Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[TxFlowers]

Here is another picture of him with hatch mates. He is the one at back left corner. All these except for the one laying down in middle ended up crested but all the others had normal crests. You can see how different the vaulted skull chick looks even at this point.

 

[TxFlowers]

Yep. What I expect these will look like. I need to photograph mine and post them, at just a couple days of age. Cute, and they seem to be ok now, but it does make me wonder what they will look like as adults...likely nothing like what we expect when we think crested SFH.

This chick was a character! lol VERY bold chick. Afraid of nothing! You could open the cage door and before you could stop him, he would fly out onto your shoulder. None of the rest would do that. He was always the first for everything. He was very cute until he started realizing he was a rooster then he didn't like being held anymore. But so it goes! lol

 

[SunnySkies]

Here is one of the vaulted babies

Here is a normal hatch mate.

 

[Jeansrie]

Double crested & vaulted skull.

 

[SunnySkies]

I crack up every time! Super cute...but yeah....so not what you think of when you think SFH.

Sigh. Well....buyer backed out on me (price) but that is cool....I'll grow this bunch out and if I don't sell them in the spring, I'll cull any roosters and be very careful to cross the girls with my non-crested roosters, assuming the roosters stay nice. Kind of an experiment you could say.

 

[Bernie56]

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.

So you allow your Swedish Flowers to interbreed with other breeds?

 

[DCchicken]

So you allow your Swedish Flowers to interbreed with other breeds?

No all of my rare breeds are kept in separate areas on the property. Landrace does not mean allowing them to breed with other breeds. In this case, it means allowing the Swedish Flower Hens to freely breed with one another without specifically separating out breeding pairs/trios based upon a specific trait that I am trying to add or remove from the breed.

 

[SunnySkies]

From GFF's blog:


That’s why at Greenfire Farms we have an ongoing program to not only import new breeds, but to improve them over time by diversifying bloodlines and carefully selecting for desirable traits.  This doesn’t mean that every bird we hatch is perfect, but if done properly, it should mean that our breeding flocks improve over time.  A case in point is our experience with cream legbars.

They mention they have breeding pens and also free range.

 

[DCchicken]

From GFF's blog:


That’s why at Greenfire Farms we have an ongoing program to not only import new breeds, but to improve them over time by diversifying bloodlines and carefully selecting for desirable traits. This doesn’t mean that every bird we hatch is perfect, but if done properly, it should mean that our breeding flocks improve over time. A case in point is our experience with cream legbars.

They mention they have breeding pens and also free range.

You can see many of their pens on videos. Some only have pairs. Others seem to have a whole flock in one big pen. I plan on going to visit GFF in February so I will ask them when I am there and report back.

 

[madamwlf]

You can see many of their pens on videos. Some only have pairs. Others seem to have a whole flock in one big pen. I plan on going to visit GFF in February so I will ask them when I am there and report back.

Are you bringing chicks back with you?