Barnevelder breeders lets work together and improve the breed

[RachaelS]

Correction....61 eggs! My daughter talked me into setting four more she brought up from the coop. LOL. She asked me to write her name on them so they would be "special" eggs.

Trisha

I LOVE chicken math

 

[mountainvieworchards]

Yes Trisha, I know what you mean about incubating, every week I ask myself if I have hatched enough chicks and I go back and look at my winter notes that tell me what I need to hatch to get the numbers I want and its another batch into the incubator. I have three incubators going now and one is hatching about 38 eggs today.

My 6 wk olds are ready to move out of the 4 x 8 brood coop and into their grower pens. I have 75 percent cockerels in there now so I am sort of top heavy on the boys. I will move them in with what I call my coach rooster. He is a couple years old and keeps the youngsters in line until I can decide who stays and who goes.

Luckily it looks like I have a big class of pullets in the small tub brooder.

The way I figure I will have to set a batch a week until the end of May for my several Barnie projects.
I have the pure Johan line where I am trying to build up stocks, the blue line, the silver line and my new and improved Barnie line where I am trying to make a double laced dark egg laying classic from several different lines including some of yours.

I hope you used a trencher for all that water line. I can only look at your gravelly loamy soil with envy, we are still in mud here in Oregon. If I do any trenching it will be in August when things finally dry out and I will be trenching in tile lines.

On a non-Barnevelder note I hatched 5 chicks this spring from a very old line of Barred Plymouth Rocks that supposedly can be traced back to the famous Imperial Ringlet strain of Thompson. They are from a site who was 10+ pounds and with excellent barring. Hopefully I will keep this project under control.

Hope everyone has good luck with hatching and rearing this spring.

Andy

 

[tls_ranch]

Andy,
I wish I had a ton of grow-out pens, I end up free ranging the chicks starting at about 5-6 weeks old...they go back to a brooder a night. I have to make choices early on the ones I think will turn out the best because I can't raise them all up. DH prefers that we just have the one main coop (split into two sides).

I pick the young ones I like best for size, lacing and growth/vigor and go on from there. There's lots of other things I look for too like: strong heads, short beaks, good tails, overall color, and personality and a dozen other little things. Then I cull again for egg production traits once the pullets start laying eggs.

We did rent a trencher, but boy was it a "beast"..jamming up all the time and had a mind of it's own. We have to rent another one this weekend to finish the irrigation project on the other side of the house. We have the opposite problem than you do..not really muddy, but if we don't finish digging soon all that "nice gravelly loam" turns into concrete LOL. Dragging hoses, sprinklers, handwatering and hauling water for the chickens was really time consuming. Having water right at the coop, garden and inground sprinklers for the lawn areas is just awsome and all that work was worth it!

Trisha

 

[Helen in the Desert]

My 10 little hatchery barny/welsies are doing great, but some have wing feathers that are quite a bit longer than the others. Can this be a sex thing? They are all the same size, so it does not seem to me that they could vary in age more than a day, and the wing growth is very different.

 

[Tailfeathers]

Thought I'd quickly chime in and say I've got an incubator full as well. There was 120 eggs in there last night when I transferred about two dozen to the hatching tray and set another three dozen in their place. Not all Barnies though. A good # of them but also Welsummers and Buckeyes and I'm starting to get a few Ameraucanas now.

Due to several various factors, I've got one Barnie cockerel, one Barnie hen, and her daughter left and they're in a pen with a couple "project birds". One of those birds is the Mama Rose-Comb that I used to get a pretty nice looking daughter with a RC. The daughter is in the pen too but am not setting her eggs yet as she is way too small. Another bird in the pen is a very mossy-backed, smutty looking "Barnie" but she lays an egg that is almost as dark as my Welsummers. So I'm using her to see what kind of offspring she'll throw and can maybe get some nice looking Barnies with a dark egg in a couple of years.

Otherwise my Barnies are doing pretty well. I just need to get better leg color on them. That being said, I'm pretty pleased with the male I'm using this year. He's got nice yellow legs. Could be better but they're the best I've had so far.

