Balance ~ Beauty ~ Grace  

We quickly became very fond of our first Black Copper Marans flock. The gorgeous well-mannered roosters, the curious yet graceful hens and the shinning blue and green sheened black feathers in the sun. All around just beautiful birds. We had originally purchased hatching eggs to add in those dark chocolate eggs to our egg basket, but when our pullets started laying, we were not impressed with the egg shades that they were producing. We had a couple hens that could lay a 4 at the beginning of the season but this quickly faded, and they laid less than a 4 for most of the laying season. We were also unimpressed with the size of the eggs as we had read that Marans produced a 70 – 80 gram sized egg when full grown. These hens were just barely making 65 grams when well over a year old.

 

In search of reasons as to why our flock was so underwhelming in the egg laying department, we jumped into the rabbit hole and sourced quality birds from breeders focused on the true heritage of the Marans breed. We were able to find 3 unrelated lines within Canada and 2 additional lines within North America with varying degrees of quality, thus began our adventure into Black Copper Marans. Each of the five lines we had acquired could lay the 71 gram eggs once mature, the shades varied from a 5 to a 6 and were consistent in shape. We have one line, the last line we purchased stock from that has over melanized hens and they are completely black, the roosters from this line are standard in colour however. The hens out of this line lay very dark eggs with some hens at a 7/8. We are currently working on this line to restore the copper neck feathers within the hens.

We breed above all else for the foundation of the bird, we asses for a correct top line and tail set within both our Cockerels and Pullets. We look for balanced proportions next, marans should look proportionate from the top, sides and rear. We select birds with a nice long straight keel bone and nice fleshing of the breast, as Marans are a dual purpose breed. We check for legs that are not to long and are set wide enough apart, and proper feathering down the shank and outer toe.

When checking for leg width for myself it works out to be the width of my hand underneath the bird when assessing leg width for hens, and for Cockerels there is what I call slight breathing room between the inner thighs and my hand. When you have assessed a few you just “know” what you are feeling for.

 

Once we have selected the birds we want to keep for breeding we continue to monitor their growth, temperament and overall vigor. Once our pullets begin to lay we assess the eggs for colour and size and continue to monitor this through the first year. Our pullets typically start laying 48 – 50 gram eggs and climb to that 65 – 71 gram egg by the time they are a year old. We start to see greater than 70grams in hens that are over a year old and hatch our next generation for breeding out of these eggs. When you purchase hatching eggs from us you will also only receive eggs from hens that are fully mature and laying full sized eggs. We find that by waiting for the larger eggs we are also able to achieve better size on our Marans at an earlier age due to the chicks being larger at hatch.

We are hoping to see over a couple generations pullets that lay larger eggs earlier in their laying. Marans hens on average will lay for about 5 years, you will see a decrease in egg production going into their 3rd year. 

 

Because we do "hard cull" our extra roosters and add our non breeding hens into our laying flock we are able to hatch in abundance , this gives us an advantage in speeding up the selective breeding process and seeing our work pay off a little earlier. Selecting only your best means that out of a hatch of 30 chicks you may end up with 5 quality birds for breeding. Breeding for quality in any poultry requires a determined mind with a clear set of goals. We are working on our Black Copper Marans lines in preparation for exhibition in 2026.  We currently offer both Black Copper and Blue Copper Marans. We do not breed our blues over blues so we do not have the splash variety within our hatches. You will see on average 50%/50% blue/black when you hatch from us. Egg shades will vary. 

For any other questions regarding our Copper Marans please contact us. We are consistently working on this breed and will have updates here on our Marans page when we have them.