Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[HaplessRunner]

If anyone's qualified to answer this, please do. Through some bad luck and bad judgement, I've never ended up with any adult pure black and white or pure black and gray adults. However, 7/12 of the parents from one of my shipments were black and white. Any idea if the babies I hatch will still have a chance to be pure black and white this year? Genetics is something I know -nothing- about.

Essentially, the Swedish Flower hens work with a BBS (black, blue, splash) base with all the other colors overlaid onto that base. If you want more white, then breeding two splash based together would give more of that type. The BBS chart that applies to other breeds can serve as guidance toward producing what you want. The wild card of course is that SFH come with many colors in addition to the base. For example, a black-based MF roo and a black-based pullet can produce chicks with many colors and possibly more blacks that you want.

Here is the chart for information:



Hope this helps!

 

[HaplessRunner]

Pictures of your roosters and hens would be helpful but I will take a stab.

Rooster #1 is a black-based mille fleur
Rooster #2 is a blue-based
Rooster #3 appears to be black-based

Hen #1 white with tan may be splash based
Hen #2 brown with black may be black-based
Hen #3 gray with a little brown, to black may be black-based

Potential matches and results (using the chart above:

Rooster #1 over Hen #2 (black over black) should result in black-based chicks => 100% chance of getting black-based chicks
Rooster #2 over Hen #1 (blue over splash) should result in ~ 50% blue-based and 50% splash-based => 50% chance of getting white-based chicks

To obtain black and white chicks, the above matches is what I would do get them given your existing stock. Like I said earlier, pictures of your hens would be helpful. Since you do not have pictures of your chickens here, at best, these can be regarded as guesses.

Others with much more experience than me should chime in.

 

[1muttsfan]

When you say black and white, do you mean only those colors and no brown/tan/cream of any kind? Maybe you could find a picture of what you have in mind.

 

[1muttsfan]

I have seen references to all-black hens, but all the birds I have seen or seen pictures of have some gold, at least around the hackles. Anyone have pure black or blue birds without any gold/cream/tan/brown?

 

[HaplessRunner]

Took the best pictures I could on my way in to feed them and what-not. That house needs a cleaning but the ground is frozen solid :[

My other couple hens and couple roosters (the dark rooster, the monster rooster, and the two brown based hens w/ black) are about 16 miles away currently, so... Also, don't mind Judy. She's just a mascot.

(and YES, exactly. JUST black and white.)

It will be very difficult to almost impossible to get a pure black and a pure white SFH. Some may come close but will never be a pure single color. You can do almost but will not achieve pure colors. I am no geneticist but there are just too many influences in SFH genes that provide the multitude of colors that we see.

In your pictures above:

• Picture 1: Three splash (white)-based hens and a blue-based rooster.
• Picture 2: Cindy, Petunia, and Bertha appear to be splash-based. Shaeneequh appears to be black-based.
• Picture 3: Victoria appears black-based.
• Picture 4: Shaeneequh appears to be black-based. Sammy appears to be blue-based.
• Picture 5: Judy appears to be splash-based.
• Picture 6: Gray Lady appears to be blue-based.

So back to your quest for black and white chicks. Since Sammy is the only rooster pictured and is blue-based, my suggestion would be as follows:

• Sammy over Cindy, Petunia, and Judy will result in 50% blue-based chicks and 50% splash (white)-based chicks.
• Sammy over Gray Lady will result in 50% blue-based chicks, 25% black-based chicks, and 25% splash(white)-based chicks.
• Sammy over Shaeneequh and Victoria will result in 50% blue-based chicks and 50% black-based chicks.

So, basically, you have the makings of pretty much all the colors that SFH can produce.

 

[HaplessRunner]

Thanks for all the advice, runner. And yeah, Victoria and Jovan (the really dark rooster) were nearly identical until about three months of age. She's definitely the darkest thing I have.

Guess I just need to learn this terminology. Like calling something "blue" when I see no blue :[

You are very welcome!

The "gray" that you see is generally referred to as "blue". When I first got back into chickens, this was a confusion point for me, too. There are some chickens that approach truer blues but in the SFH case the gray is a blue. Clear?

If it helps your understanding, in the chart I posted earlier, instead of reading blue in the combinations, just refer to the "blue" as "gray" in that chart and it will help you get to where you want to go.

 

[HaplessRunner]

Yeah, that's pretty clear. Thanks. I have a lot of reading to do. I'm guessing I couldn't get away with pairing Jovan with Victoria though, as they are brother and sister :/

You could. It is done all the time but it is not a good practice for maintaining genetic diversity. Breeding protocols frequently require breeding the offspring of a set of parents back to the parents to enhance desired traits. I would certainly not breed the offspring of a Jovan and Victoria pairing (assuming they truly are siblings) back to the parents for any reason. The only reason I could think of for doing that would be a catastrophic loss of your flock for whatever reason and that was all you had left. I would still try to acquire other stock for diversity.

 

[ki4got]

jknoles, go back a few pages to the post I made explaining the basic color possiblilities of the sfh... the roosters will all essentially be the same, unless you get one that carries E (extended black) but likely he'd have a little red leakage on the neck and wings, in addition to the mottling... it's the hens that will show the greatest diversity, depending on the e-locus gene that is dominant in their individual makeup...

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/375288/swedish-flower-hen-thread/7540#post_12700034

but like HaplessRunner said, you've got the basis for a nice variety of colors...

the blue/black/splash chart holds true too, in addition to what other mutations are present, so 2 blues will still produce black and splash in addition to blue. if you like the darkest birds, then I would not breed the splash at all, as they will only give you blues or splashes. breeding a blue to black, you'll get 50/50. so your blue and white girl with your darkest roo would be the most likely to give you the darker black based girls but they will probably have red/gold in the hackles and the roos will be like the other roos. (blue/black chest and tail with red/orange all over).

 

[Bulldogma]

I was just curious if any of you had any absurdly large roosters? I have one that's 11 or 12 pounds. His name is Roger and he's displayed huge traits since he was about two months old, got attacked by a cat once, had a nasty leg spring, and is now about 2.5 feet tall... I didn't think Swedish got that big.

Mace is my largest - I've never weighed him, but I'm pretty sure he's not in the 11-12 lb range... but he's big and very wide. Is your large roo well marked for a SFH? I suppose I would wonder about his lineage if he were that big. but if he's marked well... would definitely love to see a picture when you have one!

I give you camo-chicken!

Love that!



They do blend well with the snow.

 

[1muttsfan]

When you examine the ones in the pictures I have seen they all have some gold color around the neck - it may be quite subtle. I have not seen a genetics chart on SFH, may be hard to do as there is considerable variation. Maybe one of the genetics gurus would weigh in if we asked them.