Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Zanna]

It's folks like this that make keeping the color varieties pure such hard work. I've actually seen worse than this on eBay.

I'm happy that there is a place like BYC to help people.

Wow....... I have no understanding or tolerance for people not educating themselves and thus selling chickens so far from the correct standard to people who don't know any better Here, here for BYC amazing/helpfull members, and the various breed organizations that work so hard to promote what is correct in the breeds.

 

[SeattleLeah]

These blue marans are exactly 5 weeks old today. I thought I would be sure of gender because from what I have seen BCM roos are very apparent by 4 weeks. Are blues a little harder to tell? Any input would be greatly appreciated! They are a little messy from their fermented please, so you will have to excuse them.

Chick 1 - such a pretty light blue almost lavender color!
small pale comb and very small but pink wattles which I just noticed for the first time today. Until now, I thought this one was for sure a pullet.







Chick 2
Small pale comb, small pink wattles.


roo stance in this photo but usually stands more like a girl.



Chick 3
This chick is smaller than the others and I thought roo at first because the comb has been slightly larger than the other all along. Now Im not sure?










Thanks!!!!

 

[Oil Patch]

I ended up with a Roo like that from a (reputable) hatchery. Lesson learned!

 

[3riverschick]

Have any of you seen this listing? They are supposed to be Black copper Marans...the roo has a marans look but all that orange on the breast...is he even a black copper marans? Just curious what you guys think.
http://r.ebay.com/obrF73

I wrote the seller and enlightened him/her about the boys coloring. Hope they listen.
Karen

 

[kitchenchick]

"There is no difference other than clean legs. Egg color standard is also the same. If you cross them you will come out with both clean and feathered or poorly feathered. As a Marans breeder that keeps clean legged birds too, I would say that I prefer clean legs for mine especially in bad weather. I do get requests for clean legged chicks but not often, so if you are wanting to sell chicks or eggs eventually you might not want to go that way. My clean legged hens lay just as dark as my feather legged ones but people wanting Marans usually want the French Standard.

Your bigger problems will likely come from crossing lines, when a breeder establishes a line they have carefully selected for specific traits and bred out flaws, when you cross two totally unrelated lines you could end up with quite a mess that you would have to try to breed back out.

-Nicol"


Pinkchick,"I agree with OH and also wanted to add that when crossing lines it is most likely that egg color will suffer as well, but just as OH stated above careful selections along with only setting the darkest eggs will help you regain egg color.

"




Thanks! . The egg color has improved. I think it may have been a stress/environment change. Moved them to new pen and change up on food. I got a pullet egg yesterday that was light, but I think the dogs were around the run when she went to nest. Last year I didn't set anything less than a 5 out of the girls. I really stumped me when I pulled eggs and had barred rock colors out of this set of hens.

He does have a very good line of French standard marans, and I've never hatched a clean legged chick out of my birds so far. I think I'll stay away from the English for now just because of room.

 

[varanisblack]

Marys trio of Black coppers and her blue and blue splash Marans chicks.

#1 Big Daddy Elvis


His girls "Davis line" who are now laying and the eggs are not quite the chocolatte brown high end of the egg scale but they blow Marys brown egg layers away!!



Now for the chicks who have me confused, they were all got at 1 day old and were all exactly the same size but now some have dwarfed the others and are 3X the size of the little ones??

The splash Marans chicks,

#1 the little one.



#2 the one with the most blue and the largest of the three.



#3 the one with the biggest comb and almost the same size as the largest one.



The blues who are bigger than the little splash but not as big as the larger splashes,

#1 a little bigger than the little splash.



#2 almost as big as the larger splashes.



Not sure what to make of them or how to tell the sexes but we are hoping to get a good trio out of the bunch.
Also how would you recommend we set them up? should we do splash to splash blue to blue or should we mix them up?
I know they all came from splash to splash parents.

Thanks Mary and Scott Ras.


Edit:
The top right two were the eggs we got from one of our girls before we introduced Elvis to the girls,
The girls were with the laying hens at this time and we are sure that it was one of the girls that layed them!!
This is about the average morning haul! some mornings more some less.

 

[MultiKwolf2]

i love the eggs they look awsome i wish i could have one

 

[MultiKwolf2]

oo yeah the first one look beautiful

 

[pmessner]

These blue marans are exactly 5 weeks old today. I thought I would be sure of gender because from what I have seen BCM roos are very apparent by 4 weeks. Are blues a little harder to tell? Any input would be greatly appreciated! They are a little messy from their fermented please, so you will have to excuse them.

Chick 1 - such a pretty light blue almost lavender color!
small pale comb and very small but pink wattles which I just noticed for the first time today. Until now, I thought this one was for sure a pullet.







Chick 2
Small pale comb, small pink wattles.


roo stance in this photo but usually stands more like a girl.



Chick 3
This chick is smaller than the others and I thought roo at first because the comb has been slightly larger than the other all along. Now Im not sure?










Thanks!!!!

Did anyone give you some help with these... I still have trouble sexing... I will stare and stare for weeks... I don't quite have to wait out to see who is crowing but sometimes it sure feels that way. What has been confusing for me is the ratio of boys to girls... I always get so many more roos which does not make any sense to me... as many as 5 to 2? My guess on yours would be pullet, roo, roo... but they are still a bit too young for me. The dark pink on the wattle of the first is a bit bothersome but the body type and tail feathering are different so maybe she will stay a she. Others are way more knowledgeable than me... maybe a picture update at 6 wks will help.

 

[SeattleLeah]

Did anyone give you some help with these... I still have trouble sexing... I will stare and stare for weeks... I don't quite have to wait out to see who is crowing but sometimes it sure feels that way. What has been confusing for me is the ratio of boys to girls... I always get so many more roos which does not make any sense to me... as many as 5 to 2? My guess on yours would be pullet, roo, roo... but they are still a bit too young for me. The dark pink on the wattle of the first is a bit bothersome but the body type and tail feathering are different so maybe she will stay a she. Others are way more knowledgeable than me... maybe a picture update at 6 wks will help.

Thanks! I am still holidng on to hope that chick 1 is a girl. I will update with pics next week.