Chicken Breed Focus - Icelandic

[sumi]

The Icelandic breed is a landrace fowl which are rare outside its native country of Iceland, after which it's named. They are a very old breed, having been present on the island since introduction by Norse settlers in the 9th century. However, the breed has barely survived in a pure form in the 21st century, largely due to the importation and popularity of commercial strains of chickens in the 1950s. The few thousand Icelandic chickens in existence today are the result of conservation efforts in the 1970s and a handful of flocks that have been exported abroad.
Icelandic Chickens are not firmly standardized in appearance and possess a wide range of plumage colours and patterns, skin colouration and comb types. Some will have feather crests. Despite this variance in appearance, Icelandics are uniformly hardy in winter, have white earlobes and lay white to light brown coloured eggs. They are also said to be docile in temperament, and hens will readily go broody. They are great foragers and skilled escape artists. If there is a way out, they will find it!




Detail Value
Breed Purpose Dual Purpose
Comb Single
Broodiness Average
Climate Tolerance All Climates
Egg Productivity Medium
Egg Size Medium
Egg Color White
Breed Temperament Flighty
Breed Colors/Varieties Many
Breed Size Large Fowl













**All pics by @Happy Chooks


BYC Breed Discussions:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/299038/icelandic-chickens/0_30

BYC Breed Reviews:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/products/icelandic-or-viking-hen


Do you own Icelandics? Are you an Icelandic breeder? If so, please reply to this thread with the your thoughts and experiences, including:

· What made you decide to get this breed?
· Do you own them for fun? Breeding? Some other purpose?
· What are your favorite characteristics about this breed?
· Post some pics of your birds; male/female, chicks, eggs, etc!

We have a bunch of other awesome breed-focus threads for you to enjoy. You can see all of them here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chicken-breed-focus-project.975504/

 

[NotAFarm]

I've had Icelandics since June of 2010. Here are pictures of my two original cocks, Ari and Audun, hatched in March of 2010 by BYCer The Sheriff. She shipped them to me with two pullets from a different line hatched in May. Boi and Eldur are the result of my breedings.
I need to go to work but will post again later.







Eldur

 

[NotAFarm]

Do you own Icelandics? Are you an Icelandic breeder? If so, please reply to this thread with the your thoughts and experiences, including:

· What made you decide to get this breed?
· Do you own them for fun? Breeding? Some other purpose?
· What are your favorite characteristics about this breed?
· Post some pics of your birds; male/female, chicks, eggs, etc!

Posted some pics...now the answers to the questions:

I've had Icelandics since June, 2010.
I have bred them since the following spring, March 2011.

1. I loved the variety they offered, and that I would be helping to preserve a genetic treasure.
2. Owning them is a ton of fun....but the reason I own them is that I believe they need to be preserved. They are a unique and special landrace. Protected and preserved by a small group of people in Iceland that didn't want to lose what had been developed for hundreds of years. The foresight of some of them, to send/bring eggs here, to develop a community of like-minded people with preservation of the race in mind, is something to be admired. Their trust in us, to take such a treasure and keep it pure, is a sign of their devotion to their Viking heritage. An Icelandic is only an Icelandic if they are kept pure. No amount of "breeding back" can remove genes that were not present in them when they arrived here. The purity of the flock must be the purpose and utmost priority when keeping an Icelandic flock.
3. They are great foragers and very self-sufficient. They love their freedom and I love sitting and watching their antics. The cocks with their hens, the way the flock interacts with one-another, the broody with her chicks, the alerts for danger, the reaction of the flock to the alerts, there is so much to love about them.
4. I've already overloaded this thread with my pictures but a broody hen with chicks needs to be posted:

 

[LittleLakePhil]

I'm gonna be getting hatching eggs soon.....I already contacted the hatchery they only deal with Icelandic chickens.....he just said to tell him when to ship....I'm waiting until the weather warms up a bit.

