The French breed renown for their dark eggs
French Marans
French Marans are a breed of chicken from the French port town of Marans, from which they get their name. They are famous across the world for their exceptionally dark egg shells. Unlike the English Marans, the original French breed has feathers running down the outsides of their legs. French Marans are the recognised standard across continental Europe and North America, with English Marans considered an unwelcome deviation outside of the British Isles and some Commonwealth nations like Australia (where both standards are recognised).
The most common colour of French Marans are Black Copper Marans, taking off in popularity through social media in the last decade. While some hatcheries capitalised on this to the detriment of the breed, many lines of true and carefully bred Black Copper Marans remain the gold standard for egg colour and body type.
The Black (and Blue) Copper
One of the most famous varieties of chicken, let alone Marans, the Black Copper variety has almost become synonymous with the breed. Characterised by deep copper necks on the hens and on the cocks, copper necks and saddles with deep red shoulders. The remainder of the feathers are deep glossy black. Many of the darkest egg layers are Black Coppers, even in our own flock, with our original French line laying darker eggs than our English varieties.
Blue Coppers are a variation of the Black Copper, where the black is replaced by a delicately laced pigeon-blue/grey. Similarly, the Splash Copper contains a pale grey body with darker splashes. Neither of these variations are officially recognised in the USA and only Blue Coppers are in France.
The Silver Cuckoo
A rarer colour of Marans but due to sharing a similar colour pallet to the dark cuckoo (black and grey-white barring), the two are often confused and bred together simply as cuckoo Marans. They differ from their dark counterparts by being birchen based, giving them much whiter necks (and shoulders and backs in males) and paler barring overall. Silver Cuckoos are recognised also by the French Standard, while Dark Cuckoos are not.
Being birchen based, they share their base genetic pattern with Black Copper Marans. As a result, we have paired our Silver Cuckoo English Marans cock Duke of Wellington with Copper French Marans hens in our attempts to combine the warm golden tones with the Cuckoo plumage and bring back the Golden Cuckoo.
