Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[Bernie56]

9 chicks hatched!
And I have to decide if I want to keep crested birds at all, as keeping separate groups isn't how I envisioned keeping poultry. It's a big enough pest keeping my bantams in. I have a ton of experience with genetic issues; I bred horses for a while, and I had a lethal gene pop up. But do I want to manage this for chickens?

That is exactly why I went with all non crested roosters this year. Any rooster can go with any hen. it makes the housing issue SO much easier. Sorry for your little ones tho!

 

[SunnySkies]

I love the crested, too. I think I'm more prone to letting nature take its course unless I start seeing a ton of vaulted skulls in the incubator.

The issue I noticed in the bator is a bunch didn't even hatch -- yes, the three duds were all vaulted and died after lockdown but before pipping, so there was a problem with the chicks -- and the vaulted ones that survived needed more help than the others. One vaulted is now strong, the other not, and the other one that almost drowned is doing pretty well today. This makes me think I won't want to set crestedxcrested again. Too much wasted space in my bator.

 

[TxFlowers]

The issue I noticed in the bator is a bunch didn't even hatch -- yes, the three duds were all vaulted and died after lockdown but before pipping, so there was a problem with the chicks -- and the vaulted ones that survived needed more help than the others. One vaulted is now strong, the other not, and the other one that almost drowned is doing pretty well today. This makes me think I won't want to set crestedxcrested again. Too much wasted space in my bator.

When I had that one vaulted chick hatch out of five chicks from crested to crested, the number of chicks that went into lockdown was I believe about 8 or 9. I didn't break others open for clues as to why they didn't hatch but with what you are saying about how that yours that didn't hatch were vaulted, I wonder now if that played a part in why those others didn't hatch. Like you said, why ask for those issues that cause you to waste time and effort and incubator space on eggs that have a lower hatch rate and may result in weak chicks that you know in your heart shouldn't be raised up but at the same time you don't have the heart to put down. At the very least you may have birds whose vision is impaired to such a degree that they can't free range so they require different and more secure housing than the rest of your birds So those birds could end up costing you more than they would otherwise

It has been mentioned by others that they plan to not interfere with mother nature and they will let the genes fall where they may so to speak in terms of crested genes doubling up if that's how it would occur in the "wild". I respect that viewpoint and think the effort to refrain from "selective" breeding is good in principle as "survival of the fittest" is for the most part how this wonderful breed came to be in the first place but I don't see preventing potentially "lethal" genes, as this one could be considered, to be interfering in a way that would be to the detriment of the breed. I believe that in the wild, these "double" crest individuals are continually being weeded out for the most part either through embryonic or new born deaths or because reduced visibility would make them more susceptible to predators which would be doing the "culling". That is all good and fine to let it happen that way if you can or if the birds are in the wild and doing their own thing, but most of us have to think about things from a practical standpoint. How much time do I put into hatching my eggs? How needed is every incubator slot I have for chicks I really want to hatch and how much feed do I put into raising my chicks. Most of us have to take our resources into account when we make decisions on what animals we bring into this world and raise up. I don't believe making breeding choices that prevents double crested offspring is a bad thing for the breed as a whole. I feel we are doing what mother nature would for the most part eventually do anyway and in the mean time preventing unnecessary waste of resources that I personally would rather concentrate on chicks that would be more useful to me. Anyway, JMHO on the matter.

 

[DCchicken]

Personally I worry about possibly loosing some adaptation that came about from raising them landrace. So I will continue to let my SFH do their own selective breeding. I do the same with my Hedemora. It is important to note that it is insanely cold this morning here in Maryland. We had lots of snow and now the wind is kicking up. The non-crested birds look miserable. The crested ones are fine. I have many crested breeds including: Cream Legbars, Alsteires (Old Styrian), Sulmtalers, and of course SFH.

This is just my opinion and I am not at all in any shape or form making any judgement or argument against non-crested breeds. I have just as many non-crested breeds. Everyone should raise their birds the way they deem appropriate for their environment. For me, it is more practical to raise my chickens landrace.

 

[TxFlowers]

Personally I worry about possibly loosing some adaptation that came about from raising them landrace. So I will continue to let my SFH do their own selective breeding. I do the same with my Hedemora. It is important to note that it is insanely cold this morning here in Maryland. We had lots of snow and now the wind is kicking up. The non-crested birds look miserable. The crested ones are fine. I have many crested breeds including: Cream Legbars, Alsteires (Old Styrian), Sulmtalers, and of course SFH.

This is just my opinion and I am not at all in any shape or form making any judgement or argument against non-crested breeds. I have just as many non-crested breeds. Everyone should raise their birds the way they deem appropriate for their environment. For me, it is more practical to raise my chickens landrace.