 

[NotAFarm]

I didn't think this discussion would be complete without pasting this post from the Icelandic thread here. As the modern-day, original importer of Icelandics to the U.S. (as far as anything I've heard), she would be the utmost authority on them.

post #573 of 21446​

6/24/10​

• Sigrid
• 

• Joined: 5/2010
• Posts: 21
• offline

​

Hi to everyone on Icelandic BYC:

We are having so much fun following you experiences. Some are a bit hillarious. I could not help laughing out loud when I saw Mary's picture of Victoria's Secret Model, Fredrika. Mary is so creative. I like the name "Buri"- very appropriate. Also Una meaning content or happy. Frida, meaning beautiful and Helga- Holy. All are old Icelandic names.
Now, about our Icelandic chickens:
I remember them on some remote farmsteads in the thirthies-a small numbers foraging and taking care of themselves for most part, perching in barns and occacionally treated with leftovers the dogs did not want. They were friendly and never went far from the premises. They are social by nature and very hardy with high tolerance for harsh weather or weather changes.
They come in a rainbow of colors like all other lifestock in Iceland, horses, sheep and cows. That is what makes them all unique. Most Icelandic chickens have a crest on top of their head. Their eggs are white or slightly beige and tend to be somewhat elongated. They are good sitters. Their combs come in many variations, straight, rosecomb, etc.
The Icelandic chicken generally lives a long live. I have 3 hens ten years old and one 11 years old. I know of a 15 year old here in Iceland.
The Icelandic chicken is called Landnamshæna, (Settlers Chickens) or haughænsni, (Pile Chickens). They were brought to Iceland by the first settlers from Norway before the year 900, and were known to find something to eat in manure piles. Therefore the names. Today they are sometimes called Viking Chickens. These chickens are mentioned in the old Icelandic Sagas written around 1250. Genetic research shows them to be 78 % different form all other chickens in the world today. This is why it is important not to mix them with other breeds, once we do that, we can not get it back. Therefore we need to let them breed naturally as they always have. Nobody here in Iceland has worried about in-breeding for over a thousand years. I have had my RALA chickens in California since 1998, and started with a very few.
I have seen a number of roosters and hens together here in Iceland where they can enjoy more freedom roaming around because there are not many predators here. They seem to establish their hierarchy naturally. (There will always be a top rooster and hens tend to do that as well).
So, " let nature take its course "and don"t "make a mess of it".

After WWII the interest in our old breed diminished when a lot of people from the countrysite migrated to the City (Reykjavik) for a "better life". Egg production became commercialized using foreign breeds.
In 1974, Dr. Stefán Aðalsteinsson realized that the Landnámshænan was just about extinct. He travelled all over the country looking for Icelandic chickens and found some in remote parts of Iceland, mostly on the East Fjords and the North East part of Iceland. He brought them to RALA (Agricultural Research Center) at Keldum. They were in protection untill 1985, when they were placed at the Agricultural University at Hvanneyri. Still in protection. When I refer to my RALA chickens I am referring to those. I got my chickens from this group specifically. The original RALA group is now at 2 farms near Hvanneyri.
In 2003 there was a great promotional effort to initiate a general interest to save this breed. On Nov. 1 2003, The Landnámshæna Association with a yearly publication was established. They have now about 168 memers. It is believed there are now over 2000 Icelandic chickens in Iceland. Mary O´Bryan got 2 hens, Lukka and Henna, and 2 roosters from me. Lukka and Henna are RALA but the roosters are from hatching eggs from one of the members of the Association.
I brought some hatching eggs from Iceland last fall for the first time in 12 years. Their rooster came from an old stock on the remote island Flatey, current population 5. The population in the fourties was about 250. I had relatives there then and visited the island so this was very meaningful for me. Around 1950 or thereafter, the island was vacant for some time. There was a monestary there in 1172 and it was the center of cultue in Iceland at that time. The island is now a popular tourist place with the ferry stopping there twice a day.
I hope this will be of some help to all of you.

Sigrid

Edited by Sigrid - 6/24/10 at 7:12pm

 

[KHoward]

I will be receiving my shipment of 12 eggs next week and I am so excited to see what hatches at the end of March. I saw these in person in Iceland in December 2015 and just fell in love with the variety of colors.

 

[nordahlbunch]

Some of my David Grote birds

My Hlésey line icelandic babies

 

[N F C]

Wonderful looking birds! Thanks for another breed focus thread Sumi

 

[sumi]

I've had Icelandics since June of 2010. Here are pictures of my two original cocks, Ari and Audun, hatched in March of 2010 by BYCer The Sheriff. She shipped them to me with two pullets from a different line hatched in May. Boi and Eldur are the result of my breedings.
I need to go to work but will post again later.







Eldur

They're beautiful!

 

[HenHoneyGirl]

I have a friend that's breeding them and she gave me one of her roosters. He's a great guy, good protector(for being on the smaller side he's the one picking fights with the turkeys and my other larger roosters!) I'm using him in my cross breeding efforts for color but I hope to get some Icelandic girls for him in the future.