Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[flgardengirl]

I got a good look at the 3 black babies that I had hatched out in the bator. They are a month old tomorrow. It looks like for sure, I have two solid black little roos (with thick legs and red combs) already and 1 black female out of that group (she is very dainty).
They are sooo friendly. The little girl wants to stay on my hand and ride around with me. If I put her down, she chirps and flies right back up lol. She definitely gets that from her mama lol. These all have good shank feathering.
One of the males has one feather stub on each middle toe though grrr. This is a throw back from my blues (their ancestors). I haven't had it pop up in a few generations and I thought I had it bred out finally. Tricky genes on these Marans...

Looks like there is a clean legged roo and another roo chick running around with the black broody. I am pretty sure the others are female. Darn broody is making them wild. I might have to steal them from her lol.

 

[flgardengirl]

Ok.. finally i got a picture of the celebrated Egg... i'm so happy about it. I think it's somewhere between a 4 and a 6 but not bad.. The camera always lies about the color so it looks darker in the picture than in real life.. but still!!!!

Nice egg! Congrats.

 

[flgardengirl]

I have a hen that lays reddish eggs. You mean something like this?




There's a large variance of color when it comes to Marans eggs and genetics plays a huge role in what you want/breed for.

the RED

 

[flgardengirl]

Here is the picture with the chick in question. sorry not a full body shot, at work and using what I have! It is the chick on the right looking comb forward. You can see the little copper above his right eye. His sister (?) is right below him/her. Does this copper indicate anything?

Nice basket of babies. I have only had a roo bcm chick that hatched out early on in my program that had a copper spot on his head. He ended up with way too much coppering on his body.
I haven't had any girls have the copper spot so I don't know how they feather out.

 

[Lotsapaints]

I had them too my "lines" are Wade and Davis and the ones that have more Wade tend to have the spot and the hens are too dark and lots of the Wade/Jeanne stuff has wheaten I'm always culling for too much red in the breast so I never noticed if that was one of the culls later or not just kept the hen she lays dark eggs and now 2 years old has a nice necklace the other one stayed dark so she's gone she did lay a nice egg.

 

[gilavina]

Just thought I'd declare today 'turkey tuesday', in hopes that we all have lots of beefy and built birds come from hatches this year.

My personal goal is to get a really nice blue copper male similar to this young one I had to cull last fall due to injury, minus the white tail feather of course!

 

[Laingcroft]

I posted this in a new thread but I thought it might be better to ask here. Is anyone breeding with a focus mainly on egg color? I have several FBCMarans (one rooster and eight hens) from Wade lines. They are nice birds with room for improvement in type and egg color is fairly dark (5-7 range on the charts) but I want that dark chocolate No. 9 egg. Since I'm not interested in showing chickens I would be perfectly okay with finding pet quality marans IF it meant I could get those truly dark eggs. Could anyone point me to a group, breeders, egg show site where I could find the really dark egg layers?

Thanks!

 

[DMRippy]

Just thought I'd declare today 'turkey tuesday', in hopes that we all have lots of beefy and built birds come from hatches this year.

My personal goal is to get a really nice blue copper male similar to this young one I had to cull last fall due to injury, minus the white tail feather of course!

Big BOY! He reminds me of my GSBR roo.... not sure he is every going to grow into those legs.

Size might be my main focus this year.... along with all the other stuff. I do have some chunkers. Single matings are coming when I get some breeding pens built.

 

[gilavina]

Big BOY! He reminds me of my GSBR roo.... not sure he is every going to grow into those legs.

Size might be my main focus this year.... along with all the other stuff. I do have some chunkers. Single matings are coming when I get some breeding pens built.

very good lady. I also have quite a few pens to build and about a half a million other things. Just gotta keep pluggin away and doing one thing at a time. Got some new hanging feeders today and got those put up and got my taxes done. Also worked in the garden, less successful was trying to get the tiller going. So, gonna have a neighbor look at it that is good with motors.

 

[gilavina]

By the way lady, you were close, this was Big Boy's son heehee