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.