Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Ivywoods]

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Hi Susie,
Do you mean the 4 foot deep inside house would be divided into individual pens with kennel fence run outside of each? That would be great for your breeding pens & alot less trouble than the ones I build since you already have the bones. Good for you. I had nothing to start with but a big open corral.

After talking with my hubby, he wants to rebuild the entire thing. That will make it 20' x 40'. Woo hoo! That should be enough for chicken math for a while. If I need more than that, well, it will just be too much. The only problem with the plan is that I know it will take the two of us quite a while to do this ourselves. I will have to put my breeding plans on hold for a while.

This old barn has a cement floor, and really isn't far from the well, and we will be able to run electricity to it. That will make it so much nicer, especially in the winter. I'm sure if I built little breeder houses they wouldn't be very good for the winter. There should even be room for hubby's buck goat in one end of it.

OH BTW- We had twins last night. Buck and a doe, nubians. These two are the biggest goat kids I have ever seen. They are bigger than our two week olds. We now have a total of 7.... triples, twins, and these twins last night. They are SO cute!

 

[Casey76]

My eggs arrived

Unfortunately 3 of the 12 were smooshed

I contacted the vendor, and he said he would send me another 10 for just the price of the postage

I'm so lucky to be in this hobby (generally) everyone is sooo nice!

 

[gilavina]

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Thanks Kim,

Should have chicks in about 3 or 4 days starting to hatch from some of my stock...and these will go in today....I just got a deal from Helen Byers I couldn't turn down... (and yes...I do hope I am still on the waiting list for some blue Marans eggs from you when you are ready!)
How are your hatches goin?

You go girl!

Come On Chickies!!!!

Yep....you sure are on "my list"..............

eta:
fogot to answer your question about hatches.....3 eggs out of 10 are in lockdown....Valentine's babies??????

. The ones I pulled were mostly all pullet eggs......funny thing is that one of them that's in lockdown is another pullets very first egg and is doing fine upon candling this morning.

The other 2 eggs in there are both out of my very dark blue copper roo Bill's pen...one is from a Splash Copper pullet and the other is from a Black Copper pullet. The Splash girls eggs always hatch and this will be the second egg to hatch from the young BCM to hatch if it does, but I have only set a total of 5 of her eggs for testing. The girls that you like are produced from this rooster. I am also working on eye color with offspring from this pen.....both the Splash and the BCM have a darker eye....darker than I like and Bill's AWESOME eye color passes to almost all of his offspring. I think I only have one girl from him that has a slightly darker eye, but not as dark as the Splash or BCM. So far, the couple of boys and one pullet from my first hatches of this new season (my whacky hatching season this time started in October and hasn't stopped since) are showing nice eye color already at 4 mos old.
I have more set for lockdown on the 16th. Haven't candled those yet. Another 16 set for lockdown on the 24th. Nothing on the books after that....YET.

haha "my list" sounds so ominous

good thing it a good kind of list! haha

Sounds like both of us will have possible Valentine's babies. When I set them, I didn't realize day 21 would be the 14th...but I think it makes for a pretty fantastic present! I opened my incubator on Tuesday to get out my hatching tray so i could get some measurements to make little dividers out of that plastic cross stitchy kind of stuff someone on here mentioned using and decided I'd go ahead and candle. I set 34, quite a few of them were pullet eggs, all but 4 looked great. Only one was totally clear, the other 3 had developed somewhere around 8-10 days I'd guess and stopped...so I'm gonna be moving those 30 to the hatching tray (equipped with my handy dandy new dividers). I'm excited to get those eggs from Helen in the incubator...I was pleased with how dark quite a few of the eggs from her splash Marans were. The photo I took does not do them justice at all. I tried several settings on my camera and that's the closest I could get to it, but it washed them out still. I'm guessing between those eggs and the ones I've collected from my pens...I'll probably have 50 or so to go in

Sounds like things are going well with hatching....all the way from October...I wish I could pull that off. I'm excited to see how your chicks develop...especially outta that big boy of yours...the girls he produced are beautiful! That's great news about your work on the eye color and that he is throwing good prospects. There's always something to work on, isn't there?

Mostly, I am starting out this year just hoping that I can gain some momentum in the right direction. It's fantastic to talk with other people as excited as I am....family and friends kind of just give me that look But....it doesn't really stop me from dancing around and being a total goof at the thought of chicks and the potential they have for my breeding program.

 

[Raven1]

Very happy today I got 16 BBS Marans eggs today!

Thought they were coming first of next week but what a nice surprize! Great color for BBS can't wait to see what hatches

 

[chasehope]

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Can you post pictures of them? I would like to see the color!

 

[bairo]

Hello everyone. I will be ready in about two weeks to purchase some pullets. We want three of those to be french BCM's. I contacted a guy from Ebay that had some eggs and he ended up living close to me. He also told me he had some 1-month olds for 10.00 per each. I think that is a great price for what I saw in the pics, but am no expert. I wandered if anyone on here might know of him and his birds. His name is Michael P. and he lives in or near Sevierville, Tn (Eastern part of TN.)
Would love to hear from anyone that knows his flock and lines.

 

[berkeleysprings]

names not ringing a bell 4 me but mabe others i know wheaten marans only , but i was thinking if you could post some pictures of parrent stock someone here could rate the birds that produceed your pullets wich would be more important in my opinon , not wether they came from some line special because a nice bird is a nice bird
to me its more important to produce nice birds and not to keep a line for namesake ps no disrespect to lines or people intended


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[Mountain Mel]

I picked up a new"brooder box" today for more new chickies. It sounds like Pinkchick has some almost ready to hatch.....
I have noticed that some of my eggs -- and I'm sure they are from the Cuckoo Marans, not the Welsummers -- have small darker speckles on them. Some eggs, just a few speckles. Other eggs are totally covered with tiny dark speckles. What really makes me think that they come from Marans and not Wellies is that some of the eggs are almost spherical...isn't that a Marans trait? I know, I know...take some pics! Maybe tomorrow.

 

[math ace]

I Liked my last brooder project so well, that I have started a "new and improved" brooder project.

It keeps raining and I'll keep building. . . . I am really leaning towards all the confinement from the constant rain being the cause of my birds newest tick "egg eating".

Wynette, I'll have to check with the feed store tomorrow and see if I can get one of those purina blocks that your link referred to

 

[Mountain Mel]

OK...heres some pics of my speckled eggs....whaddaya think, folks -- are they just Wellies, even the round one?

Maybe I'm just bein' stupid and they are all Wellie eggs....wouldn't be the first time...