New Marans chicks; increasing the heritage flock.

We have five new Marans chicks! Marans are a specialty breed which lay brown eggs, and I was given my first lot of fertile eggs last year by a local friend. This lot are from my own rooster and hens, which I started last year from fertile eggs. There’s a bit involved in raising chicks, but who doesn’t love to see little fluff balls every now and then?

The black hen with her four chicks, day one.
The black hen with her four chicks, day one.

It’s been quite a saga. I’ve made a few mistakes and learnt a lot. It’s good to have plans, but with chickens things probably don’t go to plan all that often until you have plenty of experience.

Three of the chicks, getting bigger by the day.
Three of the chicks, getting bigger by the day.

Raising Marans chicks from our eggs.

The plan was to raise a clutch of selected eggs under a broody hen in Autumn. That would have given me Marans chicks that matured through Winter to start laying in Spring. Our Winters are warm and productive, so there is no problem with protection and forage. As the pullets won’t lay until Spring, I figured a late start would mean the least amount of pellet feeding to bring them to production, with its extra outlay.

The wheaten chick
The wheaten chick

But of course the chickens had other ideas. The old ones started going broody in mid-Spring, and once a couple start sitting the entire flock seems to become less inclined to lay. So my egg production fell away, and I quickly went from easily being able to collect a dozen eggs for brooding to only collecting a handful of my target Marans eggs over a week. I also then had limited time to set eggs under a hen before she got exhausted from brooding and gave up.

Four of the chicks at a few weeks old
Four of the chicks at a few weeks old

So I ended up putting only five Marans eggs under my favourite broody hen when she too started to nest in one of the laying boxes. Then the mayhem began. A couple of hens would get in the box to lay in her clutch, and as I hadn’t marked the original eggs, I had no idea which ones were due in 21 days, and which would need more incubation. She ended up sitting on thirteen eggs.

On hatching day there were four chicks, but one was weak and didn’t survive. The hen was remarkably indifferent to the weak one, so it stood no chance. I moved the hen and chicks to my specially constructed chick house and put the remaining eggs under another broody.

The five chicks and my favourite foster hen.
The five chicks at the first week, and my favourite foster hen.

She hatched one chick, so I moved them both to the chick house and moved the eggs again. That hen also hatched one chick, so I ended up with five Marans chicks under three hens. That’s less than ideal as the hens are eating chick food, which is more expensive. Last year I had ten chicks under one hen, a much better ratio.

Things settled down after that. One chick disappeared, perhaps taken by a crow or hawk, and the rest have done well. I’m no expert on sexing, but we seem to have three hens and two cocks, and one of the hens is wheaten, which is my preferred Marans colouring.

Next season? I’ll see how these ones do, and whether I need to increase my hen numbers. If I could bring myself to be ruthless I’d get rid of the old hens and keep a young laying flock, but that probably won’t happen, so I’ll have to see what size flock is manageable here.