CHOCOLATE MARANS

I started this project in 2017 by putting a chocolate Orpington cockerel over lavender marans hens. This created my first generation. I bred the siblings to each other and kept the best chocolate offspring. After that I used a good quality BCM cockerel over the best chocolate hens and repeated till I got nice Maran type birds with decent coloured eggs. Surprisingly the egg colour and type progressed much faster than it did in the lavender project. In fact egg colour with the chocolate marans is much better then the lavender marans as a whole. Temperament in lavenders though is better than the chocolates. What surprised me the most is what amazingly productive layers they are. By far the best layers of all my breeds. I think the most common complaint I hear about Marans in general is how few eggs they produce in a year. These completely defy that trend. Huge bonus with the chocolates though is the ability to create sex link chicks using a chocolate cockerel over BCM hens. Chocolate offspring will be female and black BCM (see chart on this page). If your goal is to add dark chocolate layers to your flock then these are definitely the best option for productive dark egg layers.

PRICING: $10 per EGG, $100 DOZEN $15 CHICK (unsexed)