Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[VillageChicken]

Quote:
The only known autosomal red is Mahogany - and it's not supposed to have any consistent affect on chickdown. Silkies are tricky, since they are different in Europe, where I believe most of the genetic study has been done. I think they are more often eb (asiatic partridge) based than in the U.S. which has an affect on chickdown.

So that chick was from black birchen adults? It looks splash on gold to me, maybe with Db again. The splash/blue gene could be diluting the normal dark brown head on chicks with Db.


PHarris - I'd be really surprised if those chicks feather out white. White Marans are indistinguishable from Wheaten at hatch - based on chickdown. Whites will have a little more grey in the legs initially. The two genes that cause white feathering both have white or yellow chickdown. Recessive white sometimes gives a slight silvery gray on silver based birds, but nothing as dark as your chicks. But they are cute!

flgarden- I'm curious what color shanks your parent birchens have. Those chicks have really dark shanks. (yes there goes VC about shanks again)

 

[VillageChicken]

Hey Marans friends, the in-laws arrive in two days, and the DW is due to go in for c-section in a week. I'm sure I will not always have something useful to add to this forum, but if something comes up that you think I'd want to see/read, please PM me as my laptop time will be much more limited in the next few weeks! Thanks!

 

[geebs]

Hey VC: Post some pix of some white from your area... there are very few here in the US.... I have heard of lots with blue legs... The ones I have seen online from the UK are yellow and do in fact look like the wheaton.

Give our love to the Mrs.

The C section thing... totally cool.. I have had one... No labor!!! RAH... predictable outcome...like a known hatch date and time... Congratulations in advance for your new family member...You must notify us of the stork thread when the baby arrives...

 

[math ace]

Quote:
I had a c-section when my twins were delivered. .. . . It was a great way to deliver.. .
Mine was not scheduled - - it was an emergency c - section, but still a great way to deliver healthy and strong babies!

GOOD LUCK.

 

[flgardengirl]

Quote:
I've never seen white chicks so I have no clue what color they are. Whatever yours are, they are cute!

Here's a pic of my 2 newest Birchens. One blue, one black. Not sure on the sexes yet but I think the blue one looks male. They have clean legs.
I have an older blue birchen girl (pretty sure its a girl) that I will get a pic of tomorrow.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/45258_birchens2.jpg

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/45258_birchens1.jpg

Hey Lenette,

Those chickers are looking good! I'm sure hoping you will get two pullets and a cockerel to get you going!

I was going through my chicks and switching out bands for larger ones since they grow so quickly...and I found some wonderful surprises! I have been pretty sick for the last week and so while my family was in town visiting they were nice enough to do chores and handle all that for me. Today is the first day I've felt half way alive, so its the first I've seen my chicks in about a week. I am happy to say that I found some birchen chicks starting to pop up. When I had lost my black birchen boy earlier this spring I was starting to think I hadn't gathered any eggs from the girls he was with that he was responsible for. But, I found 4 just in two of the groups I looked at. I'm excited. I still have my blue birchen boy, so I will still have some hatching out soon, but I am just beyond thrilled that my black birchen boy gave me some chicks before he died. Ohh, and its official that while I was sick my first sussex chicks colored up...and I have some coronations!!! I'm so excited.
I'll have to see if I can find some time to get some updated pics of my chicks soon.

I also have that hatch with all my lovely eggs I'm dying over coming up. Their hatch date is this tuesday! Out of 24 blue birchen shipped eggs I've got 19 that are looking really good, those 12 Lavender Silver Sussex eggs, I have 9 that look really good, and my own blue birchen pen's eggs, my blues eggs, and some blue wyandottes. I'm pretty excited...I'm going to be drowning in a sea of blues! What a lovely way to go!

Goodness! You sure had a doosy of a cold! I was wondering where you were. I am glad you are finally feeling better

Awesome on getting chicks from your Blk Birchen guy and that he was able to leave some genetic pieces of him behind. You are so lucky to have coronations and I am so jealous of your lavender silver sussex. I can't wait to see those babies when they hatch! I think I might need to buy some of those eggs too lol. I had swore off of buying any more eggs and only planning on setting my own the rest of this year BUT that was before I saw the silver sussex LOL! I think I need to thin down the herds over here first though, its getting ridiculous with all these crazy broodies. I hope I get at least one roo and one girl in the birchens lol. It would be funny if they were all girls!

Village Chicken: I don't own the parents of the birchens. I got them from someone who got thier originals from Gabbard Farms and has been trying to improve on thier line. The guy I got mine from didn't have any gold leakage in the ones we saw, but do have non-feathered shanks and that is something they and I will be working on if I can find the right matches for them etc lol. The shanks on these chicks are kinda dark and also on the older light blue birchen chick I have as well.
I hope the feather coloring comes out good on these birchens (no gold leakage) that is my main concern and then I will go from there.
It was hard for me to get started with birchens because it is hard to find any around here but I wanted them bad enough that I am willing to take my time and work with them, I am not in any hurry. It is something that I think I can enjoy and will probably be asking for lots of advice with LOL.
Oh and please post pics of your new baby when its born and good luck to you and your family with the c-section!! What an exciting time for you all !

 

[gilavina]

Quote:
Hey Lenette,

Those chickers are looking good! I'm sure hoping you will get two pullets and a cockerel to get you going!