So, I'm hatching about every egg I get from the Barnie pen. I should get some nice birds from the pure Trio, should get some improvement to the RC Barnie's comb, and then I need to get a RC male from the Mama and keep it to breed to the offspring from the daughter, and then finally it will be interesting to see what comes from the dark egg layer.

God Bless,

 

[pinkchick]

Thought I'd quickly chime in and say I've got an incubator full as well. There was 120 eggs in there last night when I transferred about two dozen to the hatching tray and set another three dozen in their place. Not all Barnies though. A good # of them but also Welsummers and Buckeyes and I'm starting to get a few Ameraucanas now.

Due to several various factors, I've got one Barnie cockerel, one Barnie hen, and her daughter left and they're in a pen with a couple "project birds". One of those birds is the Mama Rose-Comb that I used to get a pretty nice looking daughter with a RC. The daughter is in the pen too but am not setting her eggs yet as she is way too small. Another bird in the pen is a very mossy-backed, smutty looking "Barnie" but she lays an egg that is almost as dark as my Welsummers. So I'm using her to see what kind of offspring she'll throw and can maybe get some nice looking Barnies with a dark egg in a couple of years.

Otherwise my Barnies are doing pretty well. I just need to get better leg color on them. That being said, I'm pretty pleased with the male I'm using this year. He's got nice yellow legs. Could be better but they're the best I've had so far.

So, I'm hatching about every egg I get from the Barnie pen. I should get some nice birds from the pure Trio, should get some improvement to the RC Barnie's comb, and then I need to get a RC male from the Mama and keep it to breed to the offspring from the daughter, and then finally it will be interesting to see what comes from the dark egg layer.

God Bless,

Rose Comb Barnies?????? Is this a project?

 

[pinkchick]

Sorry Royce...forgot to tell you good luck with your hatch. I'm almost done hatching for this season until September. I need a break....haven't had the Sportsman turned off since Sept./Oct. last fall. It will be nice to spend the summer getting caught up on maintenance and cleaning and not rearing babies, except for the few that I have kept for myself for new stock for each breed.

Can't wait for my F1 Blue Laced Project Barnie to start laying.....which she should very very soon...her eggs might be the only exception to turning the 'bator back on. Did I just say that?!?!?!? Help me now!

 

[gavinandallison]

Is there anyone else in the NC area that is breeding Barnevelders? I am new to the breed, have some chicks outside and some (4) born last weekend.....

Just trying to see how I can sex the older chicks...

 

[Tailfeathers]

Rose Comb Barnies?????? Is this a project?

Hi Kim. Yes, it's a project. Going into 3rd year now. I have one really nice "Barnie-looking" pullet with the start of a pretty good RC but the RC isn't where it needs to be yet. I wasn't thinking before and didn't keep any of the RC males because their combs didn't look good at all. So, I'll be working on that side this year too.

I don't know if there'll be any interest in them or not. I just had a couple of birds that gave me the idea so I thought I'd try it.

God Bless,

 

[Tailfeathers]

Sorry Royce...forgot to tell you good luck with your hatch. I'm almost done hatching for this season until September. I need a break....haven't had the Sportsman turned off since Sept./Oct. last fall. It will be nice to spend the summer getting caught up on maintenance and cleaning and not rearing babies, except for the few that I have kept for myself for new stock for each breed.

Can't wait for my F1 Blue Laced Project Barnie to start laying.....which she should very very soon...her eggs might be the only exception to turning the 'bator back on. Did I just say that?!?!?!? Help me now!

I hear ya Kim. I did that a couple of years - including last year. Long story but I didn't turn off the incubator until October of last year. From now on I'm pretty well convinced that I won't be doing that again. Just wasn't worth it. I don't think the birds put on near the growth rate during the winter months that they do in the same period of time during the summer. Plus, there was a higher number of sick birds. Runny noses, bubbly eyes, gurgling, etc. Since I stopped medicating birds awhile back, I ran into a higher mortality rate with these winter raised birds as well.

And, like you said, it's nice to have some of the summer to do other things than just take care of chicks all the time. I should be done hatching for myself by mid-May. I have some folks who want hatching eggs in late May and June as well as some who want chicks then but I imagine I'll have the incubator turned off by the end of June.

God Bless,