Not a roo!

My young Black Copper Maran Rooney, who, according to Murphy, should have turned out to be a rooster, laid a lovely dark bronze egg this morning.  

We need to see a picture of that lovely egg!

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That's the little BCM egg in the front beside the blue egg.  It's all scratched up from her beak. Another young maran laid the lighter brown one, and the cuckoos lay speckled eggs.  I'd like to get one maran who lays the really dark eggs.  Briarwood has some lovely ones.  

Those are lovely eggs- it's nice to have a mix of colours. From what I understand the colour of the Marans eggs varies, a hen can lay a lot of different shades of brown- maybe your hen will surprise you with a really dark one!

It's hard to find the REALLY dark ones. A friend of mine is working on a project breed that lays darker eggs than the Marans that you can obtain as chicks or hatching eggs in Western Canada - beat out Marans eggs from two different breeders at the egg show in Red Deer with her project breed eggs!

It sure is, although I'm very pleased with the bronze ones.  I've seen pics of very dark chocolate brown eggs, and a friend of mine has a maran that lays almost a dark burgundy.  The hunt continues.

authenticfarm do you have any more information or a link ? I'd like to read up on that project.

So would I!

There is nothing online about it yet. Still much work to be done.

Great project, though. They're also much more cold hardy than Marans (no big combs), good size carcass, and come in blue/black/splash.

Any pictures?   Sorry when I read your post I read it to say that the project birds could be had as chicks and hatching eggs- I guess sometimes we read what we want to see not what's actually there!! It would be fun to follow their progress. Very tantalizing. I hope we hear more about this in the future!!!