Our 22 week old Barnevelder laid her first egg!!!

Jill G · Aug 12, 2020

So, I had originally read that barnevelders laid eggs at 28 weeks. My son brought us two blue double-laced barnevelder on 3/15/20, from a farm somewhere near San Luis Obisbo, CA. One turned out to be a roo, very handsome, but began crowing at 93 days, so we had to re-home him. Fortunately Betty was definitely a pullet, and grew more and more beautiful each day. We acquired and raised several more chicks and ended up having to give away six more cockerels as they began to crow. Each of them would court Betty. I think all of the attention from the boys must have heightened her hormone levels or something. Also, we live in San Diego, where she gets a lot of sunshine, ocean breezes, and has a great coop under shade trees. She eats a diet of wild bird seed (millet and other seeds), whole oats, sunflower seeds, powdered garlic, oregano, bee pollen, ground oyster shells, split peas, dried worms, and then a daily big treat - usually a half cantaloupe or watermelon on hot days, kale, carrot peels, weeds/grass with seed heads, leaves with whitefly, cheese, and the very exciting lettuce pinata...

Whatever the recipe - the good genes, the sunshine and nice summer days, the diet, all of those boys giving her attention, one by one, she started doing the egg song a couple of weeks ago (at 20 weeks) and then for the past 3-4 days, she would go up to her nesting box and hang out or move around quite a bit.

And then, today, at not quite 22 weeks, she laid a perfect, but small, brown egg.

Sooooo proud of our Betty!