Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[desertmarcy]

Anybody care to comment on the Blue Coppers I posted pics of ?

Ya'll taken the day off. Man it is hot out here. Hoping to go on vacation shortly--someplace MUCH cooler.

 

[ChickenExtreme]

Cool... thank you for the wellspring of info... this is year one for me... I lost all of my original Birchen hatch to predation except the one roo I have left... he does not have feathered feet so I assume that is a big negative to those on this thread... personally I have no problem with clean legs. After starting with that first Birchen hatch, I saw golden cuckoo marans hatching eggs on E-bay as well so tried a hatch of those... the birds I got from this hatch are incredibly sweet and docile... so much so that I prefer the two golden cuckoo roos I have over my Birchen. They are gentle delightful birds that follow me everywhere and make adorable soft cooing sounds... hard to describe... just a delightful pair.

I will attach pictures of my flock I just took today... the four eggs I have been incubating have started to hatch so I need to keep myself busy and away from the incubator... the temptation to constantly pick up the eggs is still way too great... I still can't get over those first peeps as they start pipping... talk about life's miracles. Eventually this will become more routine for me.. forgive my amateurishness.

So, my flock... Let me begin with saying I have had a lot of loss this first year from predation... I now have an electric fence installed around the chicken yard and I no longer have all the issues but I kept losing birds and feeling frustrated, I would go out and try to replace my layers with what was available locally on Craig's list... so I have ended up with quite an eclectic bunch which I will cull over time... but they are all very pretty and they are my babies...

any way, my marans... please offer feed back/thoughts.. they are just a starting point for me... and if anyone recognizes what that tag is on Amelia can you let me know about it???



Godzilla, my birchen roo... He is huge.

Amelia, my little survivor





and the golden cuckoos...

Featherfoot, the "better" of the two boys, bigger, feathered feet...

and my little sweetheart, Finnegan... he will fly right up onto my shoulder. I can scoop him up and carry him around any time I want... here I just picked him up and put him on the chair arm to take a picture of him... no problem. He does not have a lot of feathering on his feet and none of the bulk his brother has... he does have lighter coloring... don't know if that is a desirable thing or not.

Can anyone tell me the outcome of crossing the birchen roo with the golden cuckoo pullet... I gather from what was said above the chicks would be golden in coloring? only males would have barring???? like a sex link cross??? so what would the expected outcome of the pullets be? golden colored hybrid marans? Does anyone work purposely with hybrids in their flock for breed vigor? I worry about inbreeding... that is why I am asking these kinds of questions. Thoughts/further knowledge would be appreciated... remember I am just starting out, please.

Nice

 

[Hens and Roos]

I finally took some photos of my Blue Copper Marans cockerels. I held back 3 to evaluate and hopefully one of these will be good enough to use. Unfortunately, they are all different ages, so if makes them hard to compare. #1 is the oldest, #2 is in the middle, #3 is the youngster. Opinions please? I culled quite a few blue copper cockerels when they were really small due to too much copper leakage on their breast. These are the only ones that were half way decent.

Here is #1. He is wearing peepers to try to stop him from bullying but I don't think it has worked. He has some copper leakage on his breast and I don't particularly like the way his tail is coming in. He has lots of middle toe feathers as well as the outer ones. He looks like he has a nice wide chest to me.






Here is #2. So far I like him better than #1 but he is so much younger, it is hard to tell how he will fill out. So far his eyes are still dark.



Here is #3. He is relative baby still. He seems very light when I pick him up. He is in with #2 and is starting to get picked on by #2, so I need to decide if he is worthy of keeping to watch? He will need his own enclosure soon if that is the case, or cull now?



Here's #2 and #3 together. #3 is actually a LOT smaller than #2, it is just the perspective of the photo making them look similarly sized.

With #1 the middle toe feathering is not excepted and might cause you problems going forward if he was used.

With #2- could be the way my screen shows the picture but his hackle feathers look orangey to me. He could probably use some more time to develop.

With #3-he needs more time to develop, it may take him a while longer if he is being picked on or lowest ranking.

Hopefully others will give you feed back.

 

[Koolaid]

Anyone on here raise Blue Copper Marans in the La/Ms/Al gulf coast area that sells? Or anyone know of anyone in that area? thanks.

