These lovely dark shelled eggs are the first from our Wheaten Maran chooks, I have placed an Isa brown egg in for comparison
There are several different varieties of Maran birds some of them are Black Copper Maran, Cuckoo Maran and Copper Blue Maran. The darker the hen the darker the egg shell. They are known as the black egg layers. (Google Maran poultry, have a look)
Maran are named for the town where they were first bred, Marans in Southern France.They are a good heavy bird, lay well and are said to be good eating as well but I very much doubt if we will be eating any of these, they were NOT CHEAP !! Fertile eggs are sold at $100 per dozen and that is the cheapest I could find. A game of chance when you buy eggs because almost always, not all of them will hatch out. I prefer to pay a bit more and get week old chickens. That way you know if they are healthy, they have survived the first week and from there on its up to you.
This is a picture of some of our hens, aren't they pretty? They have feathered legs and feet.
For the time being we have them running with
our Australorps but now they have started laying they will need to be separated so that they don't cross breed.
In the middle of this shot you can see the rooster, a very handsome fellow and to the right hand side, one of the Australorps.
6 comments:
If you get any Maran chicks in the future I'd love to buy some :) gorgeous looking chooks and beautiful brown eggs!
They are a nice dark colour aren't they? The hens are rather gorgeous looking, much nicer looking than the Australorps I think.
Thanks Meeka I will keep you in mind
Yes Pip, I'm really excited about this lot of chooks. Australorps used to be my favourites .... thats before we got these.lol
wow! Pretty eggs but crazy price! I think it might be cheaper to buy the chicks from a hatchery.
Aimee, I first found these "black" eggs on eBay, would you believe? They were only available from USA so I went on a search for them here and these chicks are what I found, couldn't wait till I had some, they are not available from a hatchery only from poultry show people. I plan to sell my chicks at poultry shows which are held every 6 months or so.
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