Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[Knock Kneed Hen]

From what I get from this is that they will breed a pure bird with a different breed or not pure bred bird to get different blood lines. Then breed those traits out of future generations. I suppose that the birds I have could have come from birds that have been out crossed. What it means to me is that those birds would be of no use to me If I were to use them in my stock, breeding them then picking out the traits I like or that mostly closely resemble pure SFH's I would have to do a lot of breeding. That's not what I want to do. If I wanted to out cross birds I'd do myself. I was not aware that Greenfire Farms was doing this. Wow....anxious to hear what your seller hears from GFF.

 

[Phage]

I do not know for sure, but suspect that if GFF did any breeding it would have been between different imports of pure sfh flocks. They import and sell birds . There is no reason at all for them to be outcrossing sfh to "improve" anything and they would have to be crazy to try with these guys. They are what they are - a Swedish land race. They can't be improved in that way.

The tolbunts are totally different as they are still a work in progress that is being improved.

 

[welasharon]

I'm sorry I think I threw a clinker in the mix. I only know that tolbunt have been outcrossed and that is how the odd bird can show up. I have no knowledge of the SFH. I'm sorry.

 

[SunnySkies]

My understanding is that Greenfire is only breeding SFH to SFH. They can't be crossing with other breeds of birds and then selling the chicks as purebred, not for what it costs to import one chicken (I used to manage a lot of imports....you are looking at $2000 or more a bird!) They would not do it. Do they even have any other breeds with olive legs?

To me, it's far more likely he is some odd cross, like a hen got out accidentally on the eBayer's farm, and she didn't know.

Now I'm all paranoid about mine....what if they are not truly purebred?

And odd about the vitamins....I had one of mine not right, and I started her on vitamins and stuff, and you would never know she ever had a problem.

 

[crazyhen]

greenfire may need to start their breeders on a supplement too. Then the resulting chicks would be stronger to begin with. Just my two cents. gloria Jean

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

I do not know for sure, but suspect that if GFF did any breeding it would have been between different imports of pure sfh flocks. They import and sell birds . There is no reason at all for them to be outcrossing sfh to "improve" anything and they would have to be crazy to try with these guys. They are what they are - a Swedish land race. They can't be improved in that way.

The tolbunts are totally different as they are still a work in progress that is being improved.

I'm thinking the same thing...GFF is in the business of preserving pure bred fowl. I may need to get my trio of birds on Maury to see who their baby daddy is.

 

[TNBEARCHICK]

Hi folks. Haven't posted for a long time. I had an experience I wanted to share. I ordered some more Swedes from Greenfire that came in April of this year. One of the chicks came down with what looked like Marek's at about four weeks of age. This happened before in my last order with a hen I had named Sandy, and I ended up putting her down as she never got better. Splayed legs, toes curled, couldn't walk. I did have Sandy's blood tested and to my surprise, whatever it was was NOT Marek's, although it looked just like Marek's. Also had three others in that first batch with slightly crooked toes.

Well, this time from the first I saw the symptoms I put infant vitamins (poly-vi-sol w/out added iron) in the water and gave the chick snacks of foods I knew to have B-12 (hamburger, esp). Well, this hen got better! She's now running around with everyone else, no crooked toes. I began putting the infant vitamins in everyone's water, and have been ever since. I had 16 chicks, plus three more that a broody hen hatched to make a total of 19, and NOT ONE CROOKED TOE.

Long story short, I think these SFHs need B-12, or niacin, or some other vitamin they don't get enough of in their food. I saw an article on the web about curly-toe paralysis. It was a study about Leghorns with this issue, and them getting better on the whole if the vitamins were given early enough. Of course I can't find the article now. Anyway, my advice would be start those vitamins right away from the moment you receive, or hatch, the chicks. I put one and a half to two droppers-full in the gallon size water dispenser.

I know this is anecdotal but I really think vitamin deficiency may be the cause of the curled toes.

I thought this was very great info. I have a thread I started on some natural remedies for chickens and would love you to post this on there and any more info you may have on natural remedies.

 

[Kimbroe1981]

So I got to searching Skånsk blommehöna and I did run across a few pics of the birds in Sweden with dark legs. Maybe GFF just brought back yellow legged ones. Maybe there's a recessive gene somewhere in there. Lots of maybes in that, but I did find some in Sweden that were dark legged. I plugged in some of the stuff I found in the translator, anyone know about the breed in sweden? Do they race them? I'm totally fascinated!

This is the description I found from one of the dark legged ones "Från den sydskånska slättbygden kommer denna vår största lantrashöna. I byarna Vomb, Tofta och Esarp hittades gårdsflockar som tillsammans utgör dagens blommehöns. Hönsrasen har fått sitt namn efter äldre skåningar som talade om dem som "di gamle blommede"."

Which translates to "From the Sydskånska plain, this our native hen. In the villages Vomb, Tofta and Esarp from farm flocks that make up today's blommehöns. Chickens breed has been named after older people in Skåne who spoke of them as "di old flower Mede."

 

[Goose and Fig]

Quote:
OK- not sure if this was address or not, BUT the reason the birds develop Mareks-like symptoms is because they are on MEDICATED FEED. The anti-cocci medication in the feed blocks the absorbtion of thiamine. Stop using medicated feed, and this should not happen. This happened to me with a few birds and luckily I had read about it before I jumped the gun and put any birds down.

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

I don't use medicated feed, I don't vaccinate either, but I do put vitamins in their water. I've heard that medicated feed will undo some of the affects of vaccinations..what you're describing is an example of that. So either vaccinate and don't used medicated or don't vaccinate and use medicated. As mentioned above, I don't do either.