Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[fullmoon]

I hope you all don't mind me asking a question. When did your Swedish Flower Hens start laying? I got my birds in October of last year and they were around a week or two old when I received them. I have started calling them the freeloaders until they start laying but they don't seem to care.

Here is a picture of my hens. Please pardon the mess in the background my feed room needs shelving and the chickens really don't belong there but when I open the door to their coop they tend to run into the feed room.

 

[KYTinpusher]

Mine have started right around 5 months. My first SFH were hatched on 10/11/11. One of them laid her first egg on 3/11/12. The others followed soon after.

 

[ChickNmamma]

As most of you guys know I have been in contact with the APA and they have come back to me this time and they are now saying we would have to pick one color to be the basis of the Swedish Flower Hen and I explaind to them that they come in SO many different colors and if they wanted us to pick one color to BE the breed we would no longer continue with this and I said I wish to no longer push this and get them a show breed......BUT I am going to continue to get this breed recognized by the American Livestock Breeds Consevancy! Their goal with the ALBC is to strengthen and make the breed better for generations to come! They love the diversity of colors this breed displays and DO NOT wish to make us change anything about them! I still feel it would be of good practice to cull any and all birds with cross breeding in them and with split wing! This is where the breeding community will need to be set up and sent in....Thanks yall, Justin

After hearing what the Ameraucanas had to go through to get their birds recognized I suspected you wouldn't want to continue with the APA. They want base describable colors - and no variations. They would not accept all the colors created for the Ameraucanas, and they are still against allowing "Lavender" to be permitted because of what it is called. SFH are based on multi-colors and mixed color breeding and that's the way we like them.

I think you might have meant cross beak? instead of cross breeding. Split wing - yes - don't want to continue that. I think the curled toes hasn't come up in awhile so hopefully that was cured by not using medicated feed and adding more protein to their diets (letting them free range works great).

I would like to request that we honor the information given to us at the beginning of this thread and keep the crests to a minimum to allow them to continue to see to free range. Breeding crested x crested was not recommended The original breeder that Green Fire Farms got their stock from actually bred only non-crested birds. The description says "occasionally a hen will have a small tuft of feathers on her head". I noticed all early photos show non-crested roosters and very low crested hens. Please, let's not do what they did to the Silkies and create a bird that can't survive in a free-range situation. The original Silkies had small crests and no beards. Breeders made them what we have today. Cute, but useless in free-range situations unless you like sacrificial chickens.

This is from near the beginning of this thread given to us by a person who apparently knows something about the breeds:
Svarthona

"Landrace fowl does not have a written "standard" in the way as show-breeds do. They have of course a recognizable body type, pattern, etc. and those characteristics are documented in a "rasram" (literally breed-frame), but that frame is not as strict and reducing as a breed standard would be. It is more kind of a description about the occurring variation of the birds of a certain area (Skåne in South Sweden for the Flower hens), which is not to restrict the birds in their appearance, it is to help with preserving their variable appearance.
Landrace fowl like the Flower hens were mostly selected by predators/climate/feed/local isolation and of course some human selection (productivity) which led to certain body types giving each landrace fowl a recognizable look, but they were not selected to the degree of being as uniform as show-breeds.
With responsible culling I didn't want to suggest to fit them into a show breed standard. I more meant to not breed away from their landrace characteristics as an old farm fowl. Just good old chicken common sense when breeding smile ... For example it's not good to select for bigger crests just because they look cute. If you'd need to trim the crest of a flower hen so she's not eaten by a predator and is able to find her food > don't breed from her. Using a crested rooster on crested hens actually isn't recommended in the breed-frame because it can lead to dangerously large crests making them vulnerable for predators. Other example would be to not breed from sickish birds or to start to vaccinate/deworm/medicate them. Just stuff like that"

This is what I want to do with the breed, I hope others will choose this as well.

 

[PugBug]

Actually, he is pure Swede. He certainly has a different color pattern than most which is why I decided to keep him as a breeder. I also really like his clean yellow legs.

He's beautiful! I don't think we've begun to see all the color patterns that this breed has to offer yet.

 

[PugBug]

As most of you guys know I have been in contact with the APA and they have come back to me this time and they are now saying we would have to pick one color to be the basis of the Swedish Flower Hen and I explaind to them that they come in SO many different colors and if they wanted us to pick one color to BE the breed we would no longer continue with this and I said I wish to no longer push this and get them a show breed......BUT I am going to continue to get this breed recognized by the American Livestock Breeds Consevancy! Their goal with the ALBC is to strengthen and make the breed better for generations to come! They love the diversity of colors this breed displays and DO NOT wish to make us change anything about them! I still feel it would be of good practice to cull any and all birds with cross breeding in them and with split wing! This is where the breeding community will need to be set up and sent in....Thanks yall, Justin

I admire all your hard work on this, waiting to see what comes of it. I agree about the split wing, more for health/predator issues than anything else-

By the way, just set 15 SFH eggs yesterday from a mostly black & blue breeding pen. Wanting to add more of these colors to mine

 

[Leahs Mom]

I have a question or 2 on the "breeding crested to crested" issue.

