Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[CrazyCatNChickenLady]

I have gone back and forth with crossing pure sfh to other breeds and in the end I think it is a landrace fowl. Not something that took someone years of taking particular birds and crossing them for a particular goal. For right now I want as many good quality, healthy, pure birds that I can get my hands on and I dont want to even try and mess with multiple breeds and roosters even though I have 3 coops. I have 5 SFH girls and a rooster, plus a blue egger, 2 olive eggers, and a chocolate egger. I can easily tell eggs apart by color, and they're also separated by coop. My only tan egg layers are the swedes.

Now I'm not saying I am gonna start the project, but I think outcrossing is fine. I dont think it would be smart to sell or give away culls as swedish flower hen mixes but maybe list them as buff orp crosses or something. I had an experience recently with an icelandic pullet on craigslist.. All the crazies come out on craigslist!! Lets just say I should have listed her as a mixed banty.. Even if you have pure 'pet quality' chickens (culls) I think they should be sold as mixed breed chickens so someone doesn't take your culls and try and breed and sell 'bad' quality chickens. Just my opinion. lol and I'm going to leave it at that! Haha I can go on but there's no need..

 

[lcatty]

http://www.kackel.se/lantras_hons.html
There's a picture of one on this site that made me think of eventually trying to cross them to buff orps.. It would probably take a few generaions of back crossing and crossing the mixes together but you could probably get a gold bird with pretty cool speckling. It'd be pretty, and also large enough to be dual purpose.. and hopefully broody! I have a gold olive egger but she carries a dominant white gene so it'd cover any black or blue in 50% of the offspring. She's molting right now though.. I do have a few eggs in the incubator right now. I think only 3 pure sfh eggs are developing and 1 fayoumi/araucanaX egg (with my boy as the daddy).

I copy and pasted the pic I was talking about from the link above. I haven't seen one in the US like this yet.. Anyone have any this light? My girl is really light but its more of an orangish, not a buff. What would you call this color? Buff mille fleur?

Again this is the link where this pic came from! Not my chicken!! http://www.kackel.se/lantras_hons.html

I would think the color is either lemon mille fleur or perhaps someone attempting to breed for Porcelain color (that would be even lighter than this though). I think Porcelain coloring comes from breeding blue to mille fleur, then breeding that offspring to lavender. Or something like that. Very striking. Never seen a Swede that color, myself.

 

[15littlem]

why would you want to?

I am probably getting a BO roo for Christmas, and I thought about adding a SFH to the group.

 

[jbarrett]

I was asked in during my presentation for 4H of the Swedish Flower Hens.....I told them and showed them that there is both crested and non crested, they asked and I am interested in finding out too...If you have a crested rooster with a non crested hen, will their babies be crested or not? and crested hen with non cresed rooster? and crest to crest? non crest to non crest? and ideas?

 

[srslychickning]

Hi Everyone. I've posted once or twice here before, thought I'd post an update. Here is Sylvia, a SFH I hatched October 20, with her "brother" Edgar Allen, who was also supposed to be a SFH, but surprise - he's a Breda.



I also have a nearly-all-white splash (year old), and a black & white hen (born July 4). And I also have a mille-fluer with a double crest (poor thing can barely see - see what I mean? born early fall)





And finally, there is Clarence (born July 4), who has never challenged me, has a very good personality, doesn't pick on anyone else, but crows VERY loudly, VERY frequently. I fear my neighbors are at the end of their ropes and Clarence needs to find a home better suited to his vocal training. If anyone is interested, PM me! Here he is:



I love everyone's pictures. This is a great thread.

 

[lcatty]

I was asked in during my presentation for 4H of the Swedish Flower Hens.....I told them and showed them that there is both crested and non crested, they asked and I am interested in finding out too...If you have a crested rooster with a non crested hen, will their babies be crested or not? and crested hen with non cresed rooster? and crest to crest? non crest to non crest? and ideas?

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens lists crests as a dominant gene.

So, assuming Storey's is correct, e.g., if crested parent is heterozygous, you will get all crested offspring no matter whether the other parent is crested or not; if crested roo is homozygous and crested hen is homozygous some will be crested, some not. As you probably already know, the dominant gene, if present in the offspring, will always be expressed.

This is my understanding. If anybody with more knowledge would like to chime in please do.

 

[CasieD]

Quote:
Thanks, I've been wondering about the crested gene. The SFH's I hatched from shipped eggs are all non-crested. Now I know I need to get a crested bird in the mix to get some with crests.

 

[lcatty]

I was asked in during my presentation for 4H of the Swedish Flower Hens.....I told them and showed them that there is both crested and non crested, they asked and I am interested in finding out too...If you have a crested rooster with a non crested hen, will their babies be crested or not? and crested hen with non cresed rooster? and crest to crest? non crest to non crest? and ideas?

Oh and I forgot to add, I have heard it is not a good idea to breed crested to crested, as it results in huge crests and blocks the bird's vision. Unless you don't have predator problems and your bird will be safe nevertheless.

 

[jbarrett]

Oh and I forgot to add, I have heard it is not a good idea to breed crested to crested, as it results in huge crests and blocks the bird's vision. Unless you don't have predator problems and your bird will be safe nevertheless.

thats alot of info!! thank you Mrs. Bramblett, I guess I could have just asked you!! And crest to crest that is a nifty little note too, Thank you, Justin

 

[ki4got]

yes, it is a dominant gene.

you got hetero/homo mixed up i think... heterozygous has only 1 copy of the gene. homozygous has 2 copies...

if you have a homozygous crested, with uncrested, you'll get 100% crested. heterozygous crested with uncrested you'd get 50%. breeding 2 crested birds together could result in about 25% uncrested though, if they're both heterozygous. uncrested birds bred together will never produce a crest.

not so sure about the huge crests... i think that's more in breeds that have overdeveloped crests, like the silkies and polish... i haven't seen any sfh with that style crest yet in all the pics i've looked at.

edited multiple times to add things i forgot LOL