How did the "blind taste test" go?
My most regular layer (an English Cuckoo Marans and laid the eggs in my photo - about 18mths old, in full moult and still laying 3-5 eggs a week) lays an egg which weighs in at just under 3oz (sorry to old for metric eggs)
There are loads of different colours of Marans - in the English Standard (they are clean legged which I prefer as they are cleaner in the nest, and get less mites and scaly leg etc) there are Dark Cuckoo (the most usual) Silver Cuckoo fairly rare and not often the best layers of dark eggs, Gold Cuckoo, White and Black.
In the French Standard, there are all those and even more. The French birds have feathered legs, tend (as far as I understand it, though someone may correct me) to lay fewer eggs and somewhat smaller eggs, and the egg colour between birds can be quite variable
Funnily enough I was speaking to a senior breeder and successful shower of Marans and Welsummers today, and he said a good dark shelled egg Marans should lay around 180 eggs a year, but some Welsummers are down to 80 eggs per year if the shell colour is good (again if someone has better information
)
There are loads of pictures of all the recognized varieties of Marans both English and French on The Marans Club
website just do a web search and it should come up - and of the Dark English Cuckoo on my own website (click on the little icon of the world beneath my egg picture) and there is lots of Marans info also about hatching rearing and feeding.
All the best
Sue
Dark Brown Eggs
Topic: Egg colour? (Read 5491 times)
