Cuckoo marans

Cuckoo marans are one of the new chicken breeds we're trying out in 2011.  We decided to test the variety since Harvey Ussery uses cuckoo marans as his mother hens and we want to find a very broody/maternal variety.  Other folks keep cuckoo marans for their extremely dark brown ("chocolate") eggs, because the chickens are a relatively rare breed, or because their owners like eating James Bond's favorite type of egg.


Origin
Cuckoo marans chickens originated in the mid 1800s in the French town of Marans.  As a result, it's technically incorrect to refer to "a cuckoo maran hen" --- instead, the name "marans" should always have an "s" at the end.  The English imported marans and selected for non-feathered legs, so you can tell whether your marans are of English stock (like ours) or of French stock by looking for leg feathers.  (Most American birds are English-type marans.)  Either way, marans share the European trait of white (well, pink, really) skin, which makes for a different-looking carcass than that of traditional American meat breeds.

Marans were probably originally bred to be good farmyard birds and are now considered a dual purpose breed due to their moderate heaviness.  According to some sources, a marans type chicken dates back to the thirteenth century, which presumably means marans were selected for utility as well as looks.  Cuckoo marans originated in marshland and they're supposed to be able to handle damp and wet better than some other varieties.

Modern cuckoo marans lay anywhere from 160 to 210 eggs per year, which is not so hot if you're raising the chickens just for their eggs.  (We hope their maternal abilities will make lower egg-laying worthwhile.)  Although marans are famous for laying "chocolate eggs", many individuals lay ordinary brown eggs instead --- if shell color is important to you, be sure to look for a dark-laying strain.


Identification: Cuckoo marans vs. barred rocks
Cuckoo marans look a lot like the more common barred rock, but the two breeds aren't that tough to distinguish.  In barred rocks, look for:

• Barred feathers, meaning straight white lines running across the chicken rather than a speckled effect.
• Yellow legs

In contrast, cuckoo marans have:

• More speckling than barring (although the rooster may look nearly barred.)
  
• Light pink legs
  

Sexing cuckoo marans
You can get an idea of the sex of a cuckoo marans nearly from the day it hatches.  At the fluff stage, males tend to be light silver colored while females are almost black.  The males also usually have a a larger yellow spot on their heads than the females (but this isn't as easy to distinguish as it is with dominiques.)

Once your chicks feather out, sexing becomes simpler.  Female cuckoo marans are much darker than males, with the white spots on the feathers being smaller and further apart.  Of course, once your chickens reach three months old, you should be able to distinguish males from females of any breed by body size, comb size, etc.


Behavior
We raised our cuckoo marans in the ragweed forest, which means they were easily able to hide just by walking a few feet back into the weeds.  Perhaps that's why they turned out so skittish and shy, although the trait may be genetic since some internet sources report similar behavior.  (On the other hand, other folks say that their muckoo marans are calm and tame.)

It's also tough to get a solid handle on our cuckoo marans' foraging ability.  We processed our cockerels at 12 weeks (at which time they weighed 2.06 pounds) and found that their feed to meat conversion rate was around 5.2.  The number suggests that the marans foraged better than our dark cornish last year but worse than our black australorps.  To be fair to our marans, though, they didn't have perfect pasture conditions since I kept them in one large pasture during their entire youth rather than rotating, so they might have had limited access to good food.

I've read from several sources that cuckoo marans exhibit extreme broodiness, which can be good or bad, depending on whether you want to raise your own chicks.  Our pullets aren't old enough to show off their broodiness yet, so we'll have to wait until next year to tell you whether the reports are true.