Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Hens and Roos]

Thanks Hens! This will be my first time entering anything in a show pertaining to chickens. Hope everyone sending eggs in to Vicki does great! Also.......want to give Vicki a great big THANK YOU for all of her hard work on this egg show. THANK YOU VICKI!
Hens....how are you doing? How goes it with the chooks?

We're doing, things in our house have been crazy busy since the summer. Can't complain, work is a good thing, but DH and I have had more rental units to turn this year then in the pass and without our DD(she's 12 years old- will be 13 here in Nov) helping me not sure we would have gotten it all done! Of course all 3 kids were playing soccer and DD also played volleyball so weekends were soccer- 2 more games to go and than done for fall.

We are around 30 chickens now- most are DD's for her 4-H project, DS(10) decided he wasn't interested in showing chickens and so we found his chickens a different home-it's no fun if they don't enjoy it. I have around 8 cuckoo Marans left- lost the rooster not to long ago- trying to decided where to go from here now. Of course no one is laying well these days- haven't added the light back yet but plan to do so shortly and then make up our breed pens. DS(7) is excited, he has picked modern game chickens as what he would like to work with- we are planning to get chicks in Jan 2013 for him. DD asked to add rabbits so we have Californians- possible litter around Nov 6th if the buck did his job(he's a younger one)

So we have 5 rabbits total.

Hope all is well with your family! Back to the paper work

 

[Hens and Roos]

This is my third year celebrating my birthday on BYC. I think it was two years ago when the thread actually got shut down on my birthday. It SUCKED big time! It was my Bday and all I wanted was time away from all my real life responsibilities so that I could hang out with my friends in the virtual party land on BYC. Then the thread got shut down because a couple of other folks on here weren't playing nice.... Once again, it sucked...

I couldn't get another thread started for my marans friends and me to hang out for the night... I had to just go to bed..

Glad to see the new faces

and I am really glad there are some folks around this year to celebrate with me!

My kids went to a church Fall festival this evening... My son came home with a plate of cupcakes... How appropriate - cupcakes on my BDAY... Yum Yum..

Hope you had a great one! Might as well party all week

 

[TheCosmos]

Thank you for the information! I really appreciate it. I will take more pictures and look at him closer to check for the ewe back. He does have a good amount of shank feathers so I guess pictures can be deceiving like you said. All these chickens are pretty young. He's only around 5 months old. And yeah, all the hens were "on alert" so their tails are too high! Thank you! It gives me other things to look at (especially the back angles) that I didn't realize could/would be faults. I will get better pictures soon. Thanks again!
Tina

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, Math! Hope it was wonderful!!





Conformation can be looked at regardless of color variety - that being said, one must note that pictures are not the best way to judge conformation. You really can't tell if they are in a relaxed/natural pose, or not.

From what I can see (and this is only my opinion, I am not an expert), the male has a ewe back. (Shaped like a "U" from the side). It should be flat, and should be slightly uphill, rather than horizontal. His underline is not great - it should be more rounded. His tail angle is good, eye color is good, he does lacks shank feathering - if he has none, he would be disqualified in the show pen, but if he has sparsely feathered shanks, that would be only a fault. His wing is held almost exactly horizontal, which is optimal. I've seen many that have angles much too low.

The blue female show next has a VERY nice underline and a good wing angle as well. However, she also appears ewe backed to me, just a bit. And her tail angle is too high. But, that could be becuase she is "on alert" - it's not often that you see females (well, not nearly as often) with high tail angles as you see with the males.

The younger blue is more difficult to tell, as she's walking, so we cannot know for sure whether her back angle is true or not. Her tail is too high, but again, that could be due to her being spooked. Her back does appear to be flat as it should be, but the angle may be wrong - it should not slope down from the tail toward the front. If you coudl get a pic of her standing still that would be better. Her wing appears to have an issue - check for split wing. That would be a DQ. Her eye color is also not correct, however, it could change as she ages, she's still a bit young to know for sure. (It should be orange.)

