Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[calamityfarm]

Hi Everyone, I have a question about breeding. How are you keeping track of who is breeding with who. Does each of your hens have her own run that the rooster of choice gets to visit? When you are incubating eggs do you partition the incubator so you know which chick comes from which egg (and parents) or am I grossly over thinking this? This trying to breed to improve the line is all new to me, up till now it has always been a free for all in our coop! Please let me know so I can start to think about my set up.
Thanks,
Ann

 

[DMRippy]

Hi Everyone, I have a question about breeding. How are you keeping track of who is breeding with who. Does each of your hens have her own run that the rooster of choice gets to visit? When you are incubating eggs do you partition the incubator so you know which chick comes from which egg (and parents) or am I grossly over thinking this? This trying to breed to improve the line is all new to me, up till now it has always been a free for all in our coop! Please let me know so I can start to think about my set up.
Thanks,
Ann

I keep track of what pen and what roo..... I don't have the space or time to single mate. I do keep the eggs from each pen in separate baskets for hatching and then mark the chick with a color coded system.

 

[Debbi]

Whoa! Has anyone else seen a nose dive in egg color lately?? We have gone from hot and very dry weather, to overnight, wet and cool weather. In the last 2 days, my egg color has dropped, I would say, two color shades!! I also wormed them the day before yesterday with Wazine 17, any correlation in the drop of egg color? I've wormed them with that before, and don't recall this reaction; may be a bit of both conditions??? There were 2 eggs in there today that made me wonder who dropped in a couple of BRs in the middle of the night! Gees!!!

 

[Blarneyeggs]

Well gotta run for a bit as we are participating in our 7th Annual Valley Garage Sale tomorrow and need to get a few things done............. tons of families participate, wish I could drive the 11 miles of garage sale bliss, but alas I will be manning the fort this year. DH gets to cruise the sales this time instead, it's his turn.  

My brother has one of these... He calls it 'the neighborhood junk swap'. He says if you end up with less than you started with, you win!

3 Marans chicks hatched, 2 yellow (white? ) and one tuxedo (cuckoo?). All with feathered shanks. The sicky chick really rallied, it was chirping its little head off last night, so we popped it under our broody hen. My son walked out to the broody pen with me when we tucked the chick under her, he says 'it's kinda like leaving a baby on a doorstep'. He is doing much better now, that one needed a mother.

Also hatched 3 OEs and 4 BBS Orps, I Really wanted a splash, but got 3 black and 1 blue. One was zipped under the broody this afternoon, still hasn't made an appearance yet.... Maybe my Splash??

 

[gilavina]

Whoa! Has anyone else seen a nose dive in egg color lately?? We have gone from hot and very dry weather, to overnight, wet and cool weather. In the last 2 days, my egg color has dropped, I would say, two color shades!! I also wormed them the day before yesterday with Wazine 17, any correlation in the drop of egg color? I've wormed them with that before, and don't recall this reaction; may be a bit of both conditions??? There were 2 eggs in there today that made me wonder who dropped in a couple of BRs in the middle of the night! Gees!!!

I haven't...but then again nearly all my girls are broody right now.

So I'm relying on my other breeds to give me eggs

 

[gilavina]

Hi Everyone, I have a question about breeding. How are you keeping track of who is breeding with who. Does each of your hens have her own run that the rooster of choice gets to visit? When you are incubating eggs do you partition the incubator so you know which chick comes from which egg (and parents) or am I grossly over thinking this? This trying to breed to improve the line is all new to me, up till now it has always been a free for all in our coop! Please let me know so I can start to think about my set up.
Thanks,
Ann

I make sure all my birds from certain lines are banded with numbered bands of the same color. The number on the band identifies the bird permanently. If I'm crossing lines, I will use a spiral band with the colored number band to identify the other line crossed in.
I also test mate individually, sometimes the girls to get their own pen and I'll rotate the boys, sometimes the girls will have very easily identifiable eggs, so I'll leave them together. Other times if I'm just wanting to hatch out a few, and am happy with who I have in the pens, then I'll just collect the number of eggs I want and toss them in the incubator.
In the incubator/hatcher, I will use little baskets I made to separate eggs I've marked from either test mating, pen or etc.

 

[Debbi]

My brother has one of these... He calls it 'the neighborhood junk swap'. He says if you end up with less than you started with, you win!
3 Marans chicks hatched, 2 yellow (white? ) and one tuxedo (cuckoo?). All with feathered shanks. The sicky chick really rallied, it was chirping its little head off last night, so we popped it under our broody hen. My son walked out to the broody pen with me when we tucked the chick under her, he says 'it's kinda like leaving a baby on a doorstep'. He is doing much better now, that one needed a mother.
Also hatched 3 OEs and 4 BBS Orps, I Really wanted a splash, but got 3 black and 1 blue. One was zipped under the broody this afternoon, still hasn't made an appearance yet.... Maybe my Splash??

The Tuxedo chick you describe could well be a Black Copper, got any pics? Ha! I can relate to your Son's remark. I had one egg that was under a broody that felt cold to me, so I took it inside and popped it in the bator. The next morning, there was a Partridge Silkie chick, dancing all over my Wheaten Marans eggs! Took that little bugger outside to the broodies, and set it down with them. This is my very first time with broodies, and to my great glee, they took it in with no problem! I did feel like I was abandoning a wee child to the unknown...but all turned out well.

Glad to hear your little one seems to have made it!

 

[Debbi]

Ok, trying to do some research here before I jump into anything else!

With Olive Eggers, do you have to replenish the blue or brown factor every so often to keep the color? Or once you have an Olive Egger, do they continually breed true to egg color? Just thinking ahead into the future, not really looking into the matter right now, but thought I'd ask here as you guys have some OEs and would know, thanks!

 

[DMRippy]

Ok, trying to do some research here before I jump into anything else!

With Olive Eggers, do you have to replenish the blue or brown factor every so often to keep the color? Or once you have an Olive Egger, do they continually breed true to egg color? Just thinking ahead into the future, not really looking into the matter right now, but thought I'd ask here as you guys have some OEs and would know, thanks!

This is my first year with them so we will see what I get in the next gen. I think you would breed them back to blue or dark brown if you want to change the color in some way. You can breed Olive Eggers to Olive Eggers to try to keep the same color when you achieve what you want.

 

[Debbi]

This is my first year with them so we will see what I get in the next gen. I think you would breed them back to blue or dark brown if you want to change the color in some way. You can breed Olive Eggers to Olive Eggers to try to keep the same color when you achieve what you want.

Thanks Donna, that's basically what I wanted to know! I'd better get what I want the first time, because I don't have room for a Blue Egger roo!