I was going through my chicks and switching out bands for larger ones since they grow so quickly...and I found some wonderful surprises! I have been pretty sick for the last week and so while my family was in town visiting they were nice enough to do chores and handle all that for me. Today is the first day I've felt half way alive, so its the first I've seen my chicks in about a week. I am happy to say that I found some birchen chicks starting to pop up. When I had lost my black birchen boy earlier this spring I was starting to think I hadn't gathered any eggs from the girls he was with that he was responsible for. But, I found 4 just in two of the groups I looked at. I'm excited. I still have my blue birchen boy, so I will still have some hatching out soon, but I am just beyond thrilled that my black birchen boy gave me some chicks before he died. Ohh, and its official that while I was sick my first sussex chicks colored up...and I have some coronations!!! I'm so excited.
I'll have to see if I can find some time to get some updated pics of my chicks soon.

I also have that hatch with all my lovely eggs I'm dying over coming up. Their hatch date is this tuesday! Out of 24 blue birchen shipped eggs I've got 19 that are looking really good, those 12 Lavender Silver Sussex eggs, I have 9 that look really good, and my own blue birchen pen's eggs, my blues eggs, and some blue wyandottes. I'm pretty excited...I'm going to be drowning in a sea of blues! What a lovely way to go!

Goodness! You sure had a doosy of a cold! I was wondering where you were. I am glad you are finally feeling better

Awesome on getting chicks from your Blk Birchen guy and that he was able to leave some genetic pieces of him behind. You are so lucky to have coronations and I am so jealous of your lavender silver sussex. I can't wait to see those babies when they hatch! I think I might need to buy some of those eggs too lol. I had swore off of buying any more eggs and only planning on setting my own the rest of this year BUT that was before I saw the silver sussex LOL! I think I need to thin down the herds over here first though, its getting ridiculous with all these crazy broodies. I hope I get at least one roo and one girl in the birchens lol. It would be funny if they were all girls!

Village Chicken: I don't own the parents of the birchens. I got them from someone who got thier originals from Gabbard Farms and has been trying to improve on thier line. The guy I got mine from didn't have any gold leakage in the ones we saw, but do have non-feathered shanks and that is something they and I will be working on if I can find the right matches for them etc lol. The shanks on these chicks are kinda dark and also on the older light blue birchen chick I have as well.
I hope the feather coloring comes out good on these birchens (no gold leakage) that is my main concern and then I will go from there.
It was hard for me to get started with birchens because it is hard to find any around here but I wanted them bad enough that I am willing to take my time and work with them, I am not in any hurry. It is something that I think I can enjoy and will probably be asking for lots of advice with LOL.
Oh and please post pics of your new baby when its born and good luck to you and your family with the c-section!! What an exciting time for you all !

Yeah...this cold was terrible...my dad's home health care lady said that 9 out of the 10 cases she is assisting with have been pneumonia this spring. She said that the doctors have been saying conditions are just right for it here this year. So, I feel lucky I dodged that bullet.

I am right there with you on the Lavender Silver sussex. I didn't think I'd get any more hatching eggs this year, but then I saw those....and they just had to come home with me. That was the end of that....haha I went and checked on the incubator settings this morning and am hearing peeping in there. I also found some baby chicks sticking their heads out from underneath a broody wyandotte bantam down in my chicken house.That was a surprise...I had no idea how long she had been setting on them. She had found a little corner behind the nest boxes and I didn't know she had hidden some eggs back there til this morning. They are so cute!

I'm planning on thinning down my birds quite a bit this year as well. Luckily I have quite a few buyers from small farms that just want laying hens, so I know they will go to a good home. I am having a really hard time not opening the incubator. I try to give myself the rule that from the first peeps I hear in the incubator I wait 24 hours to open it. It usually works out pretty well for me. Its gonna be hard to wait til tomorrow morning tho...thats for sure.

I'll have to PM you some pics of my chicks of different ages. I have a few breeds outside of the Marans, and I have some that are just crackerjacks. I'm excited to see what these blue birchens end up doing that I have hatching out right now. I also have an experiment batch of a couple different colors of blues I am hopeful about as well.

 

[search4one]

A couple of questions from a new BCM owner.
I hatched some BCM chicks from two different breeders but both of their lines or Bev Davis and they are now seven weeks old. I have a pullet that has clean legs, I have two cockerels that have heavy feathering on their legs (snowshoes) and still another with some white in the feathering on his legs. Would this be things that you would cull right away, give them some time or does breeding one of the heavily feathered cockerels to the clean legged pullet make since? I plan on culling at some point but I don't have to at this time. But, if this is something that is looked down upon in the BCM breed I figure there is no use feeding them any longer than I have to.
Any advice will be appreciated.

 

[sunshineyarns]

Hi! I am a new chicken owner and was so excited to adopt a little Maran. A neighbor who breeds chickens was asking what kind of Maran she is, what can I tell her? She looks alot like my barred Rock, just more mottled. Here she is, at almost 7 weeks, that little sweetheart. I almost lost her on Day 1, so I am really attached to her, if you can't tell

 

[seabreeze]

Lisa, soooo glad you are feeling better! I was wondering where you were! Welcome back to the land of chickenz n' eggz!!

My blue birchen hatch from Gabbard was VERY disappointing. I gave the eggs to a new chicken-holic friend whose hatch rates have been over 95% and he called me and said, you want the good or bad news first? I told him bad of course. He said out of the blue birchen eggs, only two from 12 hatched and I saved the other 11 for you so when you pick these two up, we can open them together. He asked if the box had been marked fertile eggs, do not xray and I do not think it was, it only said fragile, eggs on it. So he thinks they may have been xrayed and that does the embryo in. Have you guys heard of this?

Anyway, I can't wait to see your new chicks and I am soooo excited for you about the lavender Sussex, I can't wait to see them!!

Keep getting better and hope the sun keeps shining!

 

[AyeUpChuck]

Quote:
Hey Sea! How're those blues I gave you doing?