Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[flgardengirl]

These discussions are alwasy so interesting to me; I believe it has a ton to do with what altitude you're in. I've tried incubating at lower humidity as Ernie mentions above, and I always get sticky chicks, to the point that some can't even hatch (and I am a firm believe in not helping, so it's awful to open up an egg to try and find out what happened and see that the chick was simply stuck & couldn't get out).

I'm in Michigan; I run my humidity at 40-45 through day 19, and then increase it to 65. After hatching thousands of chicks, and experimenting with the humidity levels, this seems to work best for me.

I think once you find out what seems to work for your area, just keep doing it the same way.

I practically completely dry incubate here in FL in the summer. I fill the water chamber up once when setting eggs, this evaporates in about 4 days. When they go in lock down I bump it up to 50% or so.
In the winter, when its drier and we have the heat running at night in the house: I fill up the water channels when I first put eggs in and then one more time halfway through incubation that's it. On lock down I bump it up again to around 50%. I do the same with all the varieties of chicken eggs. I agree it depends on your humidity, temp, altitude and on your individual incubator too.
Get cheap eggs to start with and experiment with what works.

 

[DMRippy]

I use Flexwatt in my bator and hatcher. I added a light to help boost the heat but in the cold it is not keeping up. I have a food dehydrator and I am going to put the base with the heating element in today to boost it some more. Maybe it will keep up now.

 

[Organics North]

Rooster from 2011 hatch


Pullet from spring 2012 hatch (Offspring of above rooster)
Sorry she was not to happy about leaving the coop for the photo shoot, also tail feathers messed up because she is a working girl spending every other day in the nest box producing an egg since 5 or 6 months of age.


Sorry to barge in on the incubator convo..but saw Pinks posts and needed to share my BBS Marans with her..
ON

 

[flgardengirl]

I use Flexwatt in my bator and hatcher. I added a light to help boost the heat but in the cold it is not keeping up. I have a food dehydrator and I am going to put the base with the heating element in today to boost it some more. Maybe it will keep up now.

I tested mine in the summer with the flex watt and it was fine. Now that its a little cooler at night it doesn't seem to work as well so re-doing the whole thing lol. Mine is even a wine cooler and is very well insulated but it still makes a difference :/

 

[flgardengirl]

Rooster from 2011 hatch


Pullet from spring 2012 hatch (Offspring of above rooster)
Sorry she was not to happy about leaving the coop for the photo shoot, also tail feathers messed up because she is a working girl spending every other day in the nest box producing an egg since 5 or 6 months of age.


Sorry to barge in on the incubator convo..but saw Pinks posts and needed to share my BBS Marans with her..
ON

Hard to see on eye color and all that but they look nice from what I can tell. I like your roos back and tail set and they both look big bodied. Haha your poor hen looks cold...she wants to come to FL for spring break in the winter My girls get their tails looking that way sitting in the nestboxes too. Plus dh put some of the breeding coop roosts a little too close to the walls.
I have a big fat silver sussex pullet who looks like she has a jacked-up wry tail due to those roosts. She likes to sit with her butt smooshed up against the wire mesh behind the roost. This reminds me we need to re-do those roosts too. List never ends around here lol.

 

[Organics North]

His eye color seems to be that reddish bay color.. yes?
Has eye color been an issue with BBS?.... I am just so focused on getting the copper that pops up say 50% of the time gone, while still maintaining OK egg color..
Thanks..
ON

 

[Organics North]

Yes body size is big and broad, some of the hens are absolutely enormous. I mean small turkey here.. The cockerels have all been tall with broad chests. Years are clicking by, been waiting util we sell our place in Wisconsin and get settled on the west coast to focus on breeding BBS Marans.. I may need to break down and hatch with more than the occasional broody Ameracuran . (Have yet to see a Marans go broody.)

I am happy to see many of the same people still working on the BBS Marans..

 

[snowbird]

I have seen some on BYC asking why do they lose egg color when crossing different lines of Marans. Lets say that you have two family of Marans that you are working with and they have real dark egg color and you decide that you want to cross these two lines together. The pullets from this cross of the two family will most likely not lay as dark of egg as they were hatched from. If you breed these pullets back into the family of the female they came from most likely the egg color will come back.

This is one reason you can't cross different family every year if you are breeding for egg color. The real Dark egg color has never been a priority for me when breeding Marans. If I have a #6 I am well pleased. A lot of well built females with proper color are not the best dark egg producers. The darkest egg layers were always the best type Marans .

This is just something I have seen in my own breeding of Marans, if it helps anyone that is fine and if not all is well.

 

[Wynette]

I have seen some on BYC asking why do they lose egg color when crossing different lines of Marans. Lets say that you have two family of Marans that you are working with and they have real dark egg color and you decide that you want to cross these two lines together. The pullets from this cross of the two family will most likely not lay as dark of egg as they were hatched from. If you breed these pullets back into the family of the female they came from most likely the egg color will come back.

This is one reason you can't cross different family every year if you are breeding for egg color. The real Dark egg color has never been a priority for me when breeding Marans. If I have a #6 I am well pleased. A lot of well built females with proper color are not the best dark egg producers. The darkest egg layers were always the best type Marans .

This is just something I have seen in my own breeding of Marans, if it helps anyone that is fine and if not all is well.

I have found this to be true, as well. But I've also seen odd things (Don, I think I PM'd you about this several months ago) that come out of nowhere regarding egg color. For instance, some pullets that were third generation, with the same parents, were laying darker - quite a bit darker - than the parent stock or the grandparent stock. I can't imagine why...but I'll take it!

 

[snowbird]

I have found this to be true, as well. But I've also seen odd things (Don, I think I PM'd you about this several months ago) that come out of nowhere regarding egg color. For instance, some pullets that were third generation, with the same parents, were laying darker - quite a bit darker - than the parent stock or the grandparent stock. I can't imagine why...but I'll take it!

Wynette, yes that is the way it should be as they are being bred closer. If you ever need to ad new blood to a line the first year they will probably be lighter. One of my Mentors always told me to be prepared to ad new blood about every five year and eliminate a lot of the accumulated faults. This is the way I have worked my fowl for the past 50 years. I try and keep this all wrote down someplace.