Barnevelder breeders lets work together and improve the breed

[ksf59]

I know the fabirc is to kewl. My mother made some table covers for us, and this was one of them I just thought I made a nice back drop for some barnie eggs. I will try to get some pics of my birds this weekend. I love them crooked toes and all, I had some issues incubating them and thought that may have caused the toes, but really think that the gene pool is so tight with barnies that they have some problems. I have seen quite a few pics of peeps barnies and often can find a hen in the background with slate legs( some of mine have that) and crooked , curled toes(ditto). I think that nutrtion plays a role, as I fed a different feed this winter to my layers and chicks, and had issues with crooked toes, as did a freind, same feed completely differnt chicken. I changed feed, no more crooked toes and my hens lay better. A win win.

 

[Stevenson]

I believe that I said I would post a picture of my lone barnevelder chick and I failed to do so! Here "she" (I hope) is!

 

[RachaelS]

Okay here is a picture of "Charlie" as of yesterday, I guess she is getting darker, funny how you don't realize it when you see them everyday. She is also my "lone" chick to hatch. She hatched on 03/29/11, so I guess that puts her at a little over 5 weeks now. Would it be okay to move her outside. I think our lows at from 53 to 65. Her buddy is Lucy a Barred Plymouth Rock, that I am guess is a little older than her, but not sure how much.

 

[oconnorfamily25]

Are Barnies ever broody? Just curious.

 

[tls_ranch]

Yes, they can go broody

I also just set eggs under one of my blue project hens

All three blue hens are trying to go broody at the same time and now several of my barnie hens are thinking about it. It seems that if one goes broody they all want to do it.

Trisha

 

[tls_ranch]

Quote:
If she's out of the drafts with her buddy she'll probably be ok. My 3 week old chicks are out in colder night time temps than that, but I keep a 100 watt heat lamp on them. Check on them and if they seem too cold, set up a lamp on them...it doesn't have to be a 250watt. Just a source of localized heat for them until they get adjusted. I use red "landscape" bulbs in mine I've found them at Walmart, Lowes and Homedepot in 85 and 100 watts. The 250's are just too hot for my setups.

Trisha

 

[oconnorfamily25]

Thanks for the information. I hope that next year we are lucky enough to have some babies from our girls.

 

[nzchicke]

hi everyone! this thread is great.
I am having trouble with plenty of things in my barnies but the major thing I want to get rid of is columbian. My main line I am working with is a project blue line and the orignal rooster I had with them was mostly solid brested- now it totally stumped me that all him male offspring none had this! all have single lacing of some sort. Now I did not see any v marked (e+) chicks out of any of them so I am assuming it is not there. So i guess the rooster had something going on with ML and Pg to cause this. For a start i thought it was columbian and that i was on a dead end road! but actually i just think this line is a 'single lacing on the males' line.
The other project I am working on it silver double laced. I have crossed a SLW to my hens and have a nice looking silver rooster back in with my barney hens. So again with these I am working on being able to pick out the columbian males which I think will be even harder with silver. I have my first back cross in the brooder at the moment- an accidental late hatch! yay could not have worked out better. They are out of my darkest egg laying -but worst pattered blue hen- and in the top two layers for this year. I have a small enough amount of hens that I know their individual egg colour so can pick out that and also know laying rate.
So my first back cross is maybe 3 weeks old, i was rather gutten when none started feathering out silver! but i thought the red may hide it for a while so now I hope there are two hopefulls in there- I was hoping for a boy too but murphys law I bet ill get girls! So I am trying to work out how to see who has columbian does anyone else have pheno single laced male line?
Also With the silvers I am noticing that some boys have white with a bit of grey tummys and some boys have all white (girls are grey)
Now SLW all usually have grey tummys- so I was thinking that maybe this sexability does not work in the presence of columbian? I am not sure but am keen to find out!

Any help in any of these areas would be great!!

 

[nzchicke]

I thought I should add some photos

So in this pic-left to right- it shows a boy who has the white with bit of grey tummy (Co- if you can see the first few feathers coming in at the front they sorta look single laced ish to me?), boy(?) with white tummy(no Co?) But when looked at closely it has double ish look to its feathers (see below on another chick), and blue girl with grey tummy (possibly Co-?) and possibly silver but hard to see at moment.

also this other thing I am noticing is this double laced effect in young roos on their chest as seen in this picture(far left)- I would normally think that columbian is not involved? But any one correct me if I am wrong but I thought they would have cleaner single lacing from young if it were? But his chick I marked because it had a bit of a different dark brown rather than blackish chick down so I will see what happens... also it has grey tum so see if it is boy or girl soon...
Also in this pic a hopefully silver!(right)

 

[tls_ranch]

The columbian is a pain to get rid of, but at least it's not recessive. I've been backcrossing to pure Barnevelders to help get rid of the columbian in my blue project. I think I have a few that now will be close to being properly laced when feathered out. I've heard that the silver double-laced is going to be a hard one to create, because you can't keep backcrossing to rid the project of unwanted traits. I was told that a silver penciled rock or wyandotte would be better to use to introduce the silver because there would be no colubian to deal with like with the single laced dottes.

You may still get some roosters with laced breasts even if you don't have columbian. It could be a lack of ML. Purebred roos will also sometimes show lacing when you look close because the ML hasn't completely melanized and/ or thicken the lacing to cover the red.

I try to look for solid breasts, dark hackles in the very young cockerels and for double lacing in the first "wing bow" feathers that come in around 5-6 weeks old. But, you really can't tell until they get their adult feathers. I would wait a few more weeks with your chicks to even start evaluating the lacing and colors.

This is a promising young cockerel I'm watching along with his two blue sisters. I'm pretty sure he's double laced and the 2 girls are too. I do see a tad bit of red in his breast, but no more than I've seen in my pure roos. I also have 4 older blue cockerels, and 5 younger blues roos and 1 blue pullet. I pick the best to pair up with pure barnevelders in the fall.