Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[gilavina]

haha - I'm glad I'm on the right track!
I do see little things and write a note with the band color, so I can look at the notes later!

It IS really relaxing!!


My SO laughs b/c the new Border Collie puppy has learned to watch "Chicken TV" with me!
He can hang out for hours and just watch them!

I wonder if HE is taking notes!!




Oh - BTW - I realized I have THREE hens with orange bands.
double orange
orange and green
orange and pink

soooo - going to have to do picture day for them again!

haha...don't you love the magically multiplying hens?

 

[Cadeau]

Haha- maybe THAT is the secret of chicken math!!
Shhhhh!

"yes, honey, the hen with the orange band is a keeper!!"
Hahaha he'll never notice "she" is three different girls!!

Were you ever able to open the egg pic??
(I need a remedial lesson...I tried the link w directions to no avail...)

 

[Christie Rhae]

By the weekend, I will be at LEAST 70 birds lighter!!!

I have a lady and a guy coming for 10 pullets tomorrow

and two people on Wednesday coming for another 18

AND

I just sent THIRTY roosters to the auction



AND I sold 3 goat kids today


Whew!

I can feel the feed bill going down already!!

70 birds??!! Holy cow... It will be so quiet at your place! I noticed a big difference just with 3 cockerels gone. I can feel your feed bill going down too!! lol

 

[Tracy the chick]

Hi guys i ordered a mixture of marans eggs, there all 9 weeks old now but theres 1 that i dont know what type of marans it is. I have BCM, Wheaton and a cuckoo Marans. But i dont know what she is, we call her Buck Beak of Harry Potter. She has beutifull Amber Eyes and lovely feathered legs.

Im going to try and take another photo.

 

[Debbi]

Good morning all

Katelyn, where do you live?? I've been to a pig farm like that, in Michigan, many years ago. It wasn't quite that modernized, but if they are still in business, I'll bet it is now. Very clean and smell free, huge grow out pens that reminded me of a baby playpen. The last dairy farm I was on, also many years ago, had an aisle scraper, but it wouldn't stay clean for long! He had about 300 head of Holsteins, and as clean as it was kept, it was still soupy! I took charge of the babies being born. Back then, a calf was a bother, and they would give them away just to keep the cow's milk. I got in there and made sure they at least had a few sucks of colostrum, and were functioning, then they all got penned up and taken to the auction house. I can't tell you how many of them I wanted to stick in the back of my Blazer and take home with me. My parents would've shot me!

 

[Cadeau]

Morning all

Debbi - I'm in PA!
That place is totally amazing!!


My 3 of my SOs uncles run dairies - the bull calves are still considered "waste" and most are still taken to auction at 3 days old.

All 3 uncles allow the babies to stay on the mommas for 3 days - they can't put the colostrum into the milk bank anyways, so why not!
1 uncle has a huge free stall, so he raises all the heifers for his replacements!

We take a lot of the bull babies and also any opposite sex twins - apparently boy/girl twins tend to be infertile....


The last 2 years, all 3 uncles have used an Angus bull for their heifers. They say it makes a smaller baby for the 1st time mothers.
So....we take all those babies and raise them for beef on our big farm, along with the fancy Piedmontesse beef cows.

 

[Debbi]

Sounds like a great set-up you have there! The last time I went to the auction barn to try to buy a day old calf, the price was $295.00! Really??? Does it come with Life Insurance?? When I first moved out here, you could buy them all day long for about $20.00. I've raised some, and I've lost some. Angus and Black Baldies are the high sellers out here, and have been since I can remember. Then there are the Charlais, but they seem to be death on fences! I raised up a pure Charlais calf (steer) from day old to 800lbs., that I paid $30.00 for. He sold for a pretty penny at the aution, and none of the old men believed that he was a bottle baby.

Even at 800lbs., if I needed to catch him, all I had to do was call him, and hold up a bottle!!! The hard part was getting the bottle back at that size!!

 

[Cadeau]

We raise all our guys on a bucket, which is a bit labor intensive for the first several months...
They learn really easily to drink from a pail, rather than fooling around with a bottle (and getting knocked down!)

The ones born to OUR cows are raised by their own mommas, but MUCH harder to handle b/c they get so wild living out on 300 acres....

A friend who has a fancy B&B turned us on to the Piedmontesse - they're an Italian cow and, apparently, their meat is more lean than a lot of chicken!
We raise a lot of his youngstock and calf out his cows for him (I'm the midwife at the farm!)

 

[Cadeau]

To make this more chicken related:

Does anyone pasture raise or tractor raise their birds??


My birds free range at our home farm, but we're looking at doing those "Red Rangers" this year, rather than the Cornish X that only eat and poop...


We're trying to figure out what might be best...
we're going to put these guys at the big farm and we're not sure if we want to:

try that electric netting
OR
do a traditional tractor
OR
do something like a dog pen? for more security for us and more freedom for them??

Each set-up would be moved every 2-3 days for fresh grass (hay field)
Each set up would have the usual shelter, food, and water, of course!!

 

[gilavina]

To make this more chicken related:

Does anyone pasture raise or tractor raise their birds??


My birds free range at our home farm, but we're looking at doing those "Red Rangers" this year, rather than the Cornish X that only eat and poop...


We're trying to figure out what might be best...
we're going to put these guys at the big farm and we're not sure if we want to:

try that electric netting
OR
do a traditional tractor
OR
do something like a dog pen? for more security for us and more freedom for them??

Each set-up would be moved every 2-3 days for fresh grass (hay field)
Each set up would have the usual shelter, food, and water, of course!!

I don't have a huge place....about 3/4 of an acre split up into 4 pasture like setups and some additional space in the orchard area that I run them in rotationally. I've trained the girls to follow me to where I call them and they hang out there for the day and then come back when I call them to go home to their own home for the night. I keep a guard boy with them to alert them to hawks and etc. Luckily I have plenty of tree cover which gives the birds a lot of protection. So I don't worry about tractors. When I finally get a bigger place I will be going to tractors of some sort tho...I think it'd be a necessity