Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[HaplessRunner]

Leigh,

An update on your eggs. Today is Day 21. So far 8 have hatched and more are zipping and pipping the shell. This is going to be my best ever hatch of SFH. Thanks to you! Of the eggs that had a letter/name on them, So far two "E" eggs have hatched. An "Ali" egg is zipping now. Also a "P" egg is externally pipping.

Had a humidity failure last night - one of the plugs in the hatcher came out and I did not notice. The "Ali" egg had zipped 3/4 but the the chick was shrink wrapped and quit. I helped two others out of the shell including the "P" egg. So including these two, I have 11 hatched. There were a number of late quitters based on candling. Still hopeful for a couple more but not likely to happen. My one JO egg is still working. The jubilee orpingtons seem to develop more slowly and take a little longer to hatch.

 

[Bulldogma]

Leigh,

An update on your eggs. Today is Day 21. So far 8 have hatched and more are zipping and pipping the shell. This is going to be my best ever hatch of SFH. Thanks to you! Of the eggs that had a letter/name on them, So far two "E" eggs have hatched. An "Ali" egg is zipping now. Also a "P" egg is externally pipping.

Had a humidity failure last night - one of the plugs in the hatcher came out and I did not notice. The "Ali" egg had zipped 3/4 but the the chick was shrink wrapped and quit. I helped two others out of the shell including the "P" egg. So including these two, I have 11 hatched. There were a number of late quitters based on candling. Still hopeful for a couple more but not likely to happen. My one JO egg is still working. The jubilee orpingtons seem to develop more slowly and take a little longer to hatch.

So sorry about your humidity problem! 11 is still pretty awesome. I hope you get mostly girls and at least one Alma x Mace boy!

 

[Bulldogma]

LOL!

Day 21, humidity is at 63%
One CCL began to hatch last night @ midnight.
Expected to see a chick this am, but it was stuck to the egg. Had to moisten as it was shrink wrapped.
Second egg has piped & I enlarged the hole, still looked most, looks like a female CCL.
No more pips for now.

 

[HaplessRunner]

So sorry about your humidity problem! 11 is still pretty awesome. I hope you get mostly girls and at least one Alma x Mace boy!

One Alma egg was a cull earlier and the two remaining Alma eggs are not looking promising (sigh - just the way it goes). And, yes, I am ecstatic with this hatch! Lots and lots of colors.

 

[CackleJoy]

I try not to be paranoid but noticed the latter part of my big cockerels comb is turning purple. ???? Ideas? No sign of illness

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

Genetics question. When crossing the predominantly red and white SFH to a Mille Fleur, what could one expect in chick plumage? What are the genetics behind the red and white coloring?

What does the male equivalent of the primarily black mottled hen look like? I have one hen ("Ghost," as my daughter named her) who is splash. She's pretty large, is very gentle, and I like her egg color. I'm wondering what kind of cock I ought to put over her to get some more colorful babies. I'm trying to get a black-based Mille Fleur out of this year's hatch because my two gents are blue-based Mille Fleur and then the red and white, probably splash on the latter? If someone could give me a little insight into his genetics, his picture appears below.

 

[HaplessRunner]

Genetics question. When crossing the predominantly red and white SFH to a Mille Fleur, what could one expect in chick plumage? What are the genetics behind the red and white coloring?

What does the male equivalent of the primarily black mottled hen look like? I have one hen ("Ghost," as my daughter named her) who is splash. She's pretty large, is very gentle, and I like her egg color. I'm wondering what kind of cock I ought to put over her to get some more colorful babies. I'm trying to get a black-based Mille Fleur out of this year's hatch because my two gents are blue-based Mille Fleur and then the red and white, probably splash on the latter? If someone could give me a little insight into his genetics, his picture appears below.

Although have many colors and genes associated with those colors, SFH operate on black-blue-splash base. So the normal rule apply in terms of determining the base outcome of a breeding. The following chart can be helpful.