Just to be clear, what I am referring to is avoiding double crested ( genetically homozygous ) birds which could result from breeding crested to crested. In these birds you can get the overly large, vision impairing crests. I wasn't speaking about doing away with crested birds in general although non crested is my personal preference in SFHs. I actually think the crested birds, provided the crest isn't huge are very cute but I personally worry about increased predation by hawks and owls if their vision is impaired so I have a preference for the non crested for a practical reason. If you have increased embryonic mortality or weak chicks, that would be another reason for many to avoid homozygous birds if you could, but like you said we all make choices best for our particular circumstances and my post was just my opinion and something that others who are just learning of the pros and cons of double crested birds could read and use in making an educated decision on what they want to do in their own breeding program.

As I mentioned, I respect anyone's decision to "not interfere" with nature. There are valid reasons behind making a decision to breed that way but each of us should know the pros and cons of all aspects of our breeding choices and make the best decisions we can for our particular situation and resources.

 

[Kyzmette]

@tTxFlowers you make very good points. The best one you make is that how you choose to breed your birds is your prerogative.

SFH have crested and non-crested. There are genes that determine crest and are passed from crested and non-crested parents. Not all crested birds have vaulted skulls, and not all crested/crested breedings have all vaulted chicks. The gene which causes the vaulted skull may possibly be found in the same sequence as the crest, but may be expressed to a lesser degree. I'm not an expert by a long shot, so this is just a guess. In closed flocks or heavily crested/crested breeding programs the vaulted trait may become so predominant that it becomes common. Inbreeding isn't good for most species.

The crest itself, however, isn't a bad thing. The breed is what it is because it evolved to survive, and crests evolved in multiple breeds and the genes found on the sequence along with the crest can frequently be important to the breed's ability to thrive. A lot of people think you can breed one trait out of a bird and have no other impact, but then you have the great laying breeds being bred closer to SOP and giving up egg quality. You hear it from the tinted egg layers all the time... Marans and Langshans bred for body type give up egg size and color. You also hear from any overly bred species breeders that breeding to type eventually leads to other health issues. Look at show dogs.

The breeds that make up the SFH evolved to thrive with some crested and some non-crested birds. There may be genes within that sequence that causes the crest that are critical to the bird population, and breeding it out could potentially have a negative impact on the breed as much as breeding only crests to crests. I know several people who prefer non-crested who have reported reduced numbers on their hatches, as well. I prefer the crests, but I'm going to do my best to keep a healthy variety of genes within my flock, crested and non-crested, without breeding toward any specific type except health.

 

[FeyRaine]

There are many pros & cons re: the crest vs noncrested and I think everyone will do what fits their situation but here a data point to add to the knowledge base.

Last summer I had what I think was a fox dig under 2 ft of buried wire to enter a 20x40 pen w/ coop where there were 6 chickens.
3 birds were killed & eaten 3 were totally UNharmed.

2 of the birds in the pen were SFH pullets, 1 Uncrested, 1 crested

the UNcrested SFH pullet was killed

the crested one, runs in a crazy zig zag all the time, & she acts like she can't see very well, but she is the one who avoided the fox.

I have owls, & both Cooper's Hawks & a pair of Red Tail Hawks who nest on my property, so I have avoided white chickens & was trying to avoid crested birds.
I've ended up w/ all but 1 of my 6 SFH looking like they will be crested, but I'm not so worried about the crests in terms of predator avoidance anymore...

Here is "Flo" this pic. was Sept2013, about 2 months after she avoided the fox

 

[DCchicken]

@tTxFlowers you make very good points. The best one you make is that how you choose to breed your birds is your prerogative.

SFH have crested and non-crested. There are genes that determine crest and are passed from crested and non-crested parents. Not all crested birds have vaulted skulls, and not all crested/crested breedings have all vaulted chicks. The gene which causes the vaulted skull may possibly be found in the same sequence as the crest, but may be expressed to a lesser degree. I'm not an expert by a long shot, so this is just a guess. In closed flocks or heavily crested/crested breeding programs the vaulted trait may become so predominant that it becomes common. Inbreeding isn't good for most species.

The crest itself, however, isn't a bad thing. The breed is what it is because it evolved to survive, and crests evolved in multiple breeds and the genes found on the sequence along with the crest can frequently be important to the breed's ability to thrive. A lot of people think you can breed one trait out of a bird and have no other impact, but then you have the great laying breeds being bred closer to SOP and giving up egg quality. You hear it from the tinted egg layers all the time... Marans and Langshans bred for body type give up egg size and color. You also hear from any overly bred species breeders that breeding to type eventually leads to other health issues. Look at show dogs.

