Welsummer

The Welsummer is a dual-purpose fowl bred in the Netherlands in the early 1900s, prized for eggs that come out a deep terracotta brown, often freckled with darker speckles. Hens run to about 2 to 2.7 kg and cockerels 2.7 to 3.2 kg, so it's a light to medium bird rather than a heavyweight table breed. That egg colour is what carried the Welsummer's name well beyond Dutch borders, Ireland included.

Give a Welsummer a bit of ground and she'll forage away happily; this is not a breed content to sit in a small run all day. They stay alert to what's going on around them, foxes and hawks especially, yet handle easily and settle well with people. A hen will lay somewhere between 160 and 200 eggs a year, with the best output in her first two seasons. The eggs come darkest early in a laying run and pale off a bit as the weeks go on.

The cockerel is the bird most people picture when they think of a farmyard rooster: a deep red-brown body, black breast, and a proud, upright carriage. Both sexes carry a single comb and clean yellow legs with no feathering.

Who suits this breed

The Welsummer suits keepers after a hardy, easy-natured bird who'd rather have good egg colour than the top egg count going. It does well in gardens and smallholdings where the flock can forage over open ground. Anyone wanting a quiet hen that's no bother to handle, and who isn't fussed about squeezing out the maximum number of eggs, will get on well with this breed. It suits those with very little space, or birds kept indoors with nothing to peck at, far less well.

The breed is named for Welsum, a village in Gelderland in the eastern Netherlands. Local keepers put it together across the first decades of the 1900s, crossing several existing breeds to land on a working 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 picked, generation after generation, for deep brown egg colour and steady laying rather than for looks alone.

The Welsummer went on show at agricultural fairs through the 1920s, and that dark egg alone was enough to draw interest right across Europe, then into Britain, Ireland and North America not long after. A bantam version followed later, built to the same type and colouring as the large fowl.

Since then the Welsummer has done double duty as a working layer and a show bird. The partridge-marked hen and the bold cockerel have kept it a familiar face on poultry standards and around smallholdings ever since.

The Welsummer carries a broad, full body held fairly upright, which gives it a confident look in the run. The head has a medium single comb, red earlobes and red wattles. The legs are clean and yellow with no feathering, each foot carrying four toes, and the beak runs yellow to horn-coloured.

Coat and colours

The hen wears the partridge pattern the breed is best known for: a warm reddish-brown body, each feather finely stippled, a golden-brown hackle striped in black, and a salmon-pink breast. The cockerel is the showier of the two, with a deep red-brown back and shoulders, a golden hackle and saddle, and a black breast and tail that often catches a green sheen in the light. Neither sex carries hard, bright markings; the shading on both stays soft and brown. A bantam form follows the same colouring at a smaller size.

The Welsummer has a name for an even, friendly temperament. Birds are generally placid around their keepers and put up with handling well, so it works well for families and for anyone new to keeping hens. They don't have the flightiness some of the lighter laying breeds are known for.

That said, these are active, alert birds. They forage with real enthusiasm and keep half an eye on what's going on around them, quick to clock a fox or a bird of prey overhead. Cockerels tend to be watchful and protective of their hens without turning aggressive over it.

Dropped into a mixed flock, Welsummers usually settle without fuss and rarely end up forcing their way to the top or bottom of the pecking order. Hens aren't given to broodiness, so they seldom go off lay to sit on eggs. They're moderate talkers: you'll hear from them, but they're not among the noisiest breeds going.

The Welsummer is a robust breed, well able for Ireland's cool, damp, soft-weather climate, which fits neatly with its Dutch origins. Day-to-day care comes down to clean housing, fresh water, secure space to range, and a regular eye kept on the birds and their surroundings.

Grooming

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

Exercise

• Let birds free-range or use the run daily, as this breed is a keen forager
• Aim for at least 1 square metre of run per bird, more if the ground allows
• Scatter grain, greens and perches about to keep birds occupied
• Fence or net the run well, since Welsummers stay watchful but can still fall to a fox or bird of prey

Environment

Welsummers handle cold a good deal better than they handle real heat. Give them a draught-free, well-ventilated coop with dry bedding and nest boxes. In warm spells, provide shade and water at all times. The single comb can suffer frostbite in a hard frost, so the priority is keeping the coop dry and free of damp rather than sealing it up tight.

A balanced commercial feed should form 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 calcium added for shell strength. Being keen foragers, Welsummers will top this up with insects, seed and greens when given range, but the bagged feed keeps intake steady day to day.

Treats and supplements

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

Welsummers are generally hardy, healthy birds with nothing in the way of breed-specific disorders. With good husbandry many will live 6 to 9 years, though the heaviest layers can taper off in production after their first few seasons. Most health issues trace back to parasites, diet or general poultry disease rather than to the breed itself.

Preventive care

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

The Welsummer suits a coop with an attached run, or access to free-range ground, best, tucked into a corner of the garden or haggard where there is one. The coop keeps birds safe overnight and in rough weather, while the run or open ground gives this active forager the daytime space it needs. Housing should be predator-proof, dry and well ventilated without being draughty.

Setup checklist

• A secure coop with a lockable pop-hole and predator-proof mesh
• Perches raised above floor level
• Dry bedding, wood shavings or straw work well
• Nest boxes tucked into a quiet, darker corner of the coop
• Clean water and feed kept under cover
• A dust-bathing patch somewhere in the run

Welsummer hens aren't given to broodiness, so eggs more often go into an incubator than under a hen. That dark brown shell is one of the breed's calling cards, but it also makes the egg harder to candle, since light doesn't pass through the pigment as freely. Pick clean, well-shaped eggs of even colour and set them within about a week of laying for the best hatch rate.

Hatching steps

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