Afternoon All!
FT- Yes! I looked at your card! Hilarious! I meant to mention it but it slipped my mind when I was blabbing about house chickens!
Very nice card and thanks for sharing it!!
CC-The Barnies. What to say. They are not as I thought they would be. From what I have read about this rare breed is that they are supposed to be friendly, laid back, and lay a big chocolate/dark brown egg. What I found out was that I did not dig enough into the breed until after I got 10 hatchery pullets. Turns out there is a huge difference in "breeder" stock Barnies vs. "hatchery" stock Barnies. Good Barnies from a breeder are pricey and they are nice , friendly, laid back chickens that lay a dark brown egg and are very cold hardy. Apparently hatchery stock Barnies can be rather flighty (check), not overly friendly (check) high strung (check) and lay a nice brown egg tending to be a more of a medium brown instead of that dark chocolate color. (Check). They are very cold hardy though!! That being said, I like their egg production so far. They have been a nice consistent layer of good sized eggs since they started to lay. We will see how long their production life lasts comparing them to the other rare breeds I have/had. Also, as they have aged they seem to have mellowed some. I can now pick up a couple of them if they squat for me first. They are not as friendly as I had hoped but they are not mean but I'd classify them as a tolerant breed. I do have one that is mean, but I think it is this birds temperament. She is the meanest chicken I have. She likes to bite you when you pick her up to work on her toes or to dust and deworm her. If I were to breed Barnies, with her temperament, she would not go into the breeding shed.
Overall, they are big beautiful birds that I much prefer to Wyandottes in looks and production. I never had much luck with Wyandottes myself so that might be a little biased on my part and should not reflect on those that want them. But, I have to say I would not be opposed to trying them again from a breeder, although there are other breeds I'd get first. I think for a rare breed, they do rather well with egg production and I do like that. Also being a dual purpose breed, it will be interesting to see how they dress out when the time comes.
SOOOOOOOOO........here is my surprise as promised!
Tah-Dah!!!
I am a complete sucker for a rescue situation. As I was reading this forum as few days back, a couple people ( I won't point fingers
) were discussing raising some pullets to sell as started pullets/hens in the spring. That got the old brain matter mattering so I told dh about my brilliant plan that I stole from my peeps on the forum! (He almost banned me right then and there! But he is my enabler so that should explain a lot!)
Anywho, I started to look at hatcheries that are still selling chicks this time of year (Ideal if your interested btw) and had my little list of breeds I wanted to get and start. DH then says "let me call Rick over at Abendroth's and see if he as plans to hatch anything." Turns out Rick did. He had a baloot order and was going to have extras. So Rick, nice man that he is, hatched out some of those eggs for me instead of turning them into baloots. So I saved some little Gold Star girls! 25 little fuzz butts!!!
The best part is that they hatched on my birthday! So we are all Christmas babies! I shall have to keep a couple! LOL!!! Name them Holly and Ivy. Then we all will have plant names!!!
LOL!!
They just got out of the shipping box and are clustered together. They are now roaming the brooder and snoozing under the lamp. No more clustering although some of them are passed out on top of each other!
Ok, I've got to feed dogs and mash some feed for the little ones! Chat soon!