The breeds that make up the SFH evolved to thrive with some crested and some non-crested birds. There may be genes within that sequence that causes the crest that are critical to the bird population, and breeding it out could potentially have a negative impact on the breed as much as breeding only crests to crests. I know several people who prefer non-crested who have reported reduced numbers on their hatches, as well. I prefer the crests, but I'm going to do my best to keep a healthy variety of genes within my flock, crested and non-crested, without breeding toward any specific type except health.

Very good points all around. We are having this same discussion amongst Ayam Cemani breeders. Many want to breed the blackest of the blackest (they call it Special quality Cemani). Others, like myself worry about what happens when we breed for one trait. My Cemani line was raised landrace and turn out to be excellent layers (my best Cemani pullet lays an egg every day). She is all black but some in the line have some red tint in the combs and wattles. If I switch from raising them from landrace to selective breeding, will I loose the great egg laying? Possibly. I may have to maintain two lines of that breed.

My biggest enjoyment of SFH is the mixing bowl effect, where everyone is different. When I buy a batch from GFF instead of hatching eggs, I love opening the box and seeing all the different variations of SFH. Correct me if I am wrong but I think GFF raises their SFH as landrace.

I will continue to raise my SFH landrace because that works for me and my SFH. Mine will probably never be any show quality birds, but that's not want I am aiming for with this breed. And in the future, if some other breeder contacts me and needs to swap birds to correct an issue that resulted from selective breeding, I will be happy to help that breeder out.

 

[TxFlowers]

Whether or not we want to admit it, we all are practicing some degree of "selective breeding" with our birds already. Just by putting a group of birds together in our back yard, we have selected a breeding group based on our criteria of what is correct for that breed, to produce offspring. I assume that when you put these bird together, you would have not included birds with any obvious defects in your group. I'm especially including defects that would still allow the birds to reproduce in the wild like not including birds with extra toes or something odd. I took an otherwise really nice cockerel out of my breeding program that was developing extra spurs. I suspect that in the wild he would have thrived due to improved ability to defend himself and passed this trait to many offspring but it wasn't a trait I wanted to have in my flock. Most of us would have done the same thing. Again that is practicing selective breeding. If we remove a bird from the breeding group before it has a chance to reproduce because it doesn't seem as healthy as the others instead of wait for nature to cull it, we are practicing selective breeding. Others are culling birds with "split wing" or comb springs from their group. It's really hard to truly not interfere at all with what you have out there in your back yard. At some point we all step in for "mother nature" to some degree and influence the outcome of the offspring our birds produce. Let's not forget to include those who "cull" roosters that show aggression. "Selective" breeding isn't necessarily a bad thing even in a land race breed and it's something very difficult to truly avoid doing.

My original comment was basically just the reasons why a person might want to avoid knowingly breeding homozygous crested SFHs. It was not suggesting doing away with crested birds in general or breeding out any of the other traits that made this breed unique and hardy as it seems some thought I was suggesting. As I said, we ALL already make selective breeding choices whether we want to admit it or not. I seriously doubt anyone is going raise their flock like it would be raised in the wild with absolutely no human "interference". If you have removed a bird from your breeding flock for any reason, you have practiced selective breeding. if you have chosen to not add a bird to your breeding flock for any reason, you have practiced selective breeding. If you can truly raise your flock as they would be if they still existed in the wild as a land race, I would say that is wonderful and admire you for being able to do so but personally I find I can't help but make some decisions that would prevent me from being able to say that I am doing that.

 

[DCchicken]

With my landrace breeds (SFH and Hedemora), the only thing I cull for is detrimental birth defects. For example, a blind bird or one with only one leg would be culled. But one with an extra toe would not. I leave it up to the birds themselves. I have only assisted in hatching once and that was a mistake. The chick later drowned in a water dish.

In my opinion, I could not honestly tell anyone purchasing my SFH or Hedemora that they were selectively bred. They are as close to doing their own thing as is possible. Granted all SFH in the U.S. came from GFF and they do cull for defects. But once the SFH arrive at my place, they do their own thing. I do force them to sleep in the coop at night as my property is a forest and I am not going to feed the local foxes rare breeds of chickens.

I also only raise the Hedemora and SFH as landrace. All others are raised in accordance to some limited selective breeding or to the SOP (even if the standard is from another country).

My breeding experience is what works for me.. I do not want anyone to think that I am arguing against selective breeding. I just put forth my opinion in case others find it useful. I suggest people try the method of breeding (landrace or selective) that works best in their environment and got with that.