#copper maran hen

[chickenor]

Blue Copper Marans: Powerful Chickens with Stunning Eggs

Engaging Opening Statement Learn about the appeal of Blue Copper Marans, a fairly unique variety of chickens that are known for their beautiful feathers and even more impressive ability to produce eggs! Popular for their bright blue plumage and the dark chocolate brown eggs they lay, these chickens are a novelty for the poultry and small scale farm growers. However as you browse through the pages…

[thomas--bombadil]

Black-Copper Maran Eggs

These are the darkest eggs that chickens can lay. They look just like they’re made of milk chocolate. 

Some can get a bit darker than these examples, and some can be delightfully speckled, as can be seen above.

NOTE:  If you are sold a black egg, it is not from a chicken. Rather, you may be getting an egg from a bird species that are known to lay black eggs, like a Cayuga duck. Or you may even have been sold an artificially-colored egg. 

[hyydraworks]

New array of chickens, thank you for all the suggestions!  Putting all the breeds so far in the tags, also some new requests came in recently, and a couple people have mentioned silkies?  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get that adorable fluffy head, but will attempt at some point.

Working on some chicken variations. Might be a little while till I get them in the shop, but if you have chicken breeds you desire let me know. It’s hard with my color palette, but I’ll try my darndest.

[kedreeva]

Hi! 😁 I might soon have the chance to have a garden and I've always wanted to have a few chickens, and I've started some online reasearch about keeping chickens but since you're an expert and I don't trust some of the online sources, do you have any tips for absolute beginners? 😅

I do! You can have a garden, or you can have chickens, but the two are diametrically opposed forces that do not coexist peacefully without fully enclosing one or the other. Chickens can and will obliterate gardens and landscaping if they have access to it, including absolutely destroying mulch patches by helping you spread it all over the yard.

I'll put the rest under a cut ^_^

When you acquire chickens, don't get them from a hatchery, get them from a small breeder you've looked into and spoken with about their actual birds. Hatcheries have poor quality animals, so while you may be getting a "black copper marans," they're not gonna necessarily look very nice, and they're almost certainly not going to lay that nice, deep chocolate marans are known for.

Vs straight from one of the bigger hatcheries pages, photos of their eggs:

You also are NOT going to get the breed qualities of any given breed except maybe some of the production breeds. For example, a Jersey Giant from a reputable breeder will get up to 10-13lbs, which is as big or bigger than my peafowl. Same with Brahmas and Cochins. Hatchery stock you will be lucky to see 6-8lbs, and people are OFTEN disappointed about this kind of thing. Silkies, as another example, can look WILDLY different from a hatchery vs a private breeder. A show quality silkie is a puffball:

Hatcheries also pull skeevy moves like calling easter eggers (mutts that lay blue, green, pink, brown, or white eggs) "americanas" hoping that you mistake it for "ameraucana" the pure breed that lays stark blue eggs. Then they charge you ameraucana prices (like, $25/chick) when they should be charging more like $3-5 a chick. They'll do things like call a marans/barred rock mix a "mystic marans" as if it's a new color morph of a marans chicken instead of a mixed breed mutt they invented to be able to sex their chicks at hatch easier. People get these guys expecting MARANS eggs, and they get tan barred rock eggs. Same can go for temperament and behaviors. You go anywhere that has a group of chicken owners and ask them what their favorite breed is, you will get a range of answers with reasons like "my X is so sweet" while the next person will go "mine's the devil" and if you ask, 9 times out of 10, it's hatchery stock birds. Well bred private breeders often have MUCH more stable temperaments.

vs hatchery stock

Getting from a private breeder also lets you get eggs, which can help you dodge a LOT of disease bullets. There's very little that transfers through the egg, strangely, and some of that is transferred on the surface of the eggs (like mycoplasma) so a quick santizing dip before incubation gets rid of that. I know that hatching them yourself is more of a hassle, but so is losing your flock to newcomers that came in with something entirely avoidable if you'd hatched instead. If your breeder is NPIP certified, they're getting tested for the major egg-traveling problem (pullorum) and a dip will take care of most anything else unless you're super SUPER unlucky.

