Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[Charm1704]

I'm thinking of ordering some chicks from Greenfire farms.
Do they pick the chicks to send at random? Because I'm interested in a few from the crested lines.

I ordered a dozen chicks last December and got them in January...I was sent chicks from 2 different pens unrelated birds and one pen had crested chicks....they sent 17 chicks......some didn't make the shipping trip...I have 13 adult birds....~Charm1704

 

[ladyfaeden]

My "pink" banded was 4 uncrested, my no-bands had 4 crested and 6 not crested, my purple bands are just old enough to start showing crests and its looking like roughly 50%.

My first baby out of our own eggs hatched this morning! I've 14 hens of laying age and it seems like the floodgates of eggs are opening. I'm thinking of selling a trio or two of adults.

 

[TNBEARCHICK]

you can request one way or the other when you order them in the notes. There are pink and purple banded SFH and as far as I understand one is crested and one is not.

 

[Contrastphoto]

you can request one way or the other when you order them in the notes. There are pink and purple banded SFH and as far as I understand one is crested and one is not.

I had crested in both my pink and purple bands. When I order my chicks, I couldn't specify crest or non-crest. I got four crested and six non-crested. Six females and four males. Two purple crested and two pink crested.

 

[ladyfaeden]

You will not get better then 50% crested unless someone is doing crested x crested breeding which I do not think Greenfire would do. You can request a line but I don't think you can tell if they are crested that young. I can't tell until they are a couple weeks old.

 

[Joybells]

Oh, what happens with crested x crested breeding? Lethal genes?

 

[KYTinpusher]

Oh, what happens with crested x crested breeding? Lethal genes?

I doubt it is lethal, but it is possible. There has been some speculation that crested x crested will cause a very large crest which would make it difficult to see when free-ranging. I just hatched 17 chicks from my flock. I set 22 eggs. If I remember, 2 were clear and 3 were early quitters. I have 2 crested roos, and 1 non-crested roo running with 3 crested hens and 4 non-crested hens. None of them appear to have an extra large crest at this point, but they are only a week old. Here is a picture when they were 1 day old. They are all perfectly adorable as far as I can see!

 

[ladyfaeden]

As far as I know you just get a crest that is bigger then the breed is supposed to have. The benefit of a chicken like that is you could breed them to uncrested and get 100% crested offspring. I was thinking of breeding a few chicks with 2 genes for crested on purpose.

 

[Joybells]

Do you think the offspring would have the smaller crest? Sounds like an interesting experiment, if the double crest chicken has a little extra care as far as free ranging goes.

KYTinpusher those chicks are adorable

 

[CarolJ]

Right now I have one crested roo over two crested hens and one uncrested hen. I have eight eggs under a broody hen right now - and I'm hoping all the chicks will have crests. I think the crests are part of the charm of SFHs.