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

[berkeleysprings]

i gotta question for the marans people
how many of you are trying to improve egg color ?
how many generations ?
how are you breeding for that
are you breeding the "resolution" way ?
or "davis" way ?. i was wondering your thoughts on what your doing . and for some of you that breed marans for years ,how many generations in a closed flock did u take for a egg color change for the better to take place ?
do any of u think its more hit or miss and its more of a numbers game?
i am on my first generation uesing the davis method and i have around 20+ marans pullets somewere around 4+ months old
and ready to pick 6 or 8 out of that gen for egg color to back breed to daddy.....
my incubator is working great picture just set it and forget it ,,, a silkee hen cost 15 bucks and my king suro incubator $300.00

 

[pinkchick]

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Ok....but I can't be held responsible for what happens when I squeeze them! "Clean up on aisle 14......"

Are those your BHB babies?

 

[halo]

Ive been hatching wheaten marans over the past 18 months or so with very very limited success. I did end up with 5 hens that are laying for me now that I really like, from a BYC member here. Ive been looking for roos, or trying to hatch roos, and either ended up with butt ugly ones, or none at all. A couple of months ago, I did hatch some really really REALLY dark eggs, got 2 to hatch. And both are boys! Which Im really glad of. The larger one has a few feathers on his middle toe. Im pretty satisfied with them so far.

 

[berkeleysprings]

nice looking roos , i have been raising them almost 2 years also.......i wish you lived closer , i have around 15 roos you could pick from ...


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[drom]

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I have 3 gens now and started with good egg color as I got my birds from Donna Gerhke. The third gen will lay in August. Some of the 3rd gen birds are a result of mother/son breeding and some a sibling to sibling breeding. I never did ask Donna how she maintained her egg color through many generations, but she obviously knew what she was doing. Resolution said it was about 8 generations if you stick to a very specific formula.
BerkSpgs, I believe the breeding charts that are posted on the breed club sites show both hens bred back to sires and the reverse. I think you can do either.


It seems to me it is a complete crap shoot trying to figure out if your roosters carry only dark egg genes.
The only thing you can do to better your odds is to hatch nothing but your very darkest eggs; don't fill up your incubator if you can't fill it with all dark eggs.
And best to hatch some from the end of the lay season which are still dark.
Always only use roosters which come from your darkest eggs.
Don't breed outside your flock unless you have a specific reason to, and keep the the offspring from the out-cross separate from the rest of your flock. Don't mix everything up or you will end up with too many unknown genetic variables.
I got one pullet in my 2nd gen that doesn't really lay a dark egg. She lays beautiful eggs, super large and they are always very dark spotted, but the background color is not great. I was very tempted to hatch some of her eggs because she is my prettiest hen, but I didn't.
These eggs were laid by a 2nd gen pullet that I call Pretzelwee. She is not nearly as nice an example of a good Black Copper hen as the girl mentioned above. But, she has been laying for almost 5 months solid now and she still lays these. She lays an egg with a thick matte coating. My other hens are still laying dark, but the coating on their eggs is not as thick as hers. I will breed her back to one of her sons. She started out incidentally, laying very stippled eggs.

 

[snowbird]

This is just my opinion and nothing else. I believe you have to single mate and mark all eggs and also toe mark all the chicks. This should be done even if you are breeding for type. Do not hatch any eggs that are not dark. Any egg I hatch in my operation has to be at least a six on the egg scale. Please do not out cross to other breeds for color or type. When you out cross they are no longer Marans and you introduce all the faults of the fowl you bring into your breeding program. I have bought high price eggs that have Pene blood in them and you will get the Carnation comb on the males , at least some of them.

 

[snowbird]

Forgot to say that in the above egg picture the Spherical eggs on the left is the most cherished shape for French Marans. I wish all of my female Marans layed this shape of eggs.

 

[geebs]

It seems to me it is a complete crap shoot trying to figure out if your roosters carry only dark egg genes.

DROM I think this is where we can take a lesson from the french standards and the balance... I have read it in several places that I can't seem to find at the moment that talks about how the rooster should look and what that tell about the egg color due to the genetic markers. So where one would say plumage has no bearing on egg color..there are statements by the french to contradict that.

I think it is an incomplete model to pick either one or the other parent. It is a more complete model to line breed both cock and hen simultaneously and I hear from other sources that it takes 8 generations to get to the offspring to mate to each other using linebreeding on BOTH sides of the family tree.

 

[drom]

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Yes, well, unfortunately, this hen does not lay a particularly large or spherical egg. It's too bad because her eggs have such a nice color. But most of them are medium sized and more oval shaped. I don't know how much of the egg shape and size is genetic. I am assuming that her offspring will will lay the same size probably. But, I have to hatch hers because they are darkest of the eggs I am getting right now.

 

[drom]

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Well,Geebs my roosters have some of those nice characteristics you are talking about I think, but I can't tell so much if it is because they have a phenotype that is maybe linked in some way to genetics for good egg color, or because of recessive wheaten genes. Hahahaha. It muddies things up a little. And, there is some disagreement on the topic right now among some of the more experienced breeders which doesn't help. But, I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water. I'm most interested developing egg color, so that is the first priority for me, everything else with the exception of health, is secondary. But if you find the information you read on the genetic markers, be sure and post it if you can think of it. I did read what Resolution wrote about it which was very interesting.