Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[OHmamma]

Nicol, My Whites lay at least a #6 and some of the wheaten lay 7-8 . I believe that with the wheaten crossing with the light Sussex you would have some undercolor problems and even some tinging of the feathers with cream color. Some of this is just thinking is not proven as of today , but can tell you before fall for sure.

You still have to decide if you would rather cut a #6 down or a #8 I have seen #9 with good wheaten. You would just have to choose them carefully too, not all wheaten have slate underfluff, I have some really washed out wheaten hens that have white light cream, I was planning on breeding them with whites to darken the eggs more, you just have to have an assortment of even off colored birds if you want to experiment

besides look....wheaten based .... http://maranschickenclubusa.com/ColumbianErminevariety.html

 

[OHmamma]

haha thanks. I do love watching this cross a lot, they are so docile and beefy

They look like they are too. I keep a few Dark Brahma hens because I love the slow moving vehicles.

I never thought of them as wearing tweed but now I wont be able to get it out of my head!

 

[gilavina]

They look like they are too. I keep a few Dark Brahma hens because I love the slow moving vehicles.

I never thought of them as wearing tweed but now I wont be able to get it out of my head!

Haha, I've always thought that about the pencileds since I was little. There used to be an old poultry guy around here that always came to the shows in tweed suits, and had a cane. I used to giggle when he would stop and look at any of the silver penciled breeds because I always thought he was dressing to look like them.

 

[gilavina]

Oh, I should probably add in there OH that that sussex cross girl was only about 3 1/2 months in that shot.

 

[OHmamma]

She is certainly very pretty. I bet a roo like that would be awesome too.

 

[kmatt87]

yay! i brought my little roo back to the feed store i got him from. turns out they mixed up my order so he has nice new home to go to and they're giving me 2 cm chicks to replace him

 

[Irishgirl]

No, I haven't looked down his throat yet. Getting a pic was hard enough! But I will look and let you know. Thank you!

Well, I finally caught him, wrestled his beak open, and... Nothing. And it appears to have gotten slightly bigger. Do you think it would be safe to pop? Or should I just see if it goes away by its self?

 

[gilavina]

She is certainly very pretty. I bet a roo like that would be awesome too.

yeah, I processed them all, but will do the cross again this spring. The males came out in two distinct patterns, both birchen type, one black birchen and the other was a blue, with an almost porcelain coloring on the wings and silver on the neck and saddle feathers.

 

[desertmarcy]

Hi all, I haven't posted in a while. The chicken condo I bought (series of 4'x4'x7' tall pens) was built with recycled materials, and the corrugated metal roofing was full of holes, leaked horribly, plus too level. I took the whole roof off and made a wooden framework attached to the top, with a decent slope, and put the metal back up. Plus I had some standing seam metal roofing left over from our house and put that to good use in the hallway of the condo---that standing seam metal roofing system is awesome, and the company lent me (for free) the tool to crimp the panels together. I used every darn good scrap that I had! That project has been taking me weeks, but finally finished it and my spare Black Copper Marans' comb looks back to normal now---so I took the best 4 Blue Copper Marans pullets I raised from last year and have them in individual pens to mate with him--phase 3 of my Blue Copper breeding project which got off to a hard start with some not so good hatching egg stock. These pullets are improved over the last, so hopefully I will see some more improvement.

 

[kowgurl62]

Since you would be making marans bantams you have to start backwards than other breeds unless you aquire a good bantam marans cock. In that case you would scrap the cockerels and keep the pullets and breed them back to their father to get 2 bantam genes,

Otherwise you have to introduce the bantam gene twice using a bantam roo over a LF marans hen. You scrap all the pullets the first time and use a male back over the mother. Then you will have them carrying 2 genes +egg color capability. You will still have to use breed reduction.

The first cross (F1) you get a mix, they are smaller but they can still produce LF. The second (F2) cross are similar in size but still a little big.

Either way it is a time consuming process. Breeders that have introduced the bantam gene use a black bantam langshan.

-Nicol

Nicol,
Do you know if anyone has ever used brown-red bantam cochins to make bantam marans? I thought if I could find a tighter feathered bantam(not like these poofy show birds), I would try working on bantams. I know the brown-red's like I would want to use are out there, I have a picture of the perfect ones, but have been unable to find the lady that had them. Or would there be something in the cochins that wouldn't work well crossing on Marans?