Lastly on acquisitions, be prepared to get roosters. If you can't have roosters, be prepared to get them processed for yourself for food, or let the roosters go to food homes. Please please please please. There are so many, many excess roosters. They cannot all go to homes. The rooster to hen ratio in a flock is like 1:9. The rooster to hen ratio in hatching is nearly 1:1. Let someone make use of them. EVEN if you order from a hatchery, and order all pullets, they can make mistakes and send rooster babies. It's not a guarantee! Have a plan in advance! Mentally prepare yourself! Don't be one of Those People making posts in local groups about how you don't want/can't have this rooster but also no one else can eat it either. Chickens are a lot of things. Sometimes food is one of those things.

BEFORE actually acquiring the chickens, locate a vet that will see them. You are GOING to have an issue at some point in their lives, and that's not the time to start looking for a vet, that's the time to already have a vet on hand. In fact if you can support a yearly wellness check on at least one of the birds to test for communicable illnesses (like mycoplasma) and have a good relationship with your vet in advance, that's even better.

As for care, if you plan to contain the chickens, the minimum recommendation for a backyard coop and run varies wildly. For stress purposes, most chickens will find 4 feet of floor space per bird inside the coop adequate, accompanied by 10 square feet of space in a run per bird. Unlike peafowl, it doesn't matter how big the run is, the chickens will be turning the entire thing to bare soil, which is one of the reasons most people don't keep both in the same pens. I literally attempted to keep 2 standard chickens in a 1200 foot pen and they systematically went about destroying everything they could get to.

Most layer feeds are 16% protein; most layer feeds are also /production/ layer feeds, meant to feed production breeds in a space where they get NO other feed except this. If you plan to feed anything other than layer feed to them, like treats or whole foods or scratch grains, then you need to find a higher protein feed for them, because most treats are lower protein than layer feed. Avoid anything produced by Purina or Dumor (which is purina but TSC brand), except MAYBE the organic dumor 5-grain scratch grain, it's well-known as one of the worst quality fowl feeds out there. Check out your local mill and see if they have any options that are better than the big box farm stores. Kalmbach makes good feeds, as does Belstra.

Possibly counterintuitive, but stick with a smaller waterer over a larger waterer. You can keep a larger one around for if you go away for the weekend or something to make it easier on a sitter, but a smaller waterer like a 5-quart or gallon waterer will be easier to clean and make sure that you're giving fresh water more often, plus avoiding mosquitoes growing in it. Waterers can slime up really easily in the summer, so just be prepared to give it a quick swish clean every time you change the water out. Smaller waterers also make it easier to give them medication if you have something that goes in the water, especially since a lot of the water medications are "make fresh daily." Personally I don't bother with heated water bases anymore in the winter, I just have enough waterers to exchange them for a fresh one a couple times daily, while the old one thaws inside the back door on some plastic. The galvanized ones you have to use with the heated bases always got gross fast, with rust and discoloration and the stopper in the bottom always dried out and eventually cracked over the summer when we weren't using them.

Try to avoid straw bedding unless you REALLY trust the source. Straw is mostly for livestock, not poultry. It cannot catch the droppings of poultry the way shavings or sand or other beddings do, meaning the wet gunk drops to the floor under it and/or collects into grossness. It also molds easily, can carry in field parasites (since it's not treated the way shavings are often kiln fired before packaging), and breaks down into shards. I'm not saying you can't ever use it for any reason (I use it in some fashion, and have for over a decade, but not exclusively, and I trust my source, we've never gotten mites or anything, and I'm very careful about which bales I pick out), but if you have a choice, go for the wood substrates, or even for sand. A lot of people put sand in their runs because they can then rake it like kitty litter.

Look into what plants chickens can't have, and check your yard over thoroughly for them before adding chickens. Things like lilac bushes are toxic to them. Tomato and potato plants are nightshades so while they can have the fruits, the leaves and stems can be toxic. Stuff like that.