 

[Johnn]

cuckoo maran chick:

 

[gilavina]

Cool... thank you for the wellspring of info... this is year one for me... I lost all of my original Birchen hatch to predation except the one roo I have left... he does not have feathered feet so I assume that is a big negative to those on this thread... personally I have no problem with clean legs. After starting with that first Birchen hatch, I saw golden cuckoo marans hatching eggs on E-bay as well so tried a hatch of those... the birds I got from this hatch are incredibly sweet and docile... so much so that I prefer the two golden cuckoo roos I have over my Birchen. They are gentle delightful birds that follow me everywhere and make adorable soft cooing sounds... hard to describe... just a delightful pair.

I will attach pictures of my flock I just took today... the four eggs I have been incubating have started to hatch so I need to keep myself busy and away from the incubator... the temptation to constantly pick up the eggs is still way too great... I still can't get over those first peeps as they start pipping... talk about life's miracles. Eventually this will become more routine for me.. forgive my amateurishness.

So, my flock... Let me begin with saying I have had a lot of loss this first year from predation... I now have an electric fence installed around the chicken yard and I no longer have all the issues but I kept losing birds and feeling frustrated, I would go out and try to replace my layers with what was available locally on Craig's list... so I have ended up with quite an eclectic bunch which I will cull over time... but they are all very pretty and they are my babies...

any way, my marans... please offer feed back/thoughts.. they are just a starting point for me... and if anyone recognizes what that tag is on Amelia can you let me know about it???



Godzilla, my birchen roo... He is huge.

Amelia, my little survivor





and the golden cuckoos...

Featherfoot, the "better" of the two boys, bigger, feathered feet...

and my little sweetheart, Finnegan... he will fly right up onto my shoulder. I can scoop him up and carry him around any time I want... here I just picked him up and put him on the chair arm to take a picture of him... no problem. He does not have a lot of feathering on his feet and none of the bulk his brother has... he does have lighter coloring... don't know if that is a desirable thing or not.

Can anyone tell me the outcome of crossing the birchen roo with the golden cuckoo pullet... I gather from what was said above the chicks would be golden in coloring? only males would have barring???? like a sex link cross??? so what would the expected outcome of the pullets be? golden colored hybrid marans? Does anyone work purposely with hybrids in their flock for breed vigor? I worry about inbreeding... that is why I am asking these kinds of questions. Thoughts/further knowledge would be appreciated... remember I am just starting out, please.

How old is your birchen boy? He's lookin like he is borderline on the squirrel tail, so that's definitely something to watch for and is a split for gold and silver, so if you were going to be using him for your start with the black copper girl, you'll have to be ready to do lots of culling.

On the band, is it a band that is a removable spiral with a number on it? If it is (hard to tell exactly on the photo), then you are looking at just a spiral number band that many people use for banding birds for identification. What the band represents can be different for each person raising them, so unless you can ask the person that owned her before, there really is no way of knowing how they were using their bands.

 

[fergy623]

I too thank you for starting this new thread on marans. I am almost to darn new to this chicken raising idea. I started last year and my Cuckoo Marans don't have any red in them or feathered legs/ Obviously I am in dire need of more education. I bought these hens and the rooster from far north alberta. and they are Black barred with white spots, a very large bird and so far we hatched out 4 sets of eggs with the hobovater. I really enjoyed the prospects of bird raising. so I bout a Crap load of many other birds. to complete my mizery of raising birds and wondering how will I feed them in the winter months. Anyway. Feel free to post a comment or 2 to educate me. LOL

 

[Blarneyeggs]

cuckoo maran chick:

How old is this chick? I just sold a 3 month old Cuckoo Marans and am just wondering for size reference. I could NOT get mine integrated into the flock and was keeping her in her own run, which would just not do, considering the winter is just around the corner.

 

[Blarneyeggs]

Welcome to BYC Fergy! I think we're all a bit worried about feed prices this coming season.

Question: I have an empty field that is just shy of 2 acres. Is there a winter feed crop I could be planting now? Or even a summer crop for next year that needs to be in now? I hate to waste the space. The farmer that worked that piece before us said it was good soil. I did get the soil tested this spring and the PH is right at about 7. Any suggestions?

 

[Johnn]

How old is this chick? I just sold a 3 month old Cuckoo Marans and am just wondering for size reference. I could NOT get mine integrated into the flock and was keeping her in her own run, which would just not do, considering the winter is just around the corner.

well first off it's a he by the looks of things, he is 6 weeks old now, 7 weeks on thursday. He got introduced into the flock my his mother who he is still with at the moment.