Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[Sylvester017]

This is the best shot I could get because Momma Hen was not too thrilled with my presence. They are fierce moms, these Swedes! The "speckledy" look I was trying to describe is how there are blotches of yellow on the heads of two of the chicks you can see here, the leftmost one and the one in the back. The other two have the classic redhead look of the blue and black based mille fleur kind of pattern.


Here is the wild EE hen shepherding her SFH chicks back into the nest compartment.

What is wild about your EE hen? Is she just snotty while brooding and rearing or is her personality generally wild? I thought EEs were fairly mellow non-combative temperaments? The only time our Silkies get cranky is if they're broody; otherwise they go about their daily foraging with no issues and tame to come up to us.

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

She has always been very flighty, unlike all of my other EEs and any pure Ameraucanas I've had. She squawks like crazy when touched and is just not generally very personable. Probably not the best choice to let her rear these chicks, but I'm hoping that if I take them away in a couple of weeks they'll be more people-oriented than she is. I had a few cream legbars and one of them was super flighty, so much so that she escaped and lived in my woodpile for about 2 months before I finally caught her. She escaped a second time and never returned. I wasn't too beat up about it aside from having paid through the nose to get her from Greenfire Farms!

 

[Alpine Chicken]

This is the best shot I could get because Momma Hen was not too thrilled with my presence. They are fierce moms, these Swedes! The "speckledy" look I was trying to describe is how there are blotches of yellow on the heads of two of the chicks you can see here, the leftmost one and the one in the back. The other two have the classic redhead look of the blue and black based mille fleur kind of pattern.


Here is the wild EE hen shepherding her SFH chicks back into the nest compartment.

Congratulations on the beautiful chicks! Now I know what you mean. If you want the solid types, then I do think you´ve got a couple there; at least that´s what mine look like as chicks. The one on the left looks like it´s going to be a pretty blue one. I don´t know what the others think, but I seem to be making the experience that the ones with more yellow on their heads tend to have more white on them as adults (not flowering, but solid white feathers). Looks like you´re going to get some pretty birds. On my latest hatch of German import eggs I´m a little disappointed right now. I know it´s very early to tell (they´re only about 10 days old), but it looks like about half of them have split wing. A couple don´t look too bad, but a few have such a huge gap in their wing feathering, I can´t imagine it growing out. It´s been a real ordeal trying to get fresh bloodlines into my flock!

 

[Sylvester017]

She has always been very flighty, unlike all of my other EEs and any pure Ameraucanas I've had. She squawks like crazy when touched and is just not generally very personable. Probably not the best choice to let her rear these chicks, but I'm hoping that if I take them away in a couple of weeks they'll be more people-oriented than she is. I had a few cream legbars and one of them was super flighty, so much so that she escaped and lived in my woodpile for about 2 months before I finally caught her. She escaped a second time and never returned. I wasn't too beat up about it aside from having paid through the nose to get her from Greenfire Farms!

Most owners have had a preference for the seemingly mellower Ameraucanas over their cousins the EEs. I know the sinking feeling of paying through the nose for a breed only to lose it. I invested over $300 total in buying one rare juvenile bird, paying shipping costs, vet bills, nursing it, and still having to put it down after only one month! The companion bird purchased with it was sent as the wrong sex and had to be re-homed. Needless to say, I won't be dealing with that breeder ever again! Poultry raising is a risk at best but inept or deceptive breeders ruin it for the hobbyists.

It never fails to amaze me at how 1% of a breed can be so different from the other 99% - my theory, and IMO only, is that the multiple breeds used in a bird's breeding history can never assure a common temperament: i.e., Dominiques have been left basically un-engineered for decades/centuries whilst the corresponding BRs (an off-shoot of Doms) has had Indian game bird (Cornish) and Malay cross-bred into them to make them larger and more dual-purpose. Because of the wilder temperament of their ancestry I've had BRs pop up with some pretty aggressive tendencies while most will inherit the sweeter temperament of their Dom roots.

Just a personal theory, mind you, but I see it happen in breeds that have Leghorn cross-bred into them (like the CLs) - Leghorns can be a very assertive to downright aggressive bird - my folks and I have had them in big flocks. LUV Legs but they haven't done well in our mixed breeds flocks. Legs are popular to cross with other breeds to increase productivity.