Lastly.... if anyone ever makes a claim about what something does for a chicken (example: diatomaceous earth, apple cider vinegar, pumpkin seeds, oregano, red pepper flakes, lavender, etc are all things I've seen people claim do all sorts of things from worming birds to curing respiratory infections), ask them for their source. If it's a blog post, ask them for a scientific article. If they can't provide it and you can't find one that backs up what they're saying, maybe reconsider the value of that particular advice. The thing is, the BIG production companies are VERY invested in finding cheap or organic or tricky ways to do WHATEVER it is (treat endo/ectoparasites, treat illness, make bigger or more eggs, change egg yolk color, etc), and they pour money into trying to figure out which old wives tales actually work and which ones don't. And if they haven't been able to prove it to a point where they'll spend money on it as a solution, then chances are REALLY GOOD that it's not a solution at all actually.

Things like how to clean coops, what feeds to get, what items to use for care, where to source birds, behavioral information etc, that's all stuff you can ask advice on in general public spaces. You'll still get a range of answers, and some of them will be garbage answers, but hardly any of them will do harm to your animals to do or not do. Like, for example, you can use a big waterer or a small waterer, as long as it's clean. You can vary coop and run size and still be fine. You don't have to feed exactly what someone else is feeding for your birds to be fine. You're probably going to try a few breeds before you find the one(s) you like best.

But when it comes to medical info or any kind of "treatment" type stuff? Consult a vet and/or at least look for scientific papers.

And lastly.... chicken math is Real, yo. However many chickens you think you want to get, plan on having the space for double that amount so you don't gotta rebuild anything when you ultimately decide wait, you need a couple more. The bigger space won't hurt them if you don't get more, but it'll be so much easier on you if you do ;)

[fanaticsnail]

Update on what's going on in the Snail Household

If you're just new to my account, you'd likely not know that chef-husband (how I refer to my husband here) had broken his shoulder in late January, had complications in recovery, had been off work for nearly 5 months to nurse the injury back to health.

I'll put the update under a break here to not take up too much space on your device. If you take the time out of your day to read here, I love you 🖤

He has returned to work now, which is amazing. His apprentices and coworkers had missed him so much, and he is so glad to be back. He is attending some physio appointments and rehabilitative therapies to regain strength - and he is doing very well. I'm so proud of him.

The two breaks were within his armpit, the bone where the socket meets the join. There are also several debris still in there and his ligaments are still very tender from splitting them and the cartilage apart on impact. The injury happened at work, so every medical expense has been covered by his workplace.

While he has enjoyed being back at work, he has been missing home time with Young-Sir & Dottir-Bean (my 4yo & 3yo) and they have been missing their dad when he goes - especially my son when he does the night shift.

I am very proud of him for returning to work, but I do miss him at home too. Very selfish of me to love my husband so much to want him home. 11 years of relationship, almost 9 years of marriage, and he's still my best friend and love of my life. Something about tall men with broad shoulders, who are kind and compassionate, who smoke to cope with stresses at work...

Now that I've said all that, here's a little going on with me, currently.

I am recovering from the flu right now, still all gross and foggy and blocked nosey. The kids have had it and it's always my turn to get it last. It's gross, and I am surviving on black coffee, honey and lemon tea, paracetamol, and numbing throat lozenges.

Now for the uncomfy stuff.

I've had to say goodbye to a friendship of 15 years with someone who, once upon a time, was very important to me. He wrote me a handwritten letter that hurt me very deeply and came across a little yandere. It made me very uncomfortable reading it. Yandere belongs in books fanfiction, not in real life.

The letter was given to me at the Star Wars themed wedding I attended on May the 4th - which I think I posted here in response to an ask from @mfreedomstuff: which I appreciate all the time, love.

I have been speaking to my extended family, and a few mutuals on here have been reassuring me that ending the friendship was the right thing to do. It was sad and I've been having a lot of anger about it that I'm working through.

This is what's been going on for the month of May, alongside finding out one of our prettier chickens was actually a rooster in disguise. He's going to make the most beautiful chicks with our hens - particularly our Araucana. Gonna get a Black Copper Marans Hen one of these days if it's the last thing I do 😤👌.

