Welsummer

The Welsummer is a dual-purpose breed that started out in the Netherlands in the early 1900s. It's a light to medium bird: hens sit around 2 to 2.7 kg and cockerels around 2.7 to 3.2 kg. Most keepers take up the breed for its eggs, a deep terracotta brown often dusted with darker speckles. That colouring first put the Welsummer on the map well beyond the Netherlands, and it's still a drawcard at the local poultry club show.

Welsummers are keen foragers and do best with room to range, which suits plenty of Aussie backyards and small acreages. They stay alert to what's going on around them but handle calmly and settle well around people. Hens lay somewhere between 160 and 200 eggs a year, with the best numbers coming in the first two seasons. Egg colour is deepest at the start of a laying run and lightens a bit as the cycle goes on.

The cockerel is the picture-book farmyard rooster: a deep red and brown body, black breast and an upright carriage. Both sexes carry a single comb and clean yellow legs with no feathering.

Who it suits

The Welsummer suits keepers after a tough, good-natured bird who rate egg colour above sheer egg count. It's a solid fit for a suburban backyard or small acreage where the flock can forage through the day. If you want a quiet, easy-handling hen and don't mind moderate rather than maximum output, this breed will suit you down to the ground. It's less suited to anyone chasing the highest possible egg tally, or keeping birds in a cramped run with nothing to keep them occupied.

The breed is named after the village of Welsum, in the Gelderland region of the eastern Netherlands. Local keepers put it together in the first decades of the 1900s, crossing several existing breeds to land on a productive farm fowl that laid distinctly dark eggs.

The foundation stock usually gets listed as Partridge Cochin, Partridge Wyandotte, Partridge Leghorn, Barnevelder and Rhode Island Red. Breeders worked over several generations, selecting for the deep brown egg colour and for steady laying rather than one big burst.

The Welsummer went on show to a wider audience at agricultural shows in the 1920s, and the dark egg was enough on its own to get poultry keepers across Europe interested, then later in Britain and North America. A bantam version followed, built to match the large fowl in type and colour on a smaller frame.

Since then the Welsummer has done double duty as a working layer and a show bird. Its look, especially the partridge hen against the bold cockerel, has kept it a familiar face at poultry club shows and on hobby farms alike.

The Welsummer carries a broad, full body held fairly upright, which gives it a confident look in the yard. The head has a medium single comb, red earlobes and red wattles. The legs are clean and unfeathered, yellow in colour, with four toes on each foot. The beak runs yellow to horn.

Coat and colours

The hen wears the partridge pattern the breed is best known for. Her body is a warm reddish brown, each feather finely stippled, with a golden brown hackle striped in black and a salmon-pink breast. The cockerel is the sharper of the two, with a deep red-brown back and shoulders, golden hackle and saddle, and a black breast and tail that often carries a green sheen in full sun. Both sexes show soft brown shading rather than hard, bright markings. A bantam form exists in the same colour pattern, just built smaller.

The Welsummer has a reputation for a friendly, even temperament. Birds are usually calm around their keepers and put up with handling well, which makes the breed a sound pick for families and anyone new to keeping chooks. They don't have the flightiness you get with some of the lighter laying breeds.

That said, these are active, alert birds. They forage with real enthusiasm and keep half an eye on what's happening around them, quick to notice a hawk overhead or a fox by the fence line. Cockerels tend to be watchful and protective of the flock without turning aggressive about it.

In a mixed flock Welsummers generally settle in without fuss and rarely end up right at the top or bottom of the pecking order. Hens aren't strongly broody, so they don't often down tools on laying to sit a clutch. They're moderate on the voice front too: chatty enough to notice, but nowhere near the loudest breed in the yard.

The Welsummer is a tough breed that copes well with cool, damp weather, true to its Dutch origins, though it also needs a hand coping with the dry heat of an Australian summer. Day-to-day care comes down to clean housing, fresh water, secure space to range, and regular checks on the birds and their surroundings.

Grooming

• Check legs and feet for scaly leg mite and keep perches clean
• Check feathers and vent for lice and red mite, especially through the warmer months
• Give birds a dry dust-bathing patch so they can groom themselves
• Trim nails or beak only if they've overgrown, which is rare in an active bird

Exercise

• Let birds free-range or use the run daily, since this breed likes to forage
• Aim for at least 1 square metre of run per bird, more if you can manage it
• Scatter grain and greens and add perches to keep birds occupied
• Fence or net the run well, since Welsummers stay alert but can still fall to a predator

Environment

Welsummers cope with a cold snap far better than a stinking hot day. Give them a draught-free, well-ventilated coop with dry bedding and nest boxes. Through summer, deep shade and water that's always on hand make more difference than anything else. The single comb can be prone to frostbite in a hard cold snap, so keep the coop dry rather than sealed up tight and humid.

A balanced commercial feed should be the backbone of the diet. Chicks need a starter crumb high in protein, growers move onto a grower ration, and laying hens need a layer feed with added calcium for shell strength. Being keen foragers, Welsummers will top this up with insects, seeds and greens when they've got range to work, but the prepared feed keeps intake steady day to day.

Treats and supplements

Offer insoluble grit so birds can grind their food in the gizzard, and put out crushed oyster shell or another calcium source separately for laying hens. Greens, mealworms and grain make good occasional treats but should stay under roughly 10 percent of the diet so the complete feed keeps doing the heavy lifting on balanced nutrition. Clean water needs to be on tap at all times.

Welsummers are generally healthy, resilient birds and aren't prone to any breed-specific disorders. With good husbandry, many live 6 to 9 years, though heavy layers can taper off in production after the first few seasons. Most health issues trace back to parasites, diet or general poultry disease rather than anything particular to the breed.

Preventive care

• Worm birds on a planned schedule and rotate the ranging ground
• Check regularly for mite and lice, especially through the warmer months
• Keep feeders and drinkers clean to cut down on disease spread
• Provide layer-grade calcium to support shell quality and reduce egg binding
• Quarantine any new birds before they join the flock

The Welsummer does best in a coop with an attached run, or with access to free-range ground. The coop keeps birds safe overnight and in rough weather, while the run or open ground gives this active forager the daytime room it needs. Housing should be predator-proof, dry and well ventilated without being draughty.

Setup checklist

• Secure coop with a lockable pop hole and predator-proof mesh
• Raised perches above floor level
• Dry bedding such as wood shavings or straw
• Nest boxes tucked into a quiet, darker part of the coop
• Clean water and feed kept under cover
• A dust-bathing patch in the run

Welsummer hens aren't strongly broody, so eggs often end up hatched in an incubator instead. The dark brown shell is one of the breed's defining features, but it also makes the egg harder to candle, since light struggles to pass through the pigment. Pick clean, well-shaped eggs of even colour and set them within about a week of laying for the best results.

Hatching steps

1. Set clean, fresh eggs at room temperature into the warmed incubator
2. Hold the temperature steady and turn the eggs until day 18
3. Candle around day 7 to 10 to check on development, using a strong light for the dark shells
4. Raise humidity to roughly 65 percent and stop turning at day 18 (lockdown)
5. Leave the lid closed while chicks hatch around day 21
6. Move dry, fluffed-up chicks to a warm brooder with starter feed and water