There has been a bit of a stir recently with Marans eggs, so we thought we’d just write a quick educational post here with some facts.

FACT 1: Not all Marans hens lay dark eggs. This doesn’t mean that those that lay lighter brown eggs aren’t Marans…they may be pure and even show quality. Just not all hens carry the very dark chocolate genes, in fact it’s a spectrum.

FACT 2. A Marans hen will often lay darker eggs when young, with her eggs becoming lighter as she ages. However, this is not always the case, and not for all Marans lines. The colour she lays may also somewhat change from one day to another, and often she may add speckles one day, and no speckles the next day. Bloom one day and no bloom the next day. Yep, they do like variety!

FACT 3. When you hatch dark chocolate eggs, that cannot guarantee that you will get dark layers! Although you have higher chances of getting dark layers from dark eggs, chicken genetics is so complex that this cannot be guaranteed. In fact, you cannot blame the breeder if you get lighter layers because it’s completely out of our control. All we can do is keep breeding the darkest layers with roosters that came from the darkest eggs and…hope for the best!

FACT 4. Photos of Marans eggs. I bet you all will stop here and read carefully. Yes, it’s going to get interesting here. It is hard to photograph any egg and accurately represent its colour. But it’s even harder for Marans eggs. I will debate which eggs are harder to photograph – chocolate eggs or pink eggs, and I’ll probably choose pink eggs as the winner. However, this is important to note and be aware of: the darkness of the chocolate colour of the Marans egg is very difficult to accurately portray in a photograph. Here, you’ll have to go by our word when we say “these eggs are dark”. We take many photographs of our eggs, in different lights and with different backgrounds, to provide you all with more material to get an idea of our eggs. Rating them based on the French Marans chart is a way to start understanding each other a little, though even that may not be accurate because it can look different in your eyes compared to mine. For this reason, we generally avoid rating our eggs.

FACT 5. Most breeders will not sell their darkest eggs (they hatch them) – unless – they have a surplus. At this stage, we don’t have a surplus and we offer a few, mostly in mixed dozens every now and then, hoping to offer more next season. So, when you look for Marans eggs, it’s important that you are comfortable with the above facts, understanding that it’s very likely there will be different chocolate shades in your carton and that what you hatch may be different to what you got. And this is the fun of the game, isn’t!

With love,
Agia Skepi Team