And BRs create most of the newly popular Auto-Sexing breeds - again exposing new breeds to the aggressive ancestry of the BRs. Most BR crossings will inherit the good Dom ancestry genes but there's always the scattered chance of the wilder temperament history emerging in Auto-sexing. Breeders can try all they like to breed out the aggressiveness in their stock but there are just certain breeds I stay away from when I know what their breeding ancestry is on the off-chance that the one bird I get will have the trait I dislike. Some breeds I feel will always have a certain temperament, like Silkies, and because they are bred in volume in all colors there is a high chance of getting one oddball but on the whole they are pretty consistent. Whereas a dual-purpose like a Welsummer or Barnevelder who have so much diverse breed ancestry it is "iffy" as to what temperament will emerge. Lucky if you get the good individuals but sad to raise a bad seed only to cull or re-home it later. True, raising birds is a challenge and have to be selectively bred, but IMO there are just some breeds that are what they are no matter how much work is put into improving them.

Sorry, I rambled a bit off topic - but it solidifies how we narrowed our choices for the breeds we ultimately chose to keep in our small backyard.

Anyone have any input regarding SFHs? Temperament, productivity, size, weight, flock compatibility, human interaction, etc?

 

[song of joy]

I'm so sorry you lost Lilly. Marek's behaves something like that if it attacks the spinal cord - the chicken will start to limp or lose balance and use the wing to support themselves. Then you give vitamins and they seem better for a couple days and then suddenly get worse unable to stand normally and eventually take more days to die so best to be put down. But I'm not sure whether Marek's would affect a chick that quickly. I think Marek's takes several weeks for symptoms to appear in juveniles but I don't know much about chicks. We lost a Dom chick at 21 days to a sudden seizure out of the blue dying in our hands - no warning as to what brought out a sudden seizure with no apparent prior symptoms. Devastating to lose the babies and without a necropsy there is no way to know for certain what took them. So many diseases have similar symptoms that there's no way knowing for sure. Even our vet gives educated guesses from his experience but the only certain way to know is necropsy through the Agricultural State Dept or through husbandry classes in your local college/university.

Thank you for your input. I had considered Marek's - and still haven't completely ruled it out. I have a hen with six, 3-week old chicks in the fenced chicken yard immediately adjacent to the SFH chicks, so if it's Marek's I'd think at least some of the chicks would show symptoms over the next few weeks or months. Time will tell.

I'm really beginning to think SFH may have dietary needs that depend on more natural foods rather than the highly-processed chicken feeds that are sold at most stores. My SFH chicks were started on Dumor chick starter, but they much prefer greens and organic, non-GMO feeds that are ground up rather than highly-processed. I wonder if the highly-processed feeds have more of an adverse effect on SFH (increasing risk of coccidiosis, vitamin deficiency) than they do on the more popular hatchery-stock breeds that have been exposed to it for generations (e.g., RIR, barred rocks, etc).

 

[Sylvester017]

Thank you for your input. I had considered Marek's - and still haven't completely ruled it out. I have a hen with six, 3-week old chicks in the fenced chicken yard immediately adjacent to the SFH chicks, so if it's Marek's I'd think at least some of the chicks would show symptoms over the next few weeks or months. Time will tell.

I'm really beginning to think SFH may have dietary needs that depend on more natural foods rather than the highly-processed chicken feeds that are sold at most stores. My SFH chicks were started on Dumor chick starter, but they much prefer greens and organic, non-GMO feeds that are ground up rather than highly-processed. I wonder if the highly-processed feeds have more of an adverse effect on SFH (increasing risk of coccidiosis, vitamin deficiency) than they do on the more popular hatchery-stock breeds that have been exposed to it for generations (e.g., RIR, barred rocks, etc).

