Hi! Briarwood Poultry is a small family run farm operated by my parents and I. We are located on Vancouver Island and have a few breeds of heritage poultry that we are pleased to raise.

Our focus is on improving the qualities in all of our breeds and over the next year or two you will likely see us narrow down the breeds we want to work on. We enjoy our poultry and do our best to improve their quality.

Our breeds of focus this year include: Light Sussex, Barnevelder, Wheaten Marans, Black Copper Marans, Blue Laced Red Wyandotte, and Blue/Black/Splash Orpington. We will be offering hatching eggs and chicks throughout the year! Photos of all are on our website.

Update June/11: We no longer have our Barnevelder flock and we are sold out of Light Sussex and Black Copper marans for the year!

In 2012 we will be able to offer our Wheaten Marans (new bloodlines brought in), Black Copper Marans (a combination of 4 different lines), and perhaps a couple other varieties of marans, Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, Blue/Black/Splash Orpingtons (3 different lines), as well as silver sussex and coronation sussex! We will also have a fun flock of frizzle/polish (white crested black and hopefully white crested blue). We have been working really hard to improve our flocks from 2011 and are happy with the direction we are heading in!

I passed your website along to a woman whose son (Devon in Cowichan Valley) is looking for Barnevelders.

I don't know either of them but somewhere she got my email address and send a request! I have Barnevelders too but you are sooo much closer and easier for him to get some stock.

Hopefully you can connect and sell some birds/chicks/eggs!

Cathy

Thanks, Cathy. Haven't heard from anyone looking for barnevelders specifically yet, but that's ok.

I should have said that I sent them your info just yesterday. Sorry for the confusion

Great Pictures !

Nice dark eggs, I can't wait

Cathyjk wrote:I should have said that I sent them your info just yesterday. Sorry for the confusion

Oops! My mistake. Thanks again for the referral!

Well I'm starting to have a better ideas about next year's breeding plans...

We will have the following, in varying flock sizes from trio's to dozen's:

Black Copper marans - we are only using a couple lines after weeding out the weaker of the bunch. They are beautiful, friendly and lay those beautiful chocolate eggs. They grow quickly and are suitable as meat birds as well.

Blue laced red wyandottes - we have brought in new blood and will have a much larger flock this year! We have retired our splash roo and will have fresh hens and either blue or black roo's! These are one of our most reliable layers of a med-large light brown egg.

Blue/Black/Splash orpingtons - I have spent many hours researching and sourcing out some new orp blood and we are very proud of our exhibition quality flock. We will be exhibiting a few birds from this flock next year. Our flock is large and we will have only blue or black roo's over our hens.

Coronation Sussex - We have a smaller but beautiful group of Coro Sussex, our boy is unrelated to all of our hens (hens are 2 different lines as well) to have the best genetic diversity we can. They are beautiful and fast growing!

Silver Sussex Project birds - I am trying a bit of a project with these guys including incorporating some birds of different lineage to give good genetic diversity to the flock. This is a small flock due to the uncanny number of roosters I hatched this year! They are beautiful and friendly.

Blue Birchen Marans - also a project, these guys come from 2 different lines and are mostly feather legged. Egg color is a work in progress. Very beautiful to look at, although a little shy. These guys are very hatch-able as far as marans go!

Solid Blue Marans - no copper on these guys! This is a small flock of all blue hens, rooster is yet to be determined but may be a splash roo. Some english some french standard. Egg color is nice although not as nice as the Black Copper or Wheaten Marans. Very calm birds.

French Wheaten Marans - we have another line of the FWM to work with, they are stunning and have raised the bar! Very friendly, beautiful and gentle birds that are laying eggs as dark as our black copper marans! May have 1 blue wheaten hen.

White Crested black and blue Frizzled and smooth polish! These guys are our "fun" flock that we keep because they are hilarious to look at and fun to have. They aren't show quality but excellent, fun pets.

Last but not least, we have a lovely little flock of wheaten/blue wheaten ameraucana. These guys were intended to add blue eggs to our eating eggs but after coming to know them we will likely keep a breeding pen of them next year. These little guys are so incredibly friendly and often jump on our hand/arm/shoulder! They are inquisitive and beautiful and lay lovely sky blue eggs.

Well, that will wrap it up for our offerings in 2012. We will be selecting a few breeds to persevere with and will be offering our breeding flocks of those we choose not to pursue for sale to a farm that can help them reach their potential. We have been working hard to build our laying flock of heritage birds, so we have been hatching dozens of each of our breeds. We will select the best birds for the breeding pens, the extra roosters we always use for the freezer and this year our extra hens are going to build our laying flock!

Thanks for looking everyone, and thanks to everyone for a great 2011! I can't wait to share our birds with everyone near and far next spring. We will likely be doing a test hatch in February and will have hatching eggs available after that. Chicks available likely in March, although we won't be shipping them.

Briarwood, well, not isn't that just nice. Sounds like you are working hard to get your lines to be improving and getting that betterness, smiling. That is a good thing. I too am working to improve my lines. These things take time and with the new blood brought in, selection of the nicest for the breeding flock, the others for layer flock is a good thing. I will be up against choosing my buff orpington breeding stock soon too from the youngsters that are growing like weeds. You sound like you have some nice birds to work with, good on ya!! Have a wonderful and great day, CynthiaM.

Thanks, Cynthia! I do love my birds, they are a blessing to me and honestly they help me get through school and living apart from my husband. Also, I must admit I am turning into rather an egg snob, I don't like eating eggs that I haven't hand picked myself!

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to say that I got an egg shipment from Amanda (Briarwood) and was very pleased in the way the eggs were shipped.
Fast, all made it and were packaged with care!

I highly recommend Briarwood Poultry!