Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[TxFlowers]

I guess GFF must have white ears somewhere in their lines. If it's good enough for them it ought to be good enough for me.

I have a nice young roo that came from GFF last summer. He has earlobes just as white as on your boy. I had another SFH roo that came from someone that got from GFF and he also had very white lobes. Every time I note differences in my birds I remind myself that this is a land race breed and differences just goes along with it. Even if GFF didn't have any crossbreeding at their place, we don't know what crossbreeding ( deliberate or accidental ) may have happened in the flocks before GFF imported from.

 

[HaplessRunner]

Tony - I'm SO thrilled to hear your news!

• puglady
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• Location: NH
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So very happy to hear that!

Many thanks to all! I cannot begin to tell you what a relief it is knowing that my young chickens are MG/MS negative (free)!

An update on Bulldogma's eggs, 22/26 are still developing nicely with two question marks at the 14 Day candling. My coops and equipment have been pressure washed and disinfected with a greater that 10% bleach mixture (2.5 cups concentrated bleach in 1.5 gallon total mixture. I will do one disinfection spray down on Monday. Everything should be ready for the first batch of chickens to move in by the beginning of May.

Hatches:

2/28 5 cream legbars (CLB)
3/8 4 CLB & 2 SFH
3/18 6 CLB
4/5 5 CLB & 2 jubilee orpingtons (JO)
4/14 9 blue wheaten/wheaten ameraucana

Projected Hatch:

4/24 20+ SFH & 1 JO
So recovery efforts are well underway. LOL- I am going to need the brooder space!

 

[KYTinpusher]

HaplessRunner - have you ever tried Oxine? Supposed to be more effective than bleach and OMRI listed.

 

[HaplessRunner]

HaplessRunner - have you ever tried Oxine? Supposed to be more effective than bleach and OMRI listed.

The bleach mixture was recommended by the State vet staff. That said, I do have a gallon of Oxine that I intend to use after the next bleach mixture wash down.

 

[CackleJoy]

Tony - I'm SO thrilled to hear your news!

I have a couple with whitish on the earlobes - Alma included. They are not pure white, but have red around the edges and whitish-tan coloring in the center.

I think your cockerel is stunning. He definitely has the SFH build. I wouldn't worry too terribly much about the earlobes as long as the type and flowering is correct. Just my $0.02

Thank you ! We think he is a looker too Every time I get close to him I think - Wow! We really like this breed and the roosters are lovely in personality - a huge plus!

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

Are you trying to nicely say that we shouldn't use the big cockerel ?

I appreciated the reference very much regarding ear lobes because I am just learning to REALLY pay attention to these things. We hope to start showing (other) birds soon.

If I were to raise up one with his physique that did not have the white ears, I might trade him out. That would be hard though because this big guy has a really sweet disposition.

Pardon my ignorance. Does anyone know what standards the SFH are supposed to have? I know the obvious ones like yellow legs and no split wing. Perhaps we should find out if more of the SFH are showing up with white in the ears. Our big guy has pink tips to his ears, like they were dipped in paint. Otherwise, they're startling white. I went and checked and all the girls have pink ears. So the offspring shouldn't throw too many whites - correct?

Oh, not at all! Just that given the correlation between white earlobes and white eggshells, you might want to watch the shell color of his daughters if it's brown eggs you want. If you are confident what you've got is pure (and hey, if we can't trust the people who imported the birds in the first place, where do we turn?), then breed away. One thing that I like with this breed is that there isn't a breed standard so strict that one can't enjoy the birds in all of their color forms and crested/uncrested glory. I tried for years to get a decent start at raising silver Ameraucanas because I thought they were beautiful, but I found them to be unthrifty, relatively poor layers, and on top of that, you essentially have to keep two lines: one for raising properly colored cocks and one for properly colored hens. That's just too much work, space, and feed for me so I crossed what I had left with my EEs and threw up my hands. So long as my EEs lay somewhere along the blue to green scale, I don't care what their earlobes look like or if they have the right tail set and so on.

 

[Bulldogma]

Projected Hatch:

4/24 20+ SFH & 1 JO
So recovery efforts are well underway. LOL- I am going to need the brooder space!

Tony -
Those are awesome development rates for shipped eggs!
I hope you get a Mace x Alma cockerel. I know you will be very pleased with one if you do!

 

[CackleJoy]

Oh, not at all! Just that given the correlation between white earlobes and white eggshells, you might want to watch the shell color of his daughters if it's brown eggs you want. If you are confident what you've got is pure (and hey, if we can't trust the people who imported the birds in the first place, where do we turn?), then breed away. One thing that I like with this breed is that there isn't a breed standard so strict that one can't enjoy the birds in all of their color forms and crested/uncrested glory. I tried for years to get a decent start at raising silver Ameraucanas because I thought they were beautiful, but I found them to be unthrifty, relatively poor layers, and on top of that, you essentially have to keep two lines: one for raising properly colored cocks and one for properly colored hens. That's just too much work, space, and feed for me so I crossed what I had left with my EEs and threw up my hands. So long as my EEs lay somewhere along the blue to green scale, I don't care what their earlobes look like or if they have the right tail set and so on.

I love this breed! Totally! To the point of being a little less enamored with some of the other breeds. But my kids are interested in showing....

We have BBS AM's. That is a particular bunch of people FOR SURE! But it makes me learn. Learning is good!

I am so excited - with in 2 weeks of first lay the eggs are already big enough to hatch. They are the size of the MFL eggs that we hatched all the time. MFL lay SMALL eggs. Another reason to avoid any kind of crossing!

 

[CountryHen19]

Hello Everyone-- I was a mostly-lurker last year on this board cause I had young SFH chicks and was not experienced in chickens at all. Then the combination of grad school and two jobs got in the way of me getting on the forums. Thankfully things slowed down and I've got chicken fever again, so I finally got back on .

We have 5 hens, 3 SFH and 2 BLRW

Our 3 SFH chicks we got from a local breeder ended up to be all female, which is good since we ended up not being able to have roosters after all.

One is mille fleur and she's at the top of the pecking order, even though she's the smallest. Her name is Partridge (nn: Partie)



The white hen is #2 and she's the "enforcer" for the most part. She's still mostly white, with a little orange and grey/blue bleeding through.Her name is Stripe


The third one is #3 naturally. She's mostly black with a good spattering of white mottling (?) and some gold/red on her hackles. Her name is Penguin. This isn't
a good pic of her but she's camera shy.

She tries to be broody but since we don't have roosters, there's no point. If she actually wouldn't abandon the eggs for more than hour or so,
I'd get some fertilized ones and give them to her but she leaves them for longer periods so she's not ready yet, by my count. Partie and Stripe literally fight over
everyone's favorite spot to lay. Usually Partie is being sat on by Stripe.

We got the coop "finished" right in Nov. before the cold hit-- only we didn't know what would happen in Jan-Mar. We made mods to it right before the first arctic blast
which I'm glad we did because our area was one of the coldest in the nation (by other reports) so whatever we did worked for us.

Anyway, we have to do the run, make nest boxes, and build a "permanent" brooder for some more chicks-- my husband (and I of course) really love this breed.
They are just like what GFF said in their description and what you all have experienced, at least so far. They are almost 1 yr old and haven't had their first molt yet.

 

[KYTinpusher]

Welcome! We're glad you joined us. Lovely birds!