Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[Flowerbh]

My rooster and one of my girls:

 

[UrbanFarmOC]

My rooster and one of my girls:

Beautiful! I love the hen's crest. I have a crested as well.

 

[Ashdoes]

My rooster and one of my girls:

That's a nice crest, and similar to what a couple of my Creams have. You can still see her eyes, which means she can see. Very pretty.

 

[UrbanFarmOC]

Woohoo! My SFH laid her first egg today, albeit in an unused large flowerpot. At least she didn't make a nest in thick brush on the hill part of my property. It's a small cream-colored 39 gram egg.

I have to figure out a way for her to lay in nest boxes! i can't really lock her in the coop until she lays because I have 4 other layers. Maybe I can lock all the layers together if she lays somewhere other than a nest box tomorrow. Any other suggestions?

 

[Leahs Mom]

One of my young girls was insisting on laying on the floor next to the nest box. (Though everyone else was using the boxes.)

One day I happened to go out when she was making her floor nest just before she layed. I was able to pick her up and put her in the nest box where she finished laying her egg. She has never layed on the floor again since that day.

 

[UrbanFarmOC]

Update- I found her missing again from my pullet flock 30 minutes after finding her egg. I found her in the planter! So I can only assume that the egg was yesterday and she was about to lay again. I now have her locked I'm the coop and even shoved her into a nest box so she could try it out. Fingers crossed that this will work and my layers don't need to go for the next hour or two!

 

[gimmie birdies]

Hey guys! a gal friend raises SFH

her hens are lovely. she gave me a SFH egg to hatch and he came out chipmunky

the upper chick in this pic. She also gave me the other eggs which are Isbars.



As he got older his feathers had a few flowers just on the tips...




now he doesn't show any flowers, I know he is the same chick. My lady friend needed another SFH roo but is deciding not to use this one she wants me to hang on to it but I don't know if he is soup or not. did anyone else have this happen with the chipmunk ones. I kinda want to go another direction my self.

 

[ki4got]

now he doesn't show any flowers, I know he is the same chick. My lady friend needed another SFH roo but is deciding not to use this one she wants me to hang on to it but I don't know if he is soup or not. did anyone else have this happen with the chipmunk ones. I kinda want to go another direction my self.

I would honestly wonder about non-flowered birds being pure. mottling is recessive so both parents have to show it. if they don't you'll get a solid non-mottled offspring. if both parents are mottled, the offspring WILL have mottling.

unless you need extra roosters to protect the girls you aren't going to collect eggs from, I wouldn't keep him. just my 2c.

forgot to mention, the light tips on him as a chick weren't mottling. that's common on chicks carrying the mahogany gene. I saw that a lot in my red bantam cochin chicks last summer but they do not carry mottling at all. (with a few sfh in there too)

 

[gimmie birdies]

thanks for the tip. she keeps her SFH separate, and of course got them from GF. She said hers didn't look like that either. mystery.

 

[dlcoops]

A couple of the chicks that hatched just before Christmas have crooked toes. What causes the chicks toes to turn? I examined them closely, looking for any deformities and crooked toes in particular a couple days after hatching. Last night was the first time I had noticed it, but I've been really busy the past week and half and could have just overlooked it till now. They're nine weeks old now. They've been in a heated brooder, fed 18% protein chick starter/grower. I've given them Durvet's vitamins and electrolytes in their water twice. I've read it's due to incubator conditions, but they didn't have it when they came out of the incubator.