As so many more experienced owners with medical knowledge re chickens have told me -- you cannot take a vet's word for a diagnosis as many will just assume Marek's and the majority of vets are not equipped to do thorough fact-finding necropsies. The suspected cases of Marek's have to be tested in Agricultural/Husbandry facilities through the State or through colleges/universities offering such services for the students to learn on. A dead bird immediately supplied to a facility is good but some of the learning facilities appreciate a sick bird to monitor which will enable them to immediately have a fresh carcass to disect when/if the bird dies. Unfortunately with so many diseases including Marek's there are no tests to diagnose them until a necropsy is performed on the dead bird. So sad that a blood test cannot tell us anything in advance what is ailing the bird. With so many chicken diseases displaying almost identical symptoms it is next to impossible to diagnose until necropsy.

I have found different breeds prefer different food. Though we used non-GMO no-soy organic we stopped using hard compressed layer pellets and started using an organic natural seeds mix instead with 18% protein. Though our little flock free-ranges the backyard we supplement their layer feed with cooked shrimp or fish, canned fish or sardines in olive oil, fresh fruits like cantaloupe, grapes, watermelon, cranberry raisins or regular raisins, produce like cucumber, cooked yam or sweet potato, or freshly sprouted seeds from a kit, quinoa or chia seeds, oat groats, shelled raw sunflowers, mealworms, Greek yogurt with live bacillus, sometimes a nice Tillamook cheese slice, multi-grain organic bread slice, cooked brown rice, bee pollen, sprinkles of turmeric, sometimes some Brewers yeast sprinkled in a food, wild bird seed or Dove seed, just an assortment of foods for them as supplemental or treats foods. I'm sure I've missed some stuff but you get the idea. It's impossible to know what nutrient a chicken needs but the chicken knows and picks it out to eat. Some days a chicken is hungry for yogurt and the next day they might need the layer feed mixed with brown rice and bee pollen. They pick their favorite stuff. When broody they eat very little and we take them off the empty nests to get feed/drink/dust-bath/exercise before they promptly return to brood again.

Digestive disorders seem to be a problem with chickens. It's one of the reasons I feed them a Tbsp of Greek yogurt before they go down for the night to help them digest all the stuff they fill in their crop. I have no idea if the processed feed causes any problems but we switched from the hard pellets to a loose seed feed. For vitamins we give one drop of Poly-Vi-Sol once a week on the side of the hen's beak until she licks it off with her tongue. If they are brooding or molting we will give them a Poly-Vi-Sol drop 2 or 3x per week because they have little appetite and need supplementing. I would think the SFHs and the landraces should be hardier than the well-known heritage breeds where feed is concerned but I don't know - that's why we offer such a variety in our hens' diet. Sometimes hens have such an upset digestive problem causing yeast (gleet) infections in the vent they'll stop laying. Poor chickens have so much going against them. I told my DH if we ever should lose our little backyard flock of chickens for whatever reason I'll switch to the somewhat hardier ducks instead. They are carriers of a lot of poultry diseases yet waterfowl breeds don't seem to be susceptible to them the way chickens and turkeys are.

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

Does anyone use their swedes for meat birds? I was gonna buther 4, 5 month old Cockerels today. I went to get the first bird and all I feel is rib cage and skinny legs. So I went and checked my 8 month old Rooster and he feels about the same. I just couldn't bring myself to do it after that.

I find that a 5-6 month old cockerel will make a nice big crockpot meal. Feeds my family for several meals.

 

[Kenzie73]

What is the most common personality of the SFH roosters? The one I had was the biggest sweetheart ever!! I was curious if that is common, though?
Thank you!

 

[minihorse927]

What is the most common personality of the SFH roosters? The one I had was the biggest sweetheart ever!! I was curious if that is common, though?
Thank you!

I was got one that is super sweet to the girls and me both. The other is super sweet to me but kinda aggressive with the girls.

 

[Sylvester017]

What is the most common personality of the SFH roosters? The one I had was the biggest sweetheart ever!! I was curious if that is common, though?
Thank you!

I've been researching the SFH for myself and the feedback is way more positive than negative. I love how unafraid they are around humans. Some breeds run if a human is around but these are somewhat-friendly and are definitely a plus in the yard. They aren't necessarily a cuddly bird but definitely a nice bird. The egg-laying is not like a production bird but is decent. If I had a choice over a USA heritage breed vs SFH I would go with the SFH first. Now I'm talking hens as I'm not interested in roos - not zoned for them.