Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[slick4591]

My first Marans egg. Not bad for a 4 1/2 month old girl. She left it for me on the ground, but won't own up to it. Looks to be a 5, I think.e

 

[Hens and Roos]

Hello all, I have been reading this thread for a few days trying to learn all I can. We are fairly new to chickens. We started our flock last summer with 10 cuckoo maran chicks. We ended up with 6 hens and 4 roosters. We lost half of both to a dog getting in the coop yard. But now our girls are laying our boys are very interested in them (we have them in a seperate pen for now). We had planned on just adding some buff orphingtons and some black australorps to the mix and calling it good. That was until I went to an auction last weekend. Then my hubby knew we were in trouble, lol. We bought a pair of blue splash marans with feather feet. They are my favorites. then we got a trio of Golden Salmon Marans that are just beautiful. Now even hubby is looking at all the different marans out there thinking where we could add pens, lol. My golden salmon girls are already laying eggs, I figured with the move they made and the night at the auction they might take a while to start laying. But nope we have been getting at least one egg a day from the two of them.

Now my question, has anyone had any luck letting a broody hen hatch marans? We are waiting for our first hen to go boody but I don't want to try to hatch my maran eggs that way if it would be better to find someone with an incubator to hatch them.

Thanks,
Cathie

Welcome, I am sure you will get an asortment of answers, personally we don't have any breeds that go broody so it is an incubator for us. Some people have broodies and have good luck with letting them hatch the eggs, hopefully more will weigh in for you.

 

[gilavina]

My first Marans egg. Not bad for a 4 1/2 month old girl. She left it for me on the ground, but won't own up to it. Looks to be a 5, I think.

which egg chart do you have? For a while there was one being circulated that had really light coloring compared to what they should have been. The one with the best coloring is from the MCCUSA club. I'll post the one I got from them so you can see if you have the same one.

 

[Hens and Roos]

My first Marans egg. Not bad for a 4 1/2 month old girl. She left it for me on the ground, but won't own up to it. Looks to be a 5, I think.

Congrats! Nice coloring to the eggs, our girls always take a bit to figure out they should use the nest box to lay the egg in!

 

[slick4591]

Thanks! We weren't expecting anything until late February or March so this was really unexpected. That's the one I have, gilavina, and if fits 5 better than four. I had to keep my desk lamp on it to take a picture because the flash washed it out big time.

 

[BarnGoddess01]

Barngoddess~ I'm sorry and I know you have said this before but are you in lockdown right now?

Just on day 5 here. Hatching buddies with Gilavina! Impatiently waiting until this weekend when I can candle the eggs and, hopefully, see signs of life. 12 Blue and Splash Silkie eggs!!

 

[berkeleysprings]

I wish I was in a position to start hatching more checks myself I just don't have the room until I can cull about 7 rooster amd i have 2 for test breedings ..i miss the chicks . i did get that new kind of chicck heater brooder thing the chicks just stand under for warm. figured its safer than heat lamp + them darn red lamps make me blind . any way . just thought id drop in here

 

[Chickety Charcoal]

Just got one FCM chick hatch from my first bator run. Hoping for a hen!

 

[flgardengirl]

OakieRidge: My BCM girls go broody all the time much more than my other marans breeds. They have made good mamas so far.
Here's some pics of them with chicks from last year.

 

[gilavina]

Ok...so I don't know who all is involved in the MCCUSA yahoo group, but I came home from work to some interesting emails in my inbox. A few people were talking about what I saw mentioned as silver marans or silver wheatens. One person supplied an attachment to the silver marans in the UK. here is the link.
http://www.featheredworld.co.uk/pages/previews/11/12/sample_2.htm

Well...it got my attention, for this reason.



anyone else see some striking similarities?! Anyways...it was mentioned somewhere I think that someone had posted pics of silver wheaten pullets, but I can't find them. So, if anyone knows where they are, I would love to see them and I'd also love some genetics whizzes to tell me more about these silver Marans in the UK and what my boy is? I hatched two that were identical, but only kept one. The other one is in a friend's layer flock.