Black Copper Marans

We're still fairly new to poultry, only 2 years now, but long enough to have fallen in love with the challenge with the Marans, especially the black copper color variety. Their color being so striking, but mostly the egg color is what drew us to them.

The dark almost milk chocolate brown makes for beautiful crafts and such a contrast with the regular brown tinted egg shells.

The picture above is of our first, and so far only, rooster Adam Henry. He'll be 1 year old this June. He is a very good start to our flock with his body type. He could use more color in his saddle hackles but overall a great start.

Around the ranch we're really looking forward to spring. With the start of hatching out many many chicks to work towards the standard of perfection, that has been submitted to the American Poultry Association. This first year is going to be our year of trying to keep the color of the egg and enhance if possible, while also wanting to look for chicks that mature to having more color.

The picture to the right you'll see a picture of our first egg from our Black Copper Marans this last summer. To the right of the Black Copper Marans' egg you'll see a regular brown egg for color comparison and the yellow pear tomatoes to show the color scale. For a first egg we were very impressed, it is darker than the eggs that we hatched our birds from so we're off to a good start.

Getting Ready for Spring

Spring is only 4 months away now so it's time to start thinking of the flock. Some of our layer flock is coming up on their 5th birthdays and younger from there. Since the chickens start to lower in egg production around 2 years old we're going to be culling the older ones to replace with younger birds. We've hatched out several chicks that are about 4 months old now and will be laying as early as February so that is a big help. We also just hatched out 11 chicks on New Years from our own eggs again, and they should be starting to lay come June or July.

Using our own flock of birds to hatch eggs from cuts out the cost of buying chicks from comercial hatcheries and when it comes time for a new rooster, to avoid inbreeding, there are always some listed in the paper for free. And hatching our own birds brings in more money too. Selling juvenile birds puts money towards the feed bill more than selling eggs does, and helps someone out who doesn't have the extra space or time to worry about a heat lamp and wants eggs sooner.

The ducks are now 6 months old so they should start to lay soon... and we're waiting, but not very patiently. Neither of us have had duck eggs before and the idea of trying something new has us on our toes.

Concrete footers are done

After several weeks of leveling, setting forms, mixing and pouring concrete we are finialy done with the concrete footers! Talk about some hard work, I really have to hand it to the folks that work with concrete as a living. That is some hard work there, real back breaking stuff.
Now I may be some young whippersnapper but I definatly should take stalk in sunscreen and Advil after all that. But I sure can say it's nice to say that I can do it.
Now the last two days, and more to come, we have had horrible winds. Soon as these winds calm down a bit we can start framing the walls. For safty reasons I just refuse to be moving 2x4s around. They catch the wind and about knock me over, it will just be better to wait it out.

On a completely unrelated topic I just have to mention. The other morning I was behind a school bus that was making a stop to pick up a little girl. I just could not help but hear the nursary ryme in my head "Mary had a Little lamb," because as the girl walked across the street and got on the bus a cute little black and white lamb followed her the whole way! Her father came running after her to get the lamb back. Precious.

Let me introduce myself.

Hello to everyone out there. I look forward to sharing my wonderful life with poultry with anyone who wants to be a part of it.
My husband and I had just began to raise poultry last year when we started with a 8'x8' shed style coop that my husband built! We thought that would surely be enough space... well it was until this year came along. We began to read about different breeds and guess what, we chose one to begin to specialize in so we needed a separate breeding pen.
On top of this we both agreed that home grown turkey would be much heather and fun to raise. So we needed extra space for the Bourbon red turkeys now. We've ordered 4 to come in June from a hatchery. They're not sexed so we're hoping to get at least one of each sex and plan to butcher the extras after picking the ideal breeding pair of the group. Our hope is that for at least the next couple years we can have the turkeys breed and raise poults (baby turkeys) for us to butcher with out having to buy them each year.
And on top of this new adventure my husband really wanted Indian Runner Ducks. Now there is a strange duck for you. Their thigh is shorter then your typical duck causing their center of balance to be different. Because of this the duck walks upright, like a person, instead of waddling. These ducks are commonly used for training herding dogs. And since we have two herding dogs, my husband's border collie and my blue heeler mix, it just seemed to make some sense.
Anyway, we have just began to build the new coop for the new additions and you are welcome to read on. I'm sure from time to time I might digress to my other hobbies, soap making and attempts at gardening. Please enjoy and comment as you wish.