Icelandic Chickens

[Chickielady]

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Oh yes! We had Menards in Iowa! SOLD. You sold me. I am going shopping tomorrow for contractor bags and a pig.

I got some of the leaves bagged today. Well, I should say, Tyler bagged leaves today. The chair there is mine.

He had plenty of chicken company out there helping him. He got 10 bags filled, and his goal is at least 40.

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So, now what are ya gonna do with them?
Up here, most folks rake & pile & have a fire & hot coacoa,the leaf fire smells wonderful, (so does the hot coa coa) a rite of the season.
I used to compost most of the 'good' oak tree leaves in CA, but some oaks there are hard & covered in tips that are sharp like heck & they do not compost well but dry & stay prickly forever..they got sent to the leaf fire.
Some here on BYC are saying they use the nice clean dry leaves for coop litter..instead of shavings or straw...

 

[NotAFarm]

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I never get tired of seeing pics of your Icelandics, Kathy!! Post away!!

Yay to Tyler for getting that handsome boy a masculine name!!

Sorry, Kathy, but Bitsy was okay when he was a baby but he's growing up and needs a grown-up name, you don't want him getting a complex!!

 

[LarryPQ]

I love his little faux hawk.

 

[kathyinmo]

Bitsy WAS a girl, and was itsy bitsy! THEN, decided to become a boy and started to grow.

I was trying to get a picture of this comb, but failed. I will try with my other camera. It is better with close ups. Anyway, this comb has a bunch of little fleshy points on it.

My favorite boys..... they are such a sweet team!

Waiting for the gate to open.........

I love his little faux hawk.

 

[The Sheriff]

Stella is a tramp for real. She flew over the fence between the yards and spent the day with Bjorn. When it got time for bed, she flew back over to her own side where the coop is bigger and insulated! Kind of reminds me what I used to do when Michael had a studio apartment on the 2nd floor and I had a 1 BD with den on the third floor.

Ah, the good old days.

 

[Okla-doodle-doo]

Kathy I used to pile my pens full of leaves in the fall and by spring the birds had them shredded and composted enough to use on the garden. They are a vaulable resource! For those that don't understand why you must get them up,if left on the ground they will kill out the grass! And also during dry periods are horrible fire danger!. Your Hamps look beautiful out there! Shame on you for enticeing us to get yet another breed!lol. I also saw the ones Joe (bandjoe) in Okla. got, they are huge! I don't have room for those now but I am sure glad Joe will be a neighbor when I get back to Okla! I am going to have to hit him up for a start!lol
And that blue and silver roo is so pretty. He will sure make a great addition to the gene pool! Hope I can come up with one that pretty. I love all the top knots on your hens, all mine have them but two,it makes the two look strange!

 

[jeslewmazer]

Consider this as an uniformed person trying to be more informed.

I will try not to offend. I like to learn and chickens are addictive to me. This breed...I see all the colors, does this mean that they are all basically mixed?...and by this I mean they have never been breed to set standards. I know that breeding for perfection can distort a otherwise perfectly fine animal. I own pure breed animals, so no disrespect either way. I know that select breeding was used to achieve the numerous varieties that we have today. Would this make them an "ancient" breed. I see lots of color and such, that it looks like what would be seen as a mixed chicken would actually be more like the beginning of the equation. You know kind of like going back to the drawing board and starting over.

I am just curious about the breed, and sorry if my ignorance is seen as offensive or rude.

 

[Jake Levi]

Hi Welcome to the thread !

No offense to honest questions. Dive in and start reading ! Look at Mary's posts and at the bottom of hers is a link to a great article on them, also go way back to the beginning of the thread and read the first few pages, it gives her introduction to this truly old breed.

The color is a matter of not selecting for a color and in the process unselecting other colors. There is NO 'standard' as in the ASOP, the Icelandic is a Landrace breed, and it is a breed that has developed distinctly different from other breeds and does breed true. The Icelandic Chicken is very uniform in a great many traits, except colors and combs, the folks who had the breed develop for them were concerned about those traits that produced a hardy free ranging source of eggs and meat. This in a country with little or no grain to spare for chickens. The result is a hardy, free ranging breed, that broods well, is friendly, and produces eggs and meat with very little input. It is only within the last century or two that Iceland began to produce much grain, mainly oats and barley and much of that went to their cattle and some to their horses, the chickens had to pick over the manure piles to get most of theirs.

Compared to most others it is an ancient breed, at least over a thousand years in development, there are several breeds in Scandinavia that I am fairly sure share some ancestry with the Icelandic, but the Icelandic has been isolated from other breeding for a very very long time.

Jump in and ask questions and read, I have read through the thread several times, beats most books !

Life is good, and better with Icelandic Chickens and Pack Goats !

 

[Jake Levi]

Kathy beautiful pics, thanks for sharing ! One of your roosters looks so much like Blau !! The big silver guy is gorgeous too and so is Harley !

 

[Happy Chooks]

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Jake gave you some key points on the breed. (land race) These birds were thought to be extinct until a population of them was found on an uninhabited island. They were surviving on their own, and my guess is color was not a factor in survival.

Here's a great article on the Icelandic chickens:
http://www.aviculture-europe.nl/nummers/10E06A03.pdf