Again, these are only my personal opinion & I am not an expert. As far as whether or not you can/should show them - I would not want to make a recommendation there based on this few number of pictures, but I would say overall, they are good examples (not great, not horrible) of the breed.

 

[Raven1]

Happy Late Birthday Math!!!

 

[math ace]

Math and Blarney~ I will PM you both the recipe I use.

Ok, here are the 4 eggs that will be mailed out to Gilavina today for the egg show. I was packaging them this morning and dropped one out of my fingers straight down onto 2 of the 6 I had been collecting.....of course it had to break the 2 darkest ones of the bunch.

NICE color... AND they came darker

 

[math ace]

Hope you had a great one! Might as well party all week

That's my kinda of thinking!

 

[math ace]

Thank you - Wynette and Raven1. I appreciate the good thoughts...

Pink... No Hurry, but don't forget about me and the email. I have a big batch of blackberries in my backyard. Every MAY we get a small harvest of blackberries.
So far, I've made blackberry jam and cobbler with them... I've got More access to blueberries than blackberries. I would assume that I could very easily convert the recipe to use blueberries instead...

 

[ChickenFootRnch]

Ok hello all the Maran-ers out there. I saw some nice things on here, and wow what nice eggs Pinkchick.
I have a question, well let me tell you my story then ask. I orderd meat birds from a hatachery and got one free chick. that chick started it all, HE was a cuckoo maran and he was not freezer bound. So he needed some gal pals. I orderd 5 cuckoo maran pullets. they are hens now and are wonderful. Ok now back to my question. My hens are different shades from gray and white to very dark grey and white, that does not bother me. My issue is their egg color. It used to be dark and now I cannot tell any difference between their eggs and my other brown eggers. I wondered if there was a reason the color has faded or is this normal? Two of my girls went broody and gave us 6 chicks, only one was a cuckoo

. But after the break, their eggs never darkend. Any advice would be appriceated. Thank You.

 

[heath_elisha]

nothing compared to pink's ... but happy to finally start seeing some chocolates in the nest boxes! Much more red then I expected....

 

[BarnGoddess01]

Reporting in and just to piss off Don and being totally off topic .... I had a brilliant day at the 2012 Canadian National -- all about my Silkies ....

Overdue reporting on the Canadian Nationals on Saturday: BRILLIANT day for my first time showing. I'm still trying to get back down to earth ... Mickey and Minnie, my black Silkies, were 1st in both their classes, and also took BV and RV. My Splash pullet, Evangeline, took second to the Splash pullet that won the whole enchilada (Best of Breed out of 40!) which totally made my day! Congratulations to Sara for that spectacular win. (And Catdance Silkies who is really responsible for most of these birds as all we did was hatch them!) Kurt and Jessica, my "Opals" as the judge labelled them, (aka - Porcelains/Blue Cream) were awarded BV and RV in the AOV class with Jess getting special mention and my colourful Kurt being a TOTAL crowd favourite even if the judge, Terry Britt, just barely tolerated him. (Kurt has some issues that still need to be worked on. Too much colour, big comb, light eyes.) He (the judge) had GREAT things to say about Jessica and felt that I would do well moving forward with the pair.

My white cockerel, Elliot, did me MOST proud. Took 3rd against some of the best in North America (Shorty Polston and Joe McHugh who also received RB for his white pullet.) Experienced showers and breeders. 8 in Elliot's class and he kept up. My cup runneth over.

Needless to say, I had a GREAT day! Made a point of asking Terry if my birds were too big. He said everybody is right in line with what he is seeing all over North America right now. His assessment of my birds was completely in line with my own which gives me great confidence.

Nobody was DQ'd, not even my splash pullet with the extra toenail - and she even placed! Learned a lot. Was great to have the opportunity to have so many experienced judges and breeders willing to look at and handle my birds, offer opinions, and advice. I am VERY excited to move forward.

(If only I could do so well with my Standards but I'm counting on Don to show me the way ...)