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.