Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Oil Patch]

We have a LOT of raccoon in this area. I use live traps baited with plain sardines in oil. I works great most of the time. I have treated a few wondering tomcats to fish dinner but it is worth it to catch the raccoons. In warm weather, I have caught them with spring traps baited with foil wrapped on the trigger submerged in shallow water. I know the spring traps are pretty cruel but I have witnessed how they (raccoons) treat chickens too many times.

 

[Organics North]

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.

Good info thanks.....

 

[Hens and Roos]

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

Very nice looking!

 

[snowbird]

Question for anyone that might know.

Blood spots in the Marans eggs. Has anyone tried to cull out the hens laying the eggs with the spots. I am wondering if we cull out the spot females and only breed to the eggs from the female that do not have spots would the eggs from this still have spots even though they were clean.
Ther should be a way to breed this egg spots out of the Marans. This would require testing all the female for the spot and recording the band number of the ones that were clean for the blood spots. Has anyone done any testing down this line of thinking.

The only Marans females I ever had that had the blood spot were the BC and I would quess we could include any of the BC crosses also.

 

[Keara]

Question for anyone that might know.

Blood spots in the Marans eggs. Has anyone tried to cull out the hens laying the eggs with the spots. I am wondering if we cull out the spot females and only breed to the eggs from the female that do not have spots would the eggs from this still have spots even though they were clean.
Ther should be a way to breed this egg spots out of the Marans. This would require testing all the female for the spot and recording the band number of the ones that were clean for the blood spots. Has anyone done any testing down this line of thinking.

The only Marans females I ever had that had the blood spot were the BC and I would quess we could include any of the BC crosses also.

In my limited experience, I see blood or meat spots in pullet eggs or a mature hen after a hard molt. I have not yet had a BCM hen who lays blood spots regularly. Anyone else?

-Keara

 

[snowbird]

In my limited experience, I see blood or meat spots in pullet eggs or a mature hen after a hard molt. I have not yet had a BCM hen who lays blood spots regularly. Anyone else?

-Keara

Keara, I have done some research in the old Poultry books and most say that the Spots are genetic. The end result might be that one line might have more of a problem than another. With the small amount of females I still have will try and do a small test with them and mark the eggs and she what the result will be.
Since I have always been more interested in developing a show bird more than the really dark eggs. As of now have not done anything to confirm if the books are right.
All info is appreciated though.

 

[pinkchick]

HI MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good to see ya! Hope everything over your direction is going super!

Love your fella that you posted! Boy I sure had to look twice....he looks very similar to my young cockerel here.

 

[DMRippy]

My original Marans had blood spots in their eggs... they did outgrow it. My new pullets don't seem to have that problem. I had not thought about it really. I might get some tiny spots but I get those in a lot of pullet eggs. Glad it is not as bad this round of pullets. That was kinda

I would just get it out of the skillet but still

 

[math ace]

Question for anyone that might know.

Blood spots in the Marans eggs. Has anyone tried to cull out the hens laying the eggs with the spots. I am wondering if we cull out the spot females and only breed to the eggs from the female that do not have spots would the eggs from this still have spots even though they were clean.
Ther should be a way to breed this egg spots out of the Marans. This would require testing all the female for the spot and recording the band number of the ones that were clean for the blood spots. Has anyone done any testing down this line of thinking.

The only Marans females I ever had that had the blood spot were the BC and I would quess we could include any of the BC crosses also.

This question has MY NAME all over it. I had a horrid time with Blood / Meat spots in my original flock.
The Blood / Meat spots were much worse whenever I had lights hooked up in the coops during the winter.
It use to be so bad, that I would give the marans eggs away with a WARNING. When I would sell a dozen of eating eggs, I would package them in 18 pack, 12 would be from by delawares and speckled sussex. The other 6 eggs would be FREE marans eggs due to the blood / meat spot issue. I could never figure out which of the original girls was the responsible hen(s), so it wasn't possible to cull them.

Speaking of identifing hens, Don .... How's that project coming?

I have 8 to 10 girls currently on the property that are offspring my original flock. I very RARELY see blood or meat spots from these girls. If I do see them, they are much smaller than the original flocks blood / meat spots. All the offspring are from a crossing of the orignal hens and an unrelated male. I have daughters and grandaugthers of the original hens on the property.

My view, based on my own personal experience, is that you can eliminate the blood / meat spot issues in future generations. I will note that my original hens laid HUGE jumbo eggs. All of their offspring are laying normal sized large eggs. Perhaps that is why the issue has disappeared in my stock...

 

[snowbird]

Lisa, I have to admit that I myself do not at present know what is up with the blood spots and I do believe it is worth investigation and see if we can pin point the problem. I have not started the id. part with the females but plans are in the works to begin shortly. The only way I know to id. the females is to # all eggs and break and see if there is blood. Once a female is considered clean then hatch some eggs and grow them out and and test the young when they start to lay.

I never used artificial lights on the Marans I was collecting eggs for hatching so that would rule out the lights. In the Poultry breeding book by Morley Jull he explains what happens in the process.