If these birds were "in the wild" surviving on their own, it seems to me that they'd breed crested to crested on their own as I don't think that would be a criteria to a rooster

(!)

-So...is the thought that if they were in the wild that the crested to crested offspring would have been removed by predation and only the others would survive?

-I know nothing about genetics thus this question: Does it ALWAYS follow that a crested to crested breeding results in over-sized crests?

 

[15littlem]

-I know nothing about genetics thus this question: Does it ALWAYS follow that a crested to crested breeding results in over-sized crests?

It would if the parents were both homozygous for crests (if X is crested and x is no crest, the parents would have to be XX and XX, not Xx and Xx or Xx and XX. There are over sizers in these others, but only a percentage of them are over sized.)

 

[jbarrett]

After hearing what the Ameraucanas had to go through to get their birds recognized I suspected you wouldn't want to continue with the APA. They want base describable colors - and no variations. They would not accept all the colors created for the Ameraucanas, and they are still against allowing "Lavender" to be permitted because of what it is called. SFH are based on multi-colors and mixed color breeding and that's the way we like them.

I think you might have meant cross beak? instead of cross breeding. Split wing - yes - don't want to continue that. I think the curled toes hasn't come up in awhile so hopefully that was cured by not using medicated feed and adding more protein to their diets (letting them free range works great).

I would like to request that we honor the information given to us at the beginning of this thread and keep the crests to a minimum to allow them to continue to see to free range. Breeding crested x crested was not recommended The original breeder that Green Fire Farms got their stock from actually bred only non-crested birds. The description says "occasionally a hen will have a small tuft of feathers on her head". I noticed all early photos show non-crested roosters and very low crested hens. Please, let's not do what they did to the Silkies and create a bird that can't survive in a free-range situation. The original Silkies had small crests and no beards. Breeders made them what we have today. Cute, but useless in free-range situations unless you like sacrificial chickens.

This is from near the beginning of this thread given to us by a person who apparently knows something about the breeds:
Svarthona

"Landrace fowl does not have a written "standard" in the way as show-breeds do. They have of course a recognizable body type, pattern, etc. and those characteristics are documented in a "rasram" (literally breed-frame), but that frame is not as strict and reducing as a breed standard would be. It is more kind of a description about the occurring variation of the birds of a certain area (Skåne in South Sweden for the Flower hens), which is not to restrict the birds in their appearance, it is to help with preserving their variable appearance.
Landrace fowl like the Flower hens were mostly selected by predators/climate/feed/local isolation and of course some human selection (productivity) which led to certain body types giving each landrace fowl a recognizable look, but they were not selected to the degree of being as uniform as show-breeds.
With responsible culling I didn't want to suggest to fit them into a show breed standard. I more meant to not breed away from their landrace characteristics as an old farm fowl. Just good old chicken common sense when breeding smile ... For example it's not good to select for bigger crests just because they look cute. If you'd need to trim the crest of a flower hen so she's not eaten by a predator and is able to find her food > don't breed from her. Using a crested rooster on crested hens actually isn't recommended in the breed-frame because it can lead to dangerously large crests making them vulnerable for predators. Other example would be to not breed from sickish birds or to start to vaccinate/deworm/medicate them. Just stuff like that"

This is what I want to do with the breed, I hope others will choose this as well.

agreed I just wanted to be able to show them nationaly and be able to get them before the public so more people can have a truely amazing breed of poultry!

 

[jbarrett]

I admire all your hard work on this, waiting to see what comes of it. I agree about the split wing, more for health/predator issues than anything else-

By the way, just set 15 SFH eggs yesterday from a mostly black & blue breeding pen. Wanting to add more of these colors to mine

GOOD LUCK!

 

[wildhorseannie]

wow...I need to stop in more often! Beautiful pictures from lots of folks, thank you!
SunnySkies, I hope all goes well from here out!
JBarrett, great pictures and info, thank you very much for that~
I am learning more about these birds here and I really appreciate it.

This may have been touched on earlier, but I came late to the party...
Is there any interest in swapping hatching eggs, for the sake of genetic diversity?
...and for feeding the need to have as many colors as some of you folks do! LOL would LOVE to have some black!
thanks all!