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journiland · 7 months

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Speaking of chickens, we're not thrilled with the Copper Maran. She's gone broody three times this summer. Then she has to spend three days in chicken jail, and doesn't lay for another week or so. She'd be at risk of becoming soup if I didn't like seeing her dark brown egg in the carton so much. (Google says Marans only occasionally become broody, but ours apparently didn't read those articles.)

We've been leaning more towards the hybrid chickens since they have better egg production. The 8 we just raised are 3 Amberlinks, 4 Black Sexlinks, and 1 Black Australorp (not a hybrid but I've always wanted one). The dozen new chicks we kept are 4 Amberlinks and 8 Black Sexlinks. (We like the look of the Black Sexlinks better...black with some copper, plus they're supposed to be slightly higher in egg production than the Amberlinks).

Black Sexlinks (the amount of copper can vary from almost none to a ton):

Australorp (Vampire calls her and the Maran demon chickens, because their irises are so dark that their eyes look all black, like when someone is possessed on tv):

Amberlinks:

And the roo (he's an Americauna):

#chickens #copper marans #australorp #Amberlinks #black sexlinks

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thomas--bombadil · 1 year

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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.

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coneygoil · 13 days

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Guinny is the friendliest little chick! She even hops up on the swing when I call her 😊

#chickenblr #baby chick #french copper maran #Guinny

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gryffon · 1 year

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my big quiet guy, gooster. he's unlike any other rooster ive had - he hasn't crowed yet. he's about a year old now.

#silver wyandotte #easter egger #copper maran

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ilraksroost · 1 year

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CAFO

I took a picture of my pullets that ended up being the perfect reference for this.

Blue Laced Barnevelder - DB Cooper

Black Copper Marans - Olivia Warbawks

Gold Laced Wyandotte - Bernadotte Peters

Easter Egger - Cleopatra (aka Cleo)

Buff Orpington - Jasper

EDIT 11/4: You can get stickers, totes, shirts, etc of this on Redbubble now!

Posted using PostyBirb

[Image ID: A cartoon drawing of five chickens on a circle of green grass. 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 with an attempt to be intimidating. The yellow chicken is not looking at anything in particular. Above the image, in a gold, cartoon font is “Cluck Around”. Below the image in the same font is “And Find Out”. /.End ID]

#chickenblr #chickens #chicken #cluck around and find out #blue laced barnevelder #gold laced wyandotte #black copper marans #easter egger #buff orpington #added in image ID

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rob-plucks · 10 months

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✨Look at all those Chickens✨

My little flock is starting to shape up.

Look out for Ranch Rams colored eggs at a farmers market near you! ( not really , cali only)

I’m getting another 8 next week 😬

#look at all those chickens #golden Brahma #golden laced wyandotte #olive egg #black copper maran #ameruacana #road Island red #colored eggs #ram ranch #ranch ram

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sugarpopss · 2 years

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Vincent my beautiful boy, honoring his namesake with his silence (he doesn’t crow, ever)

#house of wax #house of wax 2005 #vincent sinclair #roosters #isn’t he pretty?#I lov him #yes he’s missing his tail feathers #black copper maran #maran rooster

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journiland · 2 years

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8/6/2022

Very tired and unmotivated lately. Actually did nothing other than the animal chores today. I did let the goats out unsupervised for a while... during the entirety of the movie "Sense and Sensibility," actually. (And didn't realize Hugh Laurie was in it until the credits, so had to go back and watch parts again.)

I really like the dark brown egg. I think the Copper Marans just started laying.

#goats #eggs #copper marans

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occaisional-chunkens · 2 months

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everyones new favorite snack. its good because its very easy to move the spoon between bird and make sure everyone gets some, and peanut butter is more challenging to steal directly out of another birds mouth before they can swallow.

#victoria and kimberly are absolute menaces when it comes to stealing treats from the less confident birds #this also allows rachel to get a treat because usually hes too polite and gives his food to the girls #backyard chickens #chickenblr #chicken #birdblr #ameraucana #welsummer #australorp #olive egger #black copper marans #cuckoo marans

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vampawre · 1 year

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Picked up these girls yesterday! Cage was a temporary one-night thing until I could bring them to the coop, but it's a good picture of them.

The salmon faverolle is Peach, the black copper maran is Daisy, and the easter egger is Rosalina. I definitely have a favorite, but shhh.

At the time of writing this, they're getting used to their new coop.

#Chickenblr #poultry #chickens #transylvanihens #salmon faverolle #black copper maran #easter egger #peach #daisy #rosalina

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coneygoil · 2 days

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Guinny’s copper collar feathers are starting to come in!

#chickenblr #baby chicks #Guinny #french copper maran

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kedreeva · 6 months

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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 ;)

#chickens #asks

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thomas--bombadil · 8 months

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