Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Debbi]

Hey Lenette!! Glad to see you here again! How are your gardens and chickens all doing, and you of course?

 

[flgardengirl]

Hi Debbie missed you all so much!! We are getting pounded by a tropical storm today ironically named DEBBIE LOL!!! Got over 4 inches of rain last night and more on the way so the gardens are doing great. I've been canning and freezing salsa like crazy all week. We must of got 60 lbs of tomatoes thus far. They did horrible last year but this year they are doing great.
The chickens got all their open air coops soaked from rain blowing in sideways last night and so I spent all morning cleaning everything up and moving the moblie chicken tractors to higher and/or less soaked ground Had to give my baby cuckoo marans and the silver cuckoos a dose of Corid this morning too. I know that cocci is on its way with all the heat and humidity going on and one little guy looked very droopy this morning and not wanting to eat. Boy they have all grown so much!

 

[flgardengirl]

How are all your silkies doing and your bowtie showgirl chick??

 

[Debbi]

How are all your silkies doing and your bowtie showgirl chick??

I thought about you with the hurricane coming in, and hoped you wouldn't hold it against me! LOL! I am so jealous that your tomatoes are already being canned!! I am still waiting for my first ripe one. They are huge plants this year, and loaded with fruit! Hot and oh so dry here, send some of Debby up this way, will ya? Silkies and SG are all fine. Here is a pic of "Lazer" at 6 weeks.

 

[dfdesigns]

Does anybody have a picture of a nice Splash Cuckoo roo?

 

[Debbi]

Did you try the Cuckoo and White Marans thread? I think Donna (DMRippy), may have a Splash Cuckoo if I'm not mistaken? Maybe she can post one.

 

[dfdesigns]

That shows you what I know... I didn't know there was a dedicated Cuckoo thread! Thanks!

 

[hennesseyt]

this is my first time having chickens. i recently bought a BC marans off of a local lady who was selling off her flock. She sailed they were all under a year and pure. here is my questions for you all. Can you tell how old a chicken is? Can you tell if its pure BCM? also i was curious if there were any people locally that might have some BCM and would be willing to sell me a few eggs to hatch at the end of the summer?

here is a picture of her and her eggs

 

[BarnGoddess01]

this is my first time having chickens. i recently bought a BC marans off of a local lady who was selling off her flock. She sailed they were all under a year and pure. here is my questions for you all. Can you tell how old a chicken is? Can you tell if its pure BCM? also i was curious if there were any people locally that might have some BCM and would be willing to sell me a few eggs to hatch at the end of the summer?

here is a picture of her and her eggs

Looks like the real deal to me! Those eggs on the left aren't Marans but the ones on the right certainly could be. Congratulations!!

 

[desertmarcy]

All my hard work is finally paying off. I went through all my black copper Marans pullets and ended up with 17 nice ones. The main thing I was trying to improve in my stock was copper hackles on the hens, since I started with 4 solid black hens and 1 hen with only a small amount of copper. All the ones I am keeping (for now) have medium to good copper hackles, no mossy feathers, nice feathered feet, no bad combs. They are young yet, 2.5 to 3.5 months old, so I am still waiting for eye color to change, and of course I will have to see which are going to lay dark eggs. But I think I made a tremendous improvement over my starter flock! I will try to post pics later, but it is very hot out there right now. And the other good news, I have sold all the cull pullets except 3

I think I will need some help from this group on the cockerels, though. I still have 11 I am growing and watching. So hard to choose. I need to do another thin out soon. Anybody willing to weed through a bunch of cockerel pics to help with the process