Welsummer

The Welsummer is a dual-purpose chicken bred in the Netherlands in the early 1900s. It is a light to medium bird: hens run about 2 to 2.7 kg and cockerels 2.7 to 3.2 kg. Keepers value the breed above all for its eggs, a deep terracotta brown often flecked with darker speckles. That colouring is what carried the Welsummer's reputation well beyond Dutch borders, and it remains a firm favourite on South African smallholdings and in backyard runs from the highveld to the coast.

Welsummers forage hard when given the space to do it. They stay alert to what is going on around them, yet handle calmly and are generally steady birds around people. A hen lays roughly 160 to 200 eggs a year, with the best numbers in her first two seasons. The eggs are darkest at the start of a laying cycle and lighten somewhat as the season wears on.

The cockerel carries the look most people picture when they think of a farmyard rooster: a deep red and brown body, black breast and an upright, confident stance. Both sexes have 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 egg count. It does well in gardens and on smallholdings where the flock can range over some ground, which describes a good number of South African backyards. Anyone who wants a quiet hen that is easy to handle, and who is not chasing maximum production, will get on well with this breed. It suits those less who need the highest possible egg tally, or who can only offer a small, bare pen with nothing to keep the birds occupied.

The breed is named for Welsum, a village in the Gelderland region of the eastern Netherlands. Local keepers developed it in the opening decades of the 20th century, crossing several existing breeds to land on a productive farm fowl that also laid strikingly dark eggs.

The foundation stock usually gets listed as Partridge Cochin, Partridge Wyandotte, Partridge Leghorn, Barnevelder and Rhode Island Red. Breeders selected, generation after generation, for depth of brown egg colour and for reliable laying.

The Welsummer went in front of a wider audience at agricultural shows during the 1920s, and the dark egg is what pulled interest in the breed across Europe, then to Britain and North America. A bantam version followed later, built to match the large fowl in type and colouring.

The breed has always done double duty: a working layer on one side, an exhibition bird on the other. Its look, particularly the partridge-patterned hen set against the bolder cockerel, has kept it a familiar entry in poultry standards and a steady presence on smallholdings, South African ones included.

The Welsummer carries a broad, full body held fairly upright, which gives it a confident outline in the run. The head has a medium single comb, red earlobes and red wattles. The legs are clean of feathering and yellow, each foot with four toes. The beak runs yellow to horn-coloured.

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-toned breast. The cockerel is the sharper contrast of the two, with a deep red-brown back and shoulders, golden hackle and saddle, and a black breast and tail that often catches a green sheen in the light. Neither sex shows hard, bright markings; the shading stays soft and brown throughout. A bantam form follows the same colour pattern at a smaller size.

The Welsummer has a name for a friendly, level temperament. Birds are generally calm with the people who keep them and tolerate handling well, which makes the breed a sound choice for families and for anyone new to keeping chickens. They do not carry the flightiness some of the lighter laying breeds show.

That said, these are active, alert birds. They forage with real enthusiasm and keep watch over their surroundings, picking up on a threat quickly, whether that is a mongoose slipping along a fence line or a bird of prey circling overhead. Cockerels tend to stay watchful and protective of the flock without turning unusually aggressive.

In a mixed flock the Welsummer usually settles without fuss and rarely forces its way to the top or bottom of the pecking order. Hens are not strongly broody, so they seldom stop laying to sit a clutch. They are moderate on the voice: present and communicative, but nowhere near the loudest breed in the run.

The Welsummer is a tough breed that handles cool, damp conditions well, in keeping with its Dutch background, though South African keepers also need to plan for far hotter, drier stretches depending on region and altitude. 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
• Look over feathers and vent for lice and red mite, especially through the warmer months
• Provide a dry dust bath so birds can groom themselves
• Trim nails or beak only if they overgrow, which is uncommon in active birds

Exercise

• Allow daily free range or run time; this breed forages hard given the chance
• Offer at least 1 square metre of run per bird, more where the ground allows
• Scatter grain, greens and perches through the run to keep birds occupied
• Fence or net the run well, since Welsummers stay watchful but can still fall to a determined predator

Environment

Welsummers cope with cold better than they cope with real heat. Give them a draught-free, well-ventilated coop with dry bedding and nest boxes. On hot highveld or bushveld days, provide shade and a constant water supply, and check the water more than once if temperatures climb. The single comb can suffer frostbite in a hard highveld or Karoo frost, so keep the coop dry rather than sealed and humid; damp does more harm than cold on its own.

A balanced commercial feed should form the base 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 whenever they have 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 give 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 still carries the bulk of the nutrition. Clean water needs to be available at all times.

Welsummers are generally healthy, resilient birds with no disorders specific to the breed. With decent husbandry, many live 6 to 9 years, though heavy layers may taper off in production after the first few seasons. Most health problems trace back to parasites, diet or general poultry disease rather than to anything in the breed itself.

Preventive care

• Worm birds on a planned schedule and rotate the ground they range on
• Check regularly for mites and lice, especially through warm months
• Keep feeders and drinkers clean to limit how disease spreads
• Provide layer-grade calcium to support shell strength and cut the risk of egg binding
• Quarantine any new birds before they join the flock

The Welsummer is best kept in a coop with an attached run, or with access to free-range ground. The coop keeps birds safe overnight and in bad 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 turning 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 part of the coop
• Clean water and feed kept under cover
• A dust-bathing spot in the run

Welsummer hens are not strongly broody, so eggs more often get hatched in an incubator than under a hen. The dark brown shell is one of the breed's defining features, but it also makes the egg harder to candle, since light passes through that pigment less easily. Pick clean, well-shaped eggs of even colour and set them within about a week of laying for the best results. Where load-shedding is a factor, keep a plan for backup power or a generator on hand, since a break in incubator temperature partway through the cycle can cost a whole hatch.

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