Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[gilavina]

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?

If I had to choose something to use to create bantam Marans, I would choose Langshans with poor lower tail carriage for a langshan. Since they are part of what went into making a Marans, to me it makes sense that they would be a lot less of a struggle. I have two bantam hens I made with a bantam langshan male onto an overmelanized copper LF hen and both of the offspring females have copper on them. I had to abandon the project due to needing to reprioritize my time.

 

[gilavina]

If I had to choose something to use to create bantam Marans, I would choose Langshans with poor lower tail carriage for a langshan. Since they are part of what went into making a Marans, to me it makes sense that they would be a lot less of a struggle. I have two bantam hens I made with a bantam langshan male onto an overmelanized copper LF hen and both of the offspring females have copper on them. I had to abandon the project due to needing to reprioritize my time.

I should add, I was really careful about the selection of who went on in the breeding program in terms of tail carriage in the offspring and it went really well. I still have two hens from the cross...I guess maybe I haven't given up on it completely, the only thing I do notice, is out of every bird on this place, out of all the breeds, these two birds are the loudest and chattiest of all of them. They are also very friendly

 

[kowgurl62]

If I had to choose something to use to create bantam Marans, I would choose Langshans with poor lower tail carriage for a langshan. Since they are part of what went into making a Marans, to me it makes sense that they would be a lot less of a struggle. I have two bantam hens I made with a bantam langshan male onto an overmelanized copper LF hen and both of the offspring females have copper on them. I had to abandon the project due to needing to reprioritize my time.

I was just thinking the brown-red cochin bantams because of the color, do langshans come in brown-red? I was in contact with a lady who had a perfect pair of br cochin bantams, the male had lower tail carriage, the pair looked a lot like the pictures on the France marans website. If I could find a pair like that, I'd try it. Let me see if I can find that pic.....

Ok, there it is. At least the coloring would be close, unless crossbreeding like that brought out some weird colors.

 

[Runawaylobster]

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.

congrats on your improvement

 

[Hens and Roos]

congrats on your improvement

Runawaylobster- nice picture you have for your avitar

 

[desertmarcy]

congrats on your improvement

Thanks, it was a lot of work. And I am pleased to say I did not fall off a ladder once, and I had 3 of them out there--two 6-footers and an 8-footer. You were talking about my chicken condo roof repair, not the Blue Copper Marans, right?

 

[gilavina]

I was just thinking the brown-red cochin bantams because of the color, do langshans come in brown-red? I was in contact with a lady who had a perfect pair of br cochin bantams, the male had lower tail carriage, the pair looked a lot like the pictures on the France marans website. If I could find a pair like that, I'd try it. Let me see if I can find that pic.....

Ok, there it is. At least the coloring would be close, unless crossbreeding like that brought out some weird colors.

Langshans as far as I know come in black, blue and white. The only thing in cochins I don't know if I'd want to personally deal with is the leg feathering and getting that correct and the looser feathering that most have. Don might be able to give you some advice about the cross. I've never raised cochins, just not my thing I guess.

 

[OHmamma]

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?

HI,
I have one line going that I used Brown Red cochins to make. I crossed the cochin roo with a marans bantam and the cochin hen with a smaller lf marans roo. In another pen I had a langshan bantam roo over two marans bantams. I crossed the offspring from those back and I am now crossing two of the pullets back to langshan. Those will be crossed with Marans. Did I lose you all yet?

The thing is you have to pick a bantam that is not a SQ bird. I used hatchery grade cochin that were not big and puffy and had poor shank feathers, oddly enough they also had black/grey legs and a boxier langshan roo that also had lighter shank feathers and a paler eye color than normal. I will say that I just lucked out on both of those. The cochins were something I picked up for my kids at a 4H swap the langshan was from someone that said he was too ugly to show.

I have crazy notes and charts on all of this. Undecipherable except to me. I had 9 pens going for them last year and will have 12 this year.

As far as colors go I stick to the basic Copper,Black,Blue and cuckoo birds. I don't breed Wheaten.

-Nicol

 

[Runawaylobster]

Runawaylobster- nice picture you have for your avitar

Ah, that's Mr. Bill, who came to me named Billy Ray ... He is the love of my life, he came from setter rescue saveoursetters.org.
OK TMI, I know but he is one awesome doggy

 

[bamachicks8]

Ah,  that's Mr. Bill,  who came to me named Billy Ray ...   He is the love of my life,   he came from setter rescue saveoursetters.org.
OK  TMI, I know but he is one awesome doggy

So glad you decided to rescue. Two of ours are going to rescue next week.