Small, Dwarf or Bantam Marans?

[onthespot]

I hatched these two late this spring. They are less than half the size of the rest. BLRW picked the tails, sorry. They were wanting to fly off the sink (can you blame them, LOL) so the pose is not very good, but just to give you an idea of how they look.

Does anyone elese have pics of smaller typey marans they wanted to post here on BYC?

 

[Debbi]

Cute! Is she laying yet? If so, how is the egg color?

 

[onthespot]

not laying yet, but they both hatched out of my very darkest eggs, so I expect no problems with egg color when it comes time. They are not even separated right now. In with BLRW due to not enough pens. Just finishing up a new area to divide for pens this past week. Too pooped to put pens, LOL. I will get around to it. She is nowhere near squatting yet, so I really doubt she has been mismated. Her comb is still light pink.

 

[whidbey]

Great looking birds, what is there size, do they conform to the size a bantam is to be
I will be watching how they turn out, and do
Congrats on a great job

 

[onthespot]

They are about half the height of my regular marans. I have not weighed them. I was waiting for them to mature, lay eggs, crow/breed, grow full sickle feathers or whatnot that would determine them to be adults. Any weight in the meantime would not be meaningful to me. The wire shelf they are standing on is the standard wire shelf you can buy at any home improvement store, just for scale. Not much of a "great job" so far. The mother I already gave away once and she came back because she "wouldn't lay" for the man. After he gave her back, he found her stash of eggs, LOL. I was told by the breeder to cull the father rooster, "not good enough" but has turned out to be all I could ever hope for, even after he broke his sternum as a young cockerel, around five months old. Took him a long time to recover enough to be able to breed, but now he does fine. Then, when these hatched, I almost culled the roo because he was smaller than the rest. A lot smaller. Then I noticed on pullet was smaller too... HHHhhhhmmmmmmmm..... Let's see what happens with these two. That is the only point I will take credit, is one day scratching my head for an extra second or two and deciding "Eh! What the heck?" I cut them no slack growing up. Sink or swim. They got pecked nearly bald by those dratted BLRW, but made their way around regardless. They are turning out pretty nice so far. I sure hope their eggs are dark and the babies stay small.

 

[rockinpaints]

My mom has a BCM hen, excellent egg color but very small hen.

 

[BeardedLadyFarm]

Glad they're doing well! I'll keep posted on this thread!

 

[onthespot]

Quote:
Can she keep a roo? If I get an extra roo good enough next spring I could send her one.

 

[steffpeck]

Look at their feet, or post a picture of the bottom of their feet. Did other's hatch at the same time, and are they normal size or are they all smaller? I hatched some Barred Rocks 2 years ago, and had 5 hatch, 4 or them were normal size, but 1 was a midget chicken. It had a tiny body, short stubby legs, and short stubby fingers. It was just like a "little person". He was so darn cute!!

 

[star2525]

It will be interesting to see how they develope, I currently only have one small Large Fowl Marans pullet that appears to be Splash, so I'm hoping she stays small so that I can use her for a project bird, I like her so far and the egg color of the first few eggs was about a 4 to 5 with dark freckles, so hopefully that will help down the road.

What line of Black Coppers did your small Large Fowl come from? I think the coloring on the pullet is really nice.

Victoria