Marans Thread for Posting Pics of Your Eggs, Chicks and Chickens

[kathyinmo]

Ya know ... what I find difficult is to know how much is too much copper in the roosters. Do you?

 

[Germaine_11.20]

Yeah, what she said.

 

[drom]

Quote:
Do you mean on the breast?

So here is what the French standard calls for. The proposed APA standard reads pretty much the same but accepts either the solid black or lightly red-spotted breast.

Black-breasted red, with parsimonious red spotting on the breast. Having a black wing triangle. The red markings are not to be yellow or mahogany.
Copper coloured lancets in the neck hackle & the back. Deep red shoulders.

Blackdotte says that they probably mean no more than 10% of the breast with red/copper markings.

 

[drom]

Quote:
ahahahahahhahah

 

[Germaine_11.20]

ohhhh only 10 percent. sigh.......

 

[kathyinmo]

Another question I have is the hackles coloring. I see, in pictures, different shades (I guess that's the term) of color. I wish I could figure out that coloring.

 

[Germaine_11.20]

Hey Kathy! I believe (correct me if wrong) That the hackles should be a nice rich deep copper not a brassy copper. So kind of like a really SOP Rhode Island Red Deep Mahogany.

Yes, no?

 

[amazondoc]

Quote:
Not mahogany, although I personally think the mahogany ones are very handsome. The coloring should be strongly **copper**. As the French standard says: "The red markings are not to be yellow or mahogany".

IMHO this cockerel has excellent copper coloring. Ignore the rest of him (tail and comb and so on)!

 

[millebantam]

I asked the same question, and the thread degraded until it was closed by the mods. I never got an answer to the original question, which pretty much was "What IS an offspring of a pair of pure Marans that meet the standard, with the hen laying very dark eggs, if the offspring hen lays only a three". All I got was a "snarky" answer about what you should call it, and not the answer to the question, which is "what IS the bird biologically and genetically?", not what it is CALLED. Until someone can answer what the bird actually is, the statement "It's not a Marans" , literally makes no sense.
Quote:

 

[amazondoc]

Quote:
It does make sense -- it's just a different perspective than you may be used to.

When the French say "Marans", they have a specific definition for the term. The French definition of the word "Marans" goes something like this: "a bird that meets the French standard for Marans with no disqualifications, which can also lay at least a #4 egg at some point during its laying cycle". If the bird doesn't meet those specifications, then it doesn't fulfill the requirements for the "Marans" label. If you want to say it as "non-standard Marans" or "Marans failure" or something like that, I don't personally care. But you should understand that the French perspective on how they define breeds is not unique to the Marans. They have the same sort of perspective, for instance, on dog breeds, and most likely on other types of livestock as well. Also, it is not unheard of for performance requirements to be placed on breeds here in the US, either. For instance, certain horse breeds must exhibit certain gaits before they can be labeled as a specific breed -- and so on.