Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[gilavina]

Yeah!!! Watch the ones for yellow feathering and let me know if they lose them as they mature. I've had chicks born with lots of yellow fuzz on shanks at hatch, only to have them mature as clean legged. Keep us posted!

The stock the guy we are both getting them from has birds with white feathers on the legs and toes, so I'm guessing these will stay since they will be white with black later on.

 

[qball53]

Breed your best birds to your best birds to get or maintain conformational quality first! Egg color can come later by only hatching the darkest eggs. It may take awhile to get them where you want them to be; birds and eggs. The required egg color for a Marans is a 4 , but that is pretty pale. 5s and 6s are pretty much an average color, so you can improve from there. It sure won't happen over night, but it will come in time with judicial culling.

Thanks that is better advice than I had hoped for. If/when we finally have the birds we like to look at .... if they are all laying a lighter egg than we desire, nearly all the same color how do you progress?

 

[BarnGoddess01]

I have another question. Can a Wheaten Marans have Splash Maran offspring if they are mated to a Black or Blue Marans? I have one that I think is a splash color, but she has green legs so I'm thinking her mother might be the Ameracauna. The father would definitely be a Wheaten Marans.

Splash is two copies of the Bl (blue) gene. Splash only comes from either two blue parents, two splash, or blue and splash.

 

[Hens and Roos]

Hens~ Very sad! So Sorry! Hugs my friend! I used Sulmet when I was hit with Cocci. I noticed, the Sulmet can make them maybe have a little bloodier poops....and agree with Flgarden that it is a bit harder on their systems. The brighter side to that is that I noticed that they seem to perk up a little faster with the Sulmet. The thing I like about the Sulmet is that it is liquid and changed everyday. I think it is 1tablesponn to 1 gal of water for 3 days and then 1/2 tsp. for 2-3 days...can't remember exactly but not to take my word on it, the directions are on the back of the bottle. Careful with exposing the bottle to moisture or elements. I left it on the table I have outside for watering and cleaning buckets..in the rain for a few days while using it for treatment...and the plastic lettering stuff (ie...the dosage instruction) on the bottle seems to wash away. Constituted an un-necessary trip to town on my part because wouldn't you know it, I discovered this just as I needed it.................

Haven't been outstide this am yet to do chores, they were on medicated feed from day 1 and so I didn't want to use the same medication as in the feed. Last night some were moving around a bit more.

Well all remaining 7 chicks made it through the night! So right now they are holding their own, we'll see how the day goes. Hopefully they will start feeling better today!!

 

[Peach2u]

Does you EE have beard/muffs- you could look for that in the chicks, how about leg color- I think the marans have blue/slate color- off the top of my head. Depending on parent color you can end up with many shades of blue.

Good Luck!

Well most of my EE's have beards/muffs. All the babies have slate colored leggs except the 4 splash ones they have a green tint almost white. The BCM parents where a splash roo over a black copper. Then the splash maran over EE's. It made some pretty babies but I'm having trouble picking out the blue marans. The feathered feet,beards, non beards,single combs, pea combs, and all shades of gray LOL Guess I'll have to keep them a little longer to see who gets copper heads!

 

[thebutress]

ok, probably an impossible question, but when do the Marans start crowing? On average? If its impossible to say, I understand.

 

[Debbi]

ok, probably an impossible question, but when do the Marans start crowing? On average? If its impossible to say, I understand.

My earliest one started at 4 weeks. Most of my boys here start at around 8 weeks. Others' boys may crow earlier (I think Math Ace's started at 2 weeks??), or much later. If there are other older roos around, that seems to help the babies learn what it means earlier in life; just a guess on my part.

 

[Debbi]

Thanks that is better advice than I had hoped for. If/when we finally have the birds we like to look at .... if they are all laying a lighter egg than we desire, nearly all the same color how do you progress?

You could get a roo from an outside source that came from a dark egg. Or, did you say you didn't know what color egg your roo came from? Maybe he will help along. Other than that, I would just steadily hatch only the darkest of the light eggs, and hope they get darker in time. That could take quite awhile, or may never happen at all. If it were me, I'd try to find a nice roo from the darkest egg possible, and proceed from there.

 

[Hens and Roos]

Well most of my EE's have beards/muffs. All the babies have slate colored leggs except the 4 splash ones they have a green tint almost white. The BCM parents where a splash roo over a black copper. Then the splash maran over EE's. It made some pretty babies but I'm having trouble picking out the blue marans. The feathered feet,beards, non beards,single combs, pea combs, and all shades of gray LOL Guess I'll have to keep them a little longer to see who gets copper heads!

the longer you can let them grow might help you figure out who is who. When we hatch and want to keep track of who is who we use different colored zip ties and mark down which color belongs to which group. So far that has worked for us- we do have to change them out as the chick's legs get bigger.

 

[Peach2u]

7-8 weeks old is when mine started crowing too last year. Last year I had 22 cockerels and once 1 learned to crow I had a band of awful sounding crows. At first I didn't know what that noise was. Then all the cockerels had to go! Too much noise.