Welsummer

The Welsummer is a dual-purpose chook bred 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 one on for the eggs, a deep terracotta brown often flecked with darker speckles. That colouring is what carried the breed's reputation well past the Netherlands and eventually onto lifestyle blocks and suburban sections here.

Welsummers forage hard and are happiest with room to range. They stay switched on to what's going on around them but handle calmly and settle well around people, including kids. A hen lays roughly 160 to 200 eggs a year, with the best runs in her first two seasons. The eggs are darkest early in a laying cycle and lighten a bit as it goes on.

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

Who it suits

The Welsummer suits keepers after a hardy, good-natured bird who rate egg colour above sheer numbers. It's a solid fit for lifestyle blocks and larger sections where the flock can forage properly, and for households wanting a quiet hen that's easy around children and easy to handle. It's less suited to anyone chasing maximum egg count or running birds in a small, bare pen with nothing to occupy them.

The breed is named after Welsum, a village in the Gelderland region of the eastern Netherlands. Local keepers put it together in the early decades of the 20th century, crossing several existing breeds to land on a productive farm bird that laid distinctly dark eggs.

The foundation stock is usually listed as Partridge Cochin, Partridge Wyandotte, Partridge Leghorn, Barnevelder and Rhode Island Red. Breeders selected across generations for deep brown egg colour and steady laying rather than for looks alone.

The Welsummer went in front of a wider audience at agricultural shows in the 1920s, and the dark egg did the rest, pulling interest across Europe and then into Britain and North America. A bantam version followed later, built to the same type and colouring at a smaller size.

The breed made its way to New Zealand through the usual channels of the poultry fancy, and it has been kept here both as a working layer and a show bird ever since. Its look, the partridge hen and the bold cockerel, keeps it a familiar entry at poultry club shows and on backyard sections around the country.

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

Coat and colours

The hen wears the partridge pattern the breed is best known for: warm reddish brown, each feather finely stippled, a golden brown hackle striped in black, and a salmon-toned breast. The cockerel is the sharper of the two, with a deep red-brown back and shoulders, a golden hackle and saddle, and a black breast and tail that often shows a green sheen in good light. Neither sex runs to hard, bright markings, more soft brown shading throughout. A bantam form follows the same pattern at a smaller size.

The Welsummer has an even, friendly temperament. Birds are generally settled around their keepers and take handling well, which makes the breed a fair pick for families and for anyone just starting out with chooks. They don't carry the flightiness some lighter laying breeds are known for.

They're active and alert all the same. Welsummers forage with real enthusiasm and keep half an eye on their surroundings at all times, quick to clock anything unusual overhead or along the fence line. Cockerels tend to watch over the flock without turning aggressive about it.

In a mixed flock the Welsummer usually settles in without fuss and rarely ends up right at the top or bottom of the pecking order. Hens don't go broody often, so they keep laying rather than downing tools to sit on a clutch. Vocally they're middle of the road: they'll let you know what's going on, but they're not among the noisier breeds.

The Welsummer is a tough breed that copes well with cool, damp conditions, which lines up with its Dutch background and suits most of New Zealand's climate. 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 mite, especially over the warmer months
• Give the birds a dry dust-bathing spot so they can groom themselves
• Trim beak or nails only if they overgrow, which is rare in birds that stay active

Exercise

• Let the flock free-range or use run time daily, this breed likes to forage
• Allow 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 determined predator

Environment

Welsummers handle cold better than heat, and New Zealand's temperate climate suits them well. Give them a draught-free, well-ventilated coop with dry bedding and proper nest boxes. In warmer spells, especially over summer in the north, provide shade and constant water. The single comb can suffer frostbite in a hard frost, so focus on keeping the coop dry rather than sealed up tight and humid.

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 added calcium for shell strength. As keen foragers, Welsummers will top this up with insects, seeds and greens when they have range to work, but the prepared feed keeps their intake steady.

Treats and supplements

Offer insoluble grit so the birds can grind feed in the gizzard, and provide crushed oyster shell or another calcium source separately for laying hens. Greens, mealworms and grain make good occasional treats, but keep them under roughly 10 percent of the diet so the complete feed still carries the bulk of the nutrition. Clean water needs to be on hand at all times.

Welsummers are generally healthy, resilient birds without any breed-specific disorders. With good husbandry many live 6 to 9 years, though heavy layers can taper off in production after the first couple of seasons. Most health issues trace back to parasites, diet or general poultry disease rather than anything particular to the breed.

Preventive care

• Worm birds to a planned schedule and rotate the ground they range on
• Check regularly for mite and lice, especially through the warmer months
• Keep feeders and drinkers clean to limit disease spreading through the flock
• Provide layer-grade calcium to support shell quality and cut the risk of egg binding
• Quarantine any new birds before they join the flock, and check MPI's biosecurity rules before bringing in birds or eggs from off your property

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 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, 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 spot within the run

Welsummer hens rarely go broody, so eggs are usually hatched in an incubator rather than under a hen. The dark brown shell is one of the breed's signature traits, but it also makes candling harder, since light struggles to get through the pigment. Choose clean, well-shaped eggs of even colour and set them within about a week of laying for the best results. Anyone bringing in hatching eggs from overseas needs an MPI biosecurity permit; New Zealand's import rules for poultry and eggs are strict, and there's no way around that step.

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 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 shut while chicks hatch around day 21
6. Move dry, fluffed-up chicks to a warm brooder with starter feed and water