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

[drom]

Quote:
Well Marans are larger bodied and have brown earlobes. Pendesencas, are more stream-lined and much more upright. They are built more like a Leghorn. (Un-officially they are much crazier as well and have the personality of a fish...)

Ahhahah. Hmmm. Maybe if Tina crosses these girls to a Marans roo it should be a Cuckoo and not a BCM. My BCM roos are very large and pretty full of themselves. I can't imagine what it would be like if they were also wild and stupid-

 

[onthespot]

me neither! I hear people on here saying how flighty their copper blacks are, can't catch them, or even get a good pic, etc... Mine are too big to be mean. No one would keep a mean roo that size if they didn't have to. I can walk up to any of my copper blacks and pick them up, place them where I want and they don't tear off running when I let go. They ruffle their feathers like a hen that just got covered and try to walk off all nonchalant, like they are trying to play it off that they got picked up and no one will notice...

 

[drom]

I still don't have any egg pictures to post.

But here's a picture of my jumbo boy eating hay. He makes my diesel truck look like a wee little half ton.

All my birds just love the grass-alfalfa mix I feed my horses. I hope it makes the BCM egg yolks a little orangey!

YUM

 

[tfpets]

Quote:
WOW! That is a HANDSOME ROOSTER! That is some serious eye candy! MMMM

BC, my Black Copper Marans is friendly or at least not flighty. He acts like onthespots birds, sorta nonchalant after I pick him up, to preserve his dignity. And he's getting big. He's not quite as tall as my Black Langshan, but he's getting stocky now, really filling out! He doesnt dwarf a diesel truck though? Have you weighed one of your boys? I'm gonna take my scale out and weigh these guys just for fun when I get a chance.

No little pimentos yet! That one egg was awesome though! But I had five eggs in one day out of that Quarantine pen, none as dark as that one, I hit the jackpot getting these birds. They're not even settled in yet, and they are regular egg laying machines. (Only 7 in there that are egg laying age?).....

Love my chickens!
Tina

 

[ruth]

Hey Drom - he's gorgeous. If I remember correctly, you got your birds from Mr. Jesse shortly after I got mine so they should be laying soon. Mine were also total free range (until I built a breeder pen) and I've read and found that free ranging birds lay a lot sooner. All of my other breeds started laying at barely 4 months - my BCMs waited till 5 months.

My roos are huge too. Here's James getting up from roost, not too happy, I walked in there last night. I was like "whoa, boy, settle down."

 

[hcammack]

I lost one Black Marans I am not really sure why. The rest of the girls are doing well and the cuckoo's laid a few eggs

Not very dark

but they should get darker when their is pasture available.


Here are the cuckoo girls they each way 10lbs

Here are the eggs next to Faverolle and Delaware eggs and a little Ameraucana egg snuck in their.

Here is the blue girl she is getting big can't wait to see what she lays

 

[ninjapoodles]

I need to get a good picture of it, so y'all can see what I'm talking about, but one of my 6-mo. old CB pullets looks...well, adulterated with something.

Maybe just a cuckoo Marans in the woodshed somewhere? I have no idea.

First, her black feathers are "faded." You couldn't call her blue, but I sure don't call her black, either. Second, just in the last couple of weeks, I have been able to see a faint barred/cuckoo/mottled/whatever pattern coming through in the wing feathers--it's almost like you can "see through" the solid color to the black & white pattern underneath.

Needless to say, this pullet has been removed to the laying flock. I know that several of you have these same birds, so I just wanted to let you know what I was seeing. If anyone has any ideas what might be going on here, speak on up! I've never been big on secrets in any breeding program I've had, with any animals, so I don't mind putting it out there.

I'll try to get pictures in just the right light tomorrow or Saturday.

 

[onthespot]

One of my hens is off-black also. She has a brownish tinge to her down and when she was a wee pullet she had quite a bit of brown overlay o her feathers. When she moulted out most of the brown splotchiness disappeared, but her darkest feathers are not black. They are very dark brown-black. Her eggs are nothing to write home about either, but since she is F1 cross between two lines, I will try to hatch some out that were fertilized by roos known to come from very large, very dark maroon brown eggs and see what F2 lays like. I don't plan to raise many of these test pullets, let me tell you! Just enough to learn what I need to know if I am going to dabble in this breed. I don't ask anyone else, including the breeder what to expect from this experiment, because no one knows what will happen until it happens. (and THAT, my friends, is part of the reason good CBM's are so freaking expensive)

 

[drom]

Quote:
WOW! That is a HANDSOME ROOSTER! That is some serious eye candy! MMMM

BC, my Black Copper Marans is friendly or at least not flighty. He acts like onthespots birds, sorta nonchalant after I pick him up, to preserve his dignity. And he's getting big. He's not quite as tall as my Black Langshan, but he's getting stocky now, really filling out! He doesnt dwarf a diesel truck though? Have you weighed one of your boys? I'm gonna take my scale out and weigh these guys just for fun when I get a chance.

No little pimentos yet! That one egg was awesome though! But I had five eggs in one day out of that Quarantine pen, none as dark as that one, I hit the jackpot getting these birds. They're not even settled in yet, and they are regular egg laying machines. (Only 7 in there that are egg laying age?).....

Love my chickens!
Tina

Thank you Tina.
You know, I've never seen a Langshan-you will need to post a picture of that boy when you have the time. Do you have any Langshan hens?

 

[drom]

Quote:
Exactly, but you know, I have also heard some people who are line breeding say that after having a few gens of dark egg layers all the sudden they will lose their egg color in a generation and won't know why. So it seems like it can also happen with closely related birds. And, B.Davis thinks that crossing doesn't always necessarily lighten egg color.
I was even thinking that crossing more W.J. blood with these birds might be worthwhile. You never know