Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[cluckoo13]

Hi everyone, I had posted a question somewhere else on this site and I am new here so please excuse me until I figure things out. I am going to post here since this is a Maran thread.

I have 4 day old chicks. I have 9 black copper marans, one black chick that looks like a black copper maran but has white detail on its face and white wing tips, and I also have a light colored chick that hatched from a very dark brown egg. The rooster is a sweet Black Copper Maran. The hens are buff orpington, (we didn't hatch any light colored eggs) black copper maran, and we have one wheaten hen and one lavender buff. I am thinking the light yellow chick is a wheaten since it hatched from a dark brown egg. The black chick with white detail I am thinking is a BCM/lavender cross? We were expecting all BCM since the eggs were so dark and we have a lot of BCM hens. Any help or pictures are appreciated.

 

[Glory Bee]

Thank you for responding. I did know about avoiding the inbreeding. This is very helpful to know about using the female as the outsource.
It seems a bit easier to have about 5 pens rather than a layered marking system.

 

[OHmamma]

Snowbird and Oh Big Momma and others,

What are your recommendations for a new Marans owner's management of one brooder, one broody cage, 2 (8x10)pens with 250 sq ft. secure runs with attached free range?I realize this is a small system. At most, I could add one more pen later.

Would you recommend only buying,hatching and culling to only hens for a few years before adding a rooster? Is a Marans rooster easy for a new owner to handle?

I had interest in German New Hampshires and Welsummers. It appears the Marans temperament is good for a beginner. I am interested in their beauty, meat, and eggs.SOP interests me.

Hi,

That sounds like a very decent set up for starting out.

What you decide to do would depend on your goals and of course the stock that you can find. To start out I would suggest finding a nice young quad of birds from a reputable breeder. (one roo 3 hens) Of course you would want to verify egg color with them prior to purchase. You would certainly want to get a feel for the breed before you went into it full force.

I like my roosters and even my kids can handle most of them. Those that know me are aware of my rooster addiction....I love to look at them and I keep a LOT OF ROOSTERS. I have had some mean ones but most are calm enough to be handled by anyone. From my rooster experience there are still going to be mean ones from time to time. With most breeds however, how you treat them and how often you handle them is very important to the overall outcome. Most of my roosters have been shown at some point so they get handled quite a bit. I also do frequent "health checks" on them to make sure there are no issues not seen just by looking at them.

The Welsummers I have seen are a bit flighty for me but those German New Hampshires are quite stunning and seem to be very mellow. Not to be a bad influence or anything but since you have two pens.....

Nicol

 

[spiker]

Are there different breeds of chickens? I thought there was just different colors. LOL!

 

[Glory Bee]

Hi,

That sounds like a very decent set up for starting out.

What you decide to do would depend on your goals and of course the stock that you can find. To start out I would suggest finding a nice young quad of birds from a reputable breeder. (one roo 3 hens) Of course you would want to verify egg color with them prior to purchase. You would certainly want to get a feel for the breed before you went into it full force.

I like my roosters and even my kids can handle most of them. Those that know me are aware of my rooster addiction....I love to look at them and I keep a LOT OF ROOSTERS. I have had some mean ones but most are calm enough to be handled by anyone. From my rooster experience there are still going to be mean ones from time to time. With most breeds however, how you treat them and how often you handle them is very important to the overall outcome. Most of my roosters have been shown at some point so they get handled quite a bit. I also do frequent "health checks" on them to make sure there are no issues not seen just by looking at them.

The Welsummers I have seen are a bit flighty for me but those German New Hampshires are quite stunning and seem to be very mellow. Not to be a bad influence or anything but since you have two pens.....

Nicol

Nicol, sounds like great advice to get some experience and then a quad. I think I should just start with some chicks and general experience. You have a lot of roos?? lol...How do you separate your roosters,hens, and chicks?Do you have at least two pens?Yeah, the GNHs are really pretty.

 

[gilavina]

Well, the odds seem to be working rather well in my favor so far. Out of 22 chicks from one pen, only had 6 cockerels. I did another round of culling on them today at 3 weeks and out of the whole first hatch have held back 33. I didn't get the chance to get photos of them like I would have liked to this last weekend, so will try for this coming weekend. Some of them are total tanks.

 

[Chickenman76]

Hello from Ohio, I am getting ready to breed BCM and was wondering. I have a roo that I was skeptical about breeding to my girls. ? Should I breed him being that he barely has copper in his hackle and saddle feathers?

 

[Sylverfly]

Here's an updated pic of my splash chicks wings coming in. Since they are coming in dark I was wondering if that means it will be a rooster? All the splashes I've looked up with light blue wings have been roosters and the hens all had mostly white wings. Is that generally the case or maybe it was just the sample of photos I looked at?






My camera was not a happy camper with this light so the pics are not showing exactly what they should be, hopefully the slate blue base color can be seen on the wing feathers along with the black splashes of color.

 

[gilavina]

Here's an updated pic of my splash chicks wings coming in. Since they are coming in dark I was wondering if that means it will be a rooster? All the splashes I've looked up with light blue wings have been roosters and the hens all had mostly white wings. Is that generally the case or maybe it was just the sample of photos I looked at?






My camera was not a happy camper with this light so the pics are not showing exactly what they should be, hopefully the slate blue base color can be seen on the wing feathers along with the black splashes of color.

The color really has nothing to do with them being either male or female, many factors go into what you end up with, such as what a line generally throws, what the parents were in terms of color, and other various factors. I've had splashes in pretty much any breed I've raised as I've always had mostly blue breeds and have had both light and dark in both genders

 

[hunter109]

I have some eggs from chickenmans flock right now jw how they will turn out being new to incubators