Here were my first Barnevelder chicks hatched last April. Out of 6 eggs, 5 hatched, all boys.
This last attempt I had 6 eggs again (different breeder this time and egg production was low).
I had power outages but 1 did hatch. A boy of course.
Here he is in the brooder. He is looking for a home by the way. I will ship to you one free bird in a free live bird box, you pay mailing. It's around $30, depending on your zip code.
He's very handsome, from PeaceOfThyme in MO.
I'll try to add some pics to this thread soon. Hope to be able to take some pics of my Barnies to update my website this weekend. Got lots of chores to do beforehand though.
My Johan and vB lines are looking much better this year. Leg color is real good on some of them and the lacing is coming along very nicely. I just butchered one cockerel last Saturday and have three more than I am looking over still. One of them is going to my original breeder and friend so he has an extra. Am hoping to have some real winners.
Here he is in the brooder. He is looking for a home by the way. I will ship to you one free bird in a free live bird box, you pay mailing. It's around $30, depending on your zip code.
I am down to one Roo so another one would be very good......I like to have alot of backup.
I have 5 Barnevelder pullets. They are enjoying eating and wandering around in our garden of an afternoon. We live in a urban area therefore are not able to have a roo, but I would like to get fertile eggs next year or the year after and hatch our own. Our birds are about 21 or 22 weeks old. I just noticed today that some of them have started to develop pinkness and the comb is starting to grow. Looking forward to our first eggs!
This was taken Dec 27th.
This is from tonight (using a flash so colours are a little washed out)
Thanks for your replies! I love my Barnies, they are amusing to watch. They are very food oriented, and push the two Hamburgs out of the way when the food goes into the pen in the morning. They remind me of my Oma pushing her way through the crowds in the shops!!!
(Must be my dutch heritage that attracts me to them!) We were originally going to get Wyandottes, but I am pleased we got the Barnies instead.
We got ours from a family in country Victoria (about 2 hours drive away) - I live in Australia! So much as I would love to get fertile eggs from you eagle2026, I don't think Australian Quarantine will allow it!
I will post pics some from when we first got them - I think they were about 13 weeks old? They were similar in size to the Hamburgs. They are now about double the size of the Hamburgs (and still more to grow I think!). They love digging around in our mulch and finding fat wichetty grubs (kinda like bit fat caterpillars that live in the soil) - then the race is on to try to get it off each other.
There are quite a lot of places to get Barnevelder fertile eggs in Australia - I don't think they are as rare as in the US. I would like to hatch them and handle them, so that they are more used to people - ours are very timid, and it is very difficult to catch them - forget about handling them!
I hope they will quiet down a little as they get older and start laying, but I don't think they will ever be particularly 'friendly', because they were not brought up around people - just in a big pen with lots of other young birds.
These are from back in November when we first got them, sorry don't really have any close ups from that time...
Sorry about the poor quality.
This is the first time they free-ranged, two weeks after we got them, so they were about 15 or 16 weeks old. We are now in the middle of summer, and much of the grass has died off. We are expecting 115 degrees tomorrow... yuck!
Hopefully the chooks will be ok with shade and misting.
I particularly like their fluffy butts. This is from today...