A Bielefelder Thread !

[Awaytome]

Wish I had seen this thread with comments about eggs. My Bieles are big and friendly birds but only laying 2 to 3 unuepectedly small eggs a week. I'm disappointed with the breed and wouldn't get again, but like them too much to put them in the pot.

 

[Sylvester017]

Wish I had seen this thread with comments about eggs. My Bieles are big and friendly birds but only laying 2 to 3 unuepectedly small eggs a week. I'm disappointed with the breed and wouldn't get again, but like them too much to put them in the pot.

I never had Bieles but have had disappointment in collecting smaller or fewer eggs from other larger breeds. We had a Marans and Breda that were larger in the 7 to 7.5 lb weights and their eggs were medium-size at best at 2 eggs/week -- it was rare to collect 3 eggs in a week. Another unrelated problem was never getting the reported egg colors for a breed -- like getting light brown instead of chocolate or dark brown eggs or getting white eggs from brown egg layers, etc.

My best XL/L egg layer of 6-7 eggs per week was an ordinary white Leghorn that only weighed 5 lbs soaking wet. However, in the long run prolific egg laying Leghorns or Hybrid layer breeds have short or sometimes sickly deaths.

It takes a while to develop a workable backyard flock so we didn't want prolific breeds that died too early where we'd have to keep adding new birds. Plus its heartbreaking to exhaust a prolific egg-layer as we had to put down a sweet but prolific egg layer due to bleeding ovarian tumor.

There are exceptions I'm sure but we've found smaller and less prolific breeds or breeds that go broody to give their bodies a rest from egg-laying have had longer lifespans in our flock. The sacrifice is getting medium rather than huge eggs but resulting in a healthier lifespan for the hens.