If you've made it to here, thank you so much for reading. I'll get right back into writing some content for you. Just thought I'd share a little about my personal life here to give you a glimpse into what's going on with me (and why I've been writing so much this month: to deal with all this).

Writing and this community has been such a beautiful aspect of my life, and I have enjoyed getting to know you on here. Even though I am just a snail on here, this part of my life has been so much sunshine amongst the dreary. Love you all, and I'll get right back into the writing soon.

[rederiswrites]

This is Deviljho Jr. He was hatched from a missed egg. Another hen dragged him out and pecked him, and I found him wet, chilled, and injured, and promptly tucked him into my bra. He survived, obviously, and recovered quickly.

Well, I say he. I have hopes that that prominent comb means he's a roo, because his coloration means he's definitely the offspring of our beloved and now deceased roo, Moonlight. And the feathered feet mean his mama was a Black Copper Marans. So since he's already a sort of bottle baby and I'm working on keeping him friendly, I'd love him to be a.... Him.

Anyhow, I've got poor baby Deviljho tucked against my chest on day three or four and he's cheeping and my son's on the couch playing Monster Hunter World with someone over the headset. And the other kid is like, "the heck is that noise?" so my kids explains. No, he doesn't have a name, he says.

"He says to name it Deviljho Jr."

"OK," I say. So it is.

Normally I don't make pets of chickens, and before he's much bigger he'll go out with the others. But chickens can be very cruel to newcomers and the small, so for now I'm going to enjoy this weird little time with my lap chicken.

[mings]

Pretty sure I have (yet another) new favourite hen. She hatched nine weeks ago from a cross with a Black Copper Marans rooster and a Cuckoo Marans hen. Looks like the rooster provided the dominant genes in this one. Isn't she gorgeous?

[homeofhousechickens]

My flock. I’m very excited to get babies from my Barred Rock rooster, Oreo, and he has his cage mates Pringles (a Black Copper Marans) and Hershey (Rhode Island Red).

The hen coop has nine chickens in it, a starlight green egger, an Easter egger, two white leghorns, a golden comet and four game hens. Only five are laying right now. Hopefully they’ll all lay come spring.

I also have silkies, but I don’t have any good pictures of them.

Your leghorns comb is bouncing in the wind and her tail looks like an exclamation, all is right in the world. The hens up on the high perches are reminiscent of jungle fowl but i would be worried about bumblefoot from hard landings but those gals up there do look lightweight and fit.

[jonathan-marsh]

Copper Blue Maran hen doodle on a thank you card for a friend

[ilraksroost]

(Forgive the older picture of the girls - I need to get a more updated "Squad" photo soon)

I've been taking my mom some eggs from the girls and she stated that the eggs all had different flavors (she's been doing them hardboiled). My husband and I have been doing them as fried or scrambled in sandwiches but after Jasper and DB Cooper's first eggs, we hadn't tried them fried or scrambled without any seasoning (just because my husband and I are used to doing wild things with seasonings).

Taste test results and image IDs under the cut.

So we went over to my mom's with a dozen eggs on Sunday and set up a taste test, throwing in one of her store bought eggs from when we weren't able to get together last week.

The results:

Cleo (an Easter Egger, lays the gigantic green egg)- strong rich flavor, creamy - to note, she is our smallest hen but lays the largest eggs at about 64 grams.

Olivia Warbawks (a Black Copper Marans, lays the dark brown egg) - mild flavor, not as creamy. Still amazing though

Bernadotte Peters (a Gold Laced Wyandotte, lays the larger light brown egg)- between Cleo and Olivia in flavor and creaminess

DickButt "D. B." Cooper (a Blue Laced Barnevelder, lays the medium brown egg - her name came from a friend)- Bright, strong, mustardy. Had a nice aftertaste on the back of the tongue.

Jasper (a Buff Orpington, lays the smallest, light brown egg)- Creamy, somehow Sweet?!

Store bought (white egg)- no.

I should also add they all seem to have their own favorite forage foods so maybe that's what led to a difference in egg flavor. It's going to be interesting when watermelon and flower season start up again for the girls!

