Welsummer Chickens

I have had welsummers (both red duckwing, otherwise known as partridge and silver duckwing) for the past 2 years. I have also recently started breeding the former. In my experience, both male and female of this breed are among the most stunning for appearance and if you get a good strain, the egg colour is an amazing red/brown colour - quite unique! They lay extremely well from Jan to Sept with eggs being quite large. The cockerels seem to be more friendly than the hens and they don't particularly like cold/wet weather (mine stay in their coop if it's too cold outside!). I've heard they this breed can be flighty but I haven't had this issue unlike the cream legbars! Overall, if you can balance out the lack of autumn eggs with a good winter laying breed or a hybrid, than they are well worth having.

Welsummers were my 'starter' birds and I now have a flock of 8, 2 of which I hatched in an incubator. They eat absolutely anything (apart from meat of course) and run flat out down the garden whenever they hear the patio door open! Very funny birds to watch. The cockerel is magnificent in his stature and colour. They don;t like to be handled, but these are chickens - not pets, so you shouldn't really pick them up as it stresses them out. Egg production is hit and miss with my flock; average 4 a week per bird in summer and spring, sometimes nothing for weeks and weeks in winter :(

We have Welsummers, Buff Orpingtons, Bantam Bearded Silkies and Golden and Rusted Crested Marans. Our Welsummers are very intelligent, beautiful and their best friend is my Potbellied pig Tally. They eat right out of our hands and they are very cuddly. We have had them for a year now and they continue to amaze us with their learning processes. They are not aggressive towards even our smallest Bantams and are quite friendly with our goose and duck. They are free range as we live on 2 acres. They go into the coop at night and usually pile onto 1 nest together. They enjoy heights and we make sure to clip their wings twice a year, very easy to do takes less than a minute for each bird, at NO pain to them. We are dif. going to get more Welsummers as we have all hens and want to get more hens. Their favorite food is dried meal worms! If you get Welsummers you will love them. They look like little hawks when they raise their neck feathers and they constantly look like they are thinking.

A truly handsome chicken, beautiful dark brown eggs, but the couple I've got are not very friendly and panic if I try and pick them up. Worth keeping for appearance, and size and colour of eggs which average out at about 4 a week in full lay.

We have one hen who is at the bottom of the pecking order of our little flock of 4, so she is very flighty and skittish, can't get anywhere near her and even at night she'll scream blue murder if someone tries to sneak a quick cuddle! She screeches for about 30-40 minutes every morning to tell everyone where she lives and then is quiet for the rest of the day unless something spooks her. She lays huge eggs for her size and because of this they often take 2 days to "put together". She gets very stressed if she cannot have the coop to herself while laying and will run in and out for as long as the other bird is sitting in the nest box! She is a beautiful and elegant bird who can outrun all the others easily and seems to actually enjoy running as she frequently does it without any provocation. Apart from the hideous, loud voice the only drawback of this little bird is that she eats all the flowers!!