a mixed one.

 

[Hens and Roos]

I use a sharpie.

Does that bleed through the egg at all? We use a regular pencil to mark.

 

[gilavina]

Great to know as my previous attempts to mark the eggs have been a big flop! THanks for the great pis, too, to illustrate the different effects.

Would love to see some of your art work, too. Do you do chickens??

I have done chickens in the past, but that's been quite a few years back. I've been thinking of picking it back up again. I do quite a bit of different things, kind of go with the flow of where my creativity leads. I do jewelry making, bookbinding, painting, drawing, photography, and a few other things like upcycling and furniture restoration... unfortunately I don't keep much of my work and up until recently never took reference photos either. DOH! So, I'm working on moving forward into new directions with things and hopefully will do better about keeping reference materials.

Below are a few pics...the first one is a beat up old reference drawing in prismacolors, one of these days I'll do a bigger painting of it. Got out of drawing for a while because of time constraints, but plan to pick it back up again. The others are just some photos I've taken in the past. I'm more of an animal and nature kind of person, so no rail thin model photoing for me haha











ok...back to the Marans!

 

[gilavina]

After all the effort to write on info that is so important--how do you keep track of which chick pushed out of which egg? Do you segregate the eggs in some manner at lockdown??

I posted a pick a while back of what I use, but I just got done washing the rest of my incubator equipment and the dividers I use are on a towel drying. Once I get everything all dried I'll put together a mock up of what I use and post it for reference. I have more material on hand and plan to make several more sizes of dividers to work for keeping things organized.

 

[Arielle]

Gilavina--Very nice work ! I love the outdoors and like to pause to watch the sunset while doing night feeding and locking up the birds late in the afternoon. With living art walking around, aka chickens, no need to put them on paper. THanks for sharing!

 

[Arielle]

I posted a pick a while back of what I use, but I just got done washing the rest of my incubator equipment and the dividers I use are on a towel drying. Once I get everything all dried I'll put together a mock up of what I use and post it for reference. I have more material on hand and plan to make several more sizes of dividers to work for keeping things organized.

You mentioned using cross stitch cloth in a recent post??

 

[gilavina]

You mentioned using cross stitch cloth in a recent post??

yup...that was me. Did you catch those pic I posted then? They are super easy to clean and I don't have to worry about pokey wire, they collapse, and they allow the air to flow through no problem!

 

[gilavina]

Katelyn, are all these boys you sent me pics of the same age?!

 

[kathyinmo]

Quote:
I have not had any problem with them.

 

[chuckeychickens]

Could I please impose on the Birchen experts to take a look at the comb on my Birchen (only one of two that are true silver, instead of some
mix of gold and silver or just gold, as discussed previously) and let me know if there are any sprigs, thumbprints or any other defective qualities?
I'm trying to figure out if I can breed with this rooster or if I should send the lot of them to the flea market.
Thanks in advance.