As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, we had some Trouble with Roosters. Ramon was being aggressive towards Reuben, and I decided to separate them. Reuben got moved up to the main chicken yard, and that left Ramon all by himself in the bachelor pad coop. I didn’t want to leave Ramon alone for too long and take the chance that he would become aggressive towards us or to his future replacement coop mates. I already had a short list of chicken breeds that I hoped to add to our flock one day, and here was my chance. I wanted to get chickens that were old enough that I could put right in with Ramon, but I didn’t want chickens that were past their egg laying prime either. At the top of my list were the breeds of chickens known for laying chocolate brown eggs, and of these I was really hoping to find some cuckoo marans or black copper marans. I looked on Craigslist every day to see if anyone was looking to rehome a few chickens of the breeds that I was interested in. After a few weeks of patiently searching Craigslist, I finally found someone with three black copper marans pullets that were 11 weeks old. They were a little younger than I wanted, but I decided to go take a look at them.
I drove to a small farm in Birkenfeld, a scenic one hour drive from us. I could tell within a few moments of talking to their owner that she loved her chickens as much as I loved mine, and that they were healthy and had been well cared for. She showed me an egg laid by the last batch of chickens she had hatched from the same mother, and the egg was a beautiful dark speckled brown. The hens had the leg feathering that is characteristic of the french breed standard, which was a good sign that these hens would also lay a dark brown egg. I decided to bring them home. She offered to sell me a rooster of the same breed so that I could raise more black copper marans if I decided to. Although it was tempting, and black copper marans roosters are very handsome, I explained to her that I already had more roosters than I needed and that it was because of my roosters that I was here buying more hens in the first place!
When we got back to the farm, I put the ladies right into Ramon’s coop so that they would learn where their new home was. It’s been well over a year since Ramon was with any ladies, so I was hoping that he would behave himself and be a gentleman – well as much of a gentleman as can be expected from a rooster that is! After a couple of hours I let the girls out to meet Ramon, and it was love at first sight. He set right to work escorting the ladies around the pasture, and they seemed happy to follow his lead. They should start laying eggs in another couple of months, and hopefully they will contribute a nice dark brown egg to our egg basket.
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