[First Image ID: A picture of six eggs, arranged in a circle on a counter. From the top, going clockwise, there is a dark brown egg labeled "Olivia Warbawks", a small, light brown egg labeled "Jasper", An extremely large green egg labeled "Cleopatra", a white egg labeled "Store Bought", a large, light brown egg labeled "Bernadotte Peters", and a Medium brown egg labeled "D B Cooper". /.End ID]

[Second Image ID: Five chickens standing in a chicken run a There is a Blue chicken with brown spots, a Black chicken with a copper colored neck, a Brown chicken with black lace markings, a brown chicken with a fluffy tan beard, and a yellow chicken. They are grouped together in the center of the image and all except for the yellow chicken are looking into the camera. The yellow chicken is not looking at anything in particular. /.End ID]

[jensownzoo]

The new chicks are four months old today! They’re at the tail end of their juvenile molt (just some belly feathers still regrowing).

By going in their run and sitting on an upended bucket for some “chicken therapy” nearly daily I have accidentally made one of the Sapphire Gems a lap chicken. Which...I really like having chickens, but in my mind they’re more in a category like tropical fish (but more useful in a food-producing way). My older hens are pretty strictly hands-off except for occasional “toe-ball” removal (one side of their run is essentially a compost pile so I have to keep an eye out).

In general I’ve noticed that all the Sapphire Gems are very friendly in a people-oriented way. Makes sense with Plymouth Rock being a foundation breed of their hybrid mix.

The Cream Legbars are the smartest and most curious (and because of this approach me readily). They’re definitely of different genetic lines because while one is a true cream color, the other two are reddish. The runty one (a red) has the funniest personality, of course.

The Midnight Majesty Marans are sort of middle of the road—they will approach, but are mostly disinterested in it. A blah kind of personality, but nicely docile so *shrugs*. Definitely a mix of black French Marans and Black Copper Marans as the three that I kept all have a bit of copper bleeding through at the neck.

Theoretically I was planning on selling another set of three in December as point-of-lay. We’ll see if that happens or if I just build an addition to the new run for more space and move a few to the coop/run housing the older hens. Two of the hens are coming up on 10 years in age, so holding onto a few more youngsters than I technically need at the moment makes a lot of sense. Especially considering how much coordination it took to get them here with all my limitations.

[thomas--bombadil]

1. Portrait of a Black Copper Maran hen 2. Black Copper Maran eggs

These hens lay some of the darkest eggs that exist. They are intelligent, friendly and productive.

[justalittlebirde]

OOC// Meet the Chickens: Rosetta

Rosetta is a Black Copper Marans. She does not like to hang around people very much making her very difficult to paint if you're into that kind of thing. Apparently chickens have swears, because she curses like a sailor. She holds grudges easily, so you have to be very sweet to her even if she's not particularly sweet back. She's another of the family hens, belonging equally to everyone (or not belonging equally to everyone, she's her own woman who demands all of your sunflower seeds).

[esmeraldawhitlock]

Kinds of Chickens at Esmeralda Whitlock’s Home and The Eggs They Lay

Whiting True Blue

Whiting True Green

French Black Copper Marans

Swedish Flower Hen

[penpaladinjules]

I have new Black Copper Marans chicks! They will lay a chocolate colored egg, very pretty. I expect half of them to be roosters, and I’ll probably lose a couple of them before they are adults (they are such fragile creatures), so 8 chicks is a good bet for retaining 1 or 2 adult hens. And if by some small miracle they are all hens and all survive, I can sell the extras. https://www.instagram.com/p/CpP_lULrPre/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[homeofhousechickens]

I've been playing around breeding crosses, Exchequer Leghorn Hen x Black Copper Marans Roo, so many cool colours :0 I've gotten everything from nearly full black to white with red leakage

I think Exchequer Leghorns might be extended black based while Marans are eb (brown) based so their chicks would be split for both of those which could lead to some messy and fun coloring. Mottling is also a fun gene to work with and that baby cockerel on the left looks very huggable