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

[haTHOR]

yep, geebs, when mine were 1.5 wks most on here who responded thought i had maybe 1 pullet, now it looks like 2 maybe 3. pretty neat!

and that is cool about my dark "roo" maybe being a weird great hen, lol. was going to keep that one as roo anyway, due to size and temperament, so now i'll keep one other roo as well and hope for the best with that odd-colored one.

 

[jarcoo0153]

Well, I am a proud new owner of 3 Cuckoo Marans! So I thought I would show off my Chicks! I only have pics of two of them though. The other one doesn't have feathers on its legs.

 

[Lotsapaints]

Quote:
It makes sense they are not looking the same I've got them @12 weeks now I'm learning to not be a hurry.....now to get some nice photos maybe later this week

 

[TurkeyMountainChickens]

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I think part of it is people like to complain! You feel the need to vent when you've got all roos, but when they're all pullets you just think, oh, lucky me!

 

[geebs]

My experience in hatching in roughly 50/50 give or take one... I have never hatched all roos...

 

[tplummer]

We have two hens to go with him. We bought them as a trio. They are also pretty.




Quote:
that's a very pretty roo do you have hens to go with him?

Geebs I have some like that too Jeane's so they will feather up correct? I haven't gotten rid of anything yet. I do have a really red roo in the fattening pen but he's not old enough yet and some I would have bet were roos but they are not turning into beautiful girls....my Goldens are still little babies I think I have 3 girls and 2 boys. I really have some nice CM's need to get pics so you all can see but I know some of them are carrying recessive white so I hope one will not be they are really nice maybe I'll take up White Marans .....

 

[berkeleysprings]

dont get me started with the hen to rooster ratio hatching ....i have around 40 wheaten marans 20 roo and 20 hens and i laugh because i had a few hatches that 7 chicks and 1 was a hen but in the end it evened out at 50/50 ratio .... i thought at first i thought i had gator blood mixed in my wheaten marans wich wopuld explane the hatching all roos but that wasnt the case ,i have pure chicken blood in my wheatens so bev and buddy have nothing to worry about .......one of my old wheaten hens gone broody and steals all the eggs , il let her hatch a few but i gotta stop i got to many marans . i have to cull around 50 for egg color down to 10 hens and 2 roo for my first generation to breed back to daddy . he is such a nice tempered roo that came fron a very dark egg of bev davis ...i personaly dont think every dark egg bird passes the dark egg gene to its siblings . out of the 50 or so birds iin my first generation only a hand full are darker egg or for that matter """as dark '''''' then the parrent , i do still beleave you stand a better chance breeding dark egg to dark egg lol lol lol its still a shot in the dark for alot of it , just my thought

 

[thrustbucket]

Hello,

I just registered an account here to post this. Hopefully it's the beginning of a long relationship with this forum!

Just to introduce myself, we just got 3 chicks at the first of May. We have never had chickens before, but the house we bought had a coop so we thought we'd give it a shot. We love our 3 chickens so I started doing research for what to get next. BCM's seemed really interesting and I found someone locally selling chicks. So needless to say - we are very newbie chicken ranchers, please excuse any ignorance.

(BTW, I probably wouldn't have to post this if there was a useful thread search, and I don't have time to read 800 pages of posts).

On to the questions:

I bought four 1 week old BCM's from a local breeder a week ago (so now 2 weeks old). City does not let me keep a rooster so I am hoping I get some hens out of the batch.

1) What is strange is one of them, the day we got them, had tail feathers. One week later, the other three still do not. I don't know what this means, is it normal?

2) Also, 3 of the chicks have started to feather already, mostly on the wings. However, one chick (who is slightly bigger), has absolutely no feathers on it's wings. In fact, it's wings almost seem deformed compared to the feathering of the other chicks; it's wings are just tiny little bent shapes with nothing but fuzz on them. This chick is also extremely aggressive. It chest thumps the other chicks, picks at their feet, and plucks their feathers. Is this an indication of anything? is this a roo?

3) All of these chicks seem much less friendly and far more skittish than our first three chickens we got in May (two sexlinks and a RIR), is the BCM breed just known to be not so friendly and really skittish or am I doing something wrong in raising these chicks? Can someone speak to how docile BCM's are compared to others?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[haTHOR]

no expert but i recently got my first FCBMs, and put them with a bunch of stuff i had hatched out (see my sig for details on what i have). then i got 5 more and put under a broody black java. i have many breeds if you count the adults and babies and bothy the week olds and the 6 week old FCBMs are far and away more skittish and pecky than my other birds.

 

[they'reHISchickens]

Our 10 Marans are going on 3 weeks old and if my reading on this thread has showed me anything, it's that you can't sex them until they crow or lay eggs. I have my guesses, but who knows if they are accurate.
We have 2 12 week old orpingtons that we are still guessing about! The combs look roo-ish but I'm not seeing tail feathers. The April hatch of EEs are finally showing irridescent tails so we can tell the boys from the girls.
Now, the leghorns we had, you could tell the girls feathered out sooner.
I don't think the Marans are any crazier than the EEs and much tamer than the Leghorns. From my experience, the RIR are fairly mellow on the chickenpsycho scale.
And if you can't keep roosters, at least Marans should be good eating!