So to get a black-based MF from your birds that you described above, you would need to breed the black-based hen with a blue-based rooster. This will result in 50% chance of getting what you want. You will just have to hatch until you get a black-based cockerel and then can breed that cockerel back to his black-based mother or a black-based sibling to get all black-based SFH. If they are MF, then your odds get better.

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

But Mille Fleur pattern is based on Wheaten, not Extended black. So that chart above, while helpful for figuring out how black parts will appear on a chicken, doesn't tell me about the distribution of other colors which is what I'm really after. If I have a truly black-based mottled bird and cross it with a Mille Fleur, the Extended black would dominate over the Wheaten and I'd expect the offspring to appear black mottled, too, even though they'd carry one copy of E^wh.

Maybe I should rephrase my question. Are the red and white SFH truly "red mottled?" Like are they Columbian with the black tail, similar to a Rhode Island Red (being Wheaten based of the E locus) or do they not carry Columbian? What restricts the expression of black in the red and white SFH, is it simply that they are splash so the black isn't apparent or do they truly just not express it for some other reason? I think it must be the latter in that the birds appear to be truly white, not splash.

Edited to add: Are the apparently blue, black, and splash mottled SFH just based on Extended black? On most I've seen around the site, they seem to have some gold in the hackles, so I wonder what that is from. My splash girls doesn't seem to be anything other than solid splash, but I'm not sure what color I ought to cross her to so that I'd have enough genetic information on the cock involved to figure out by process of elimination what she carries.

 

[Bulldogma]

One Alma egg was a cull earlier and the two remaining Alma eggs are not looking promising (sigh - just the way it goes). And, yes, I am ecstatic with this hatch! Lots and lots of colors.

Awww - well, I'm glad you got the ones you did!

I try not to be paranoid but noticed the latter part of my big cockerels comb is turning purple. ???? Ideas? No sign of illness

Keep an eye on him. Sometimes they get a little purplish if they are resting and they color back up when they start running around. If he starts acting off, it could be the first sign of heart failure which is most likely to happen to cockerels between the ages of 7 and 12 months.

Genetics question. When crossing the predominantly red and white SFH to a Mille Fleur, what could one expect in chick plumage? What are the genetics behind the red and white coloring?

What does the male equivalent of the primarily black mottled hen look like? I have one hen ("Ghost," as my daughter named her) who is splash. She's pretty large, is very gentle, and I like her egg color. I'm wondering what kind of cock I ought to put over her to get some more colorful babies. I'm trying to get a black-based Mille Fleur out of this year's hatch because my two gents are blue-based Mille Fleur and then the red and white, probably splash on the latter? If someone could give me a little insight into his genetics, his picture appears below.

Mace is the product of Ginger (red + white) and Gunnar (black based mille fleur). I get a lot of black based mille fleurs (and some blue based mille fleurs from these crosses.

 

[HaplessRunner]

But Mille Fleur pattern is based on Wheaten, not Extended black. So that chart above, while helpful for figuring out how black parts will appear on a chicken, doesn't tell me about the distribution of other colors which is what I'm really after. If I have a truly black-based mottled bird and cross it with a Mille Fleur, the Extended black would dominate over the Wheaten and I'd expect the offspring to appear black mottled, too, even though they'd carry one copy of E^wh.

Maybe I should rephrase my question. Are the red and white SFH truly "red mottled?" Like are they Columbian with the black tail, similar to a Rhode Island Red (being Wheaten based of the E locus) or do they not carry Columbian? What restricts the expression of black in the red and white SFH, is it simply that they are splash so the black isn't apparent or do they truly just not express it for some other reason? I think it must be the latter in that the birds appear to be truly white, not splash.

Edited to add: Are the apparently blue, black, and splash mottled SFH just based on Extended black? On most I've seen around the site, they seem to have some gold in the hackles, so I wonder what that is from. My splash girls doesn't seem to be anything other than solid splash, but I'm not sure what color I ought to cross her to so that I'd have enough genetic information on the cock involved to figure out by process of elimination what she carries.

Talk with @ki4got , she has done some work on figuring out the genetics of the SFH. I am not a geneticist and there are indeed many other influences of color that overlay the black, blue or splash base.