[Fleecewife]

I was lucky enough to get 4 young poults from darkbrowneggs' recent dispersal, when Bloomer brought them north.  I bought 2 Cream Legbars and 2 black Marans.   They have been growing superbly with their broodie mum still in attendance and are free range.
Yesterday we heard a rather strangled sound from the orchard and wondered whatever it could be.  It slowly resolved itself into a sort of crowing.  Oh no, we thought, the buzzard's caught Napoleon (our Scots Grey cock).  But then we heard him crow, his usual confident self.
So then we knew that one of the newbies must be a cockerel.  We had had our suspicions for a week or two, but this was confirmation that the rather striking Black Maran 'hen' was in fact male.
 
I can't keep him because of Napoleon so I have put him for sale in 'Marketplace'.  I hope someone can take advantage of him as he is of top breeding, from a strain of very dark egg producers.

[HesterF]

I've still got my cuckoo Marans cockerel for sale on preloved. He's ruling a pen of boys at the moment and husband is keen to keep him because 'he looks like a proper cockerel' (I much prefer my magnificent if slightly fluffier Orps) but I'm not really intending to breed from him. Had some lovely lady booked to come and see him last week who never showed up and has not replied to my 'are you still interested?' messages so he may still end up in the pot  .

[bloomer]

the boy marans are very good at avoiding early detection of the 4 marans i have left from the batch i brought up 2 are looking very boyish and 1 started this weekend to make strangled cockadoodledoos...


such a shame...

[Fleecewife]

I hope we don't have to end up eating him      If he gets on ok with Napoleon we could keep him and get some nice young hens from him  .   Do you think that crosses from breeds such as Black rock, Buff Maran, Welsummer, etc, which already lay brown or brownish eggs, would improve the egg colour from his input?   As you can tell, I'm not very well up on chook breeding.