Choosing Icelandic Chickens for Our Little Homestead and Raising from Day Old Cold Brooded Chicks

 

Along with everything else involved with moving and settling into a new place this summer, we added chickens to our little homestead. With the continued goal of creating a place where we are able to produce more of what we need on a regular basis from our own property. In preparation for this, last winter I did a lot of research and reading about what breeds would best for our situation. Like most thing, this meant I first had to figure out what my main goals were, so I could then determine what would fit with that. I wanted something that would:

- Lay us eggs to eat pretty reliably.

- Handle our climate well, including the many months of cold, snow, and short dark winter days.

- Reproduce themselves, i.e. have some broody mamas with good instincts for raising their own chicks with no need to source new chicks from a hatchery every year or so.

- Produce a rooster that we would not mind eating, even if meat production is not the main goal since if mama hens are going to hatch chicks and reproduce the laying flock, there are certain to be spare roosters.

- Have birds who like to and are good at foraging for their own food. Because we have space for them to do so, it reduces feed bills, gives the birds a better diet, and provides bug control around the property.

- Be generally healthy and sturdy birds.

So I read books about chickens. Blogs about chickens. Breed descriptions from hatcheries and livestock sites. Watched videos of other homesteaders in cold climates and what chickens they had and liked. And so on. And somewhere in there, I first ran into Icelandic Chickens. I don't remember where exactly. The breed that came in second in my consideration as good fit for that list were Buckeyes, which I still think are very neat birds. But the Icelandics had a few things unique to them that just really fascinated me. 

In addition to filling my list of priorities above, Icelandic chickens have an incredible variety of colors, feathering patterns, comb styles, etc that makes every bird look unique. They are one of the oldest recognized “breeds” of poultry in the world. Genetically they have been found to be over 78% different from any other breed of Gallus Gallus (the domestic chicken) making them quite the genetic treasure. They are considered "threatened" which is the domestic animal equivalent of the endangered species list for wild animals. With only a few thousand left in the world. Mostly in Iceland and the States. I look forward to being part of keeping this special breed alive into the future! If you are curious, learn more about these special birds at any of these links:

http://icelandicchicken.com/frequently-asked-question.html

http://www.davidgrote.com/icelandic-chickens.html

https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/raising-chickens/icelandic-chickens-zm0z14onzkin

https://livestockconservancy.org/heritage-breeds/heritage-breeds-list/icelandic-chicken/

Back in January of last year I ordered 25 chicks for delivery at the end of May when hopefully the snow would be gone and the temps not too far below freezing. Something to be aware of if you are interested in Icies, is that most breeders, like Whippoorwill Farms where ours came from, are very small. I am not aware of any large or even medium sized hatchery selling them. Only individuals who usually raise nothing else and have devoted their life to just these birds. That means that had I waited till May to try to source some, I probably would have had to wait another year to actually get any. 

But the day finally came and a peeping box of day old chicks greeted me at the crack of dawn at our little local post office. The weather was actually still below freezing overnight and for much of the day, and the shop we were having erected was not finished as had been planned the previous fall. So they came inside for the first day to recover from hatching in this temporary box by the wood stove. With plenty of food and water and a nice fake mama hen to huddle under created by a couple feather dusters with a hot water bottle in the middle. And Burley to watch over them all. 26 actually arrived in the mail, but one little one passed away in it's sleep the first night as newborn things sometimes do. All the rest seemed strong and healthy! You can watch their baby antics if you like.

By day two, the sun was out and it was pleasant and above freezing outside for much of the day. So out they went into this little chick playpen made from an old wire dog crate and a discarded patio furniture cover. That allowed them to start to scratch in the dirt and greening grass, spend time in the sunshine, or cuddle up in the back corner away from any breezes and near the hot water bottle. They seemed to love this setup!

For several days they went back and forth from the daytime playpen to back in the box by the wood stove at night as temps continued below freezing. And I built them this "fake chicken mama" box with a salvaged styrofoam cooler to cuddle under if they wanted to. For brooding chicks in an off grid setting with no power for a heat lamp, this thing worked out quite well! You can see how I put it together here:

After a few days they were not nearly so tiny and started to stay outside round the clock. Graduating from the chick playpen up to a larger chicken tractor I made them.

You can watch me put that together in this video.

Moving to a fresh patch of grass every day, these tough little birds rapidly started to feather out and turn into awkward scruffy looking teenage chickens. With hints of their beautiful colors to come starting to show.

Before you knew it, they were suddenly looking like grown up chickens and now out to roam anywhere they liked on the property and then back in their bird yard we built (more on that in an upcoming post) for overnight safety.

Tiramisu.

They really lived up to the expectation of being excellent foragers, barely touching their grain that was offered freely as long as there was any plants or bugs to be found outside before snow once again blanketed the world. I've read that these birds are not very happy in confined areas and that makes sense with the way this flock loves to roam!

Misty.

Blue.

And all those scruffy feathers turned into some truly spectacular colored hens and roosters. While I was expecting averages to give us about half roosters, we ended up with 15 hens which was wonderful! But that was still far more boys than a little flock needed so we observed them carefully to choose who would stick around to be the flock roosters. One fellow took himself out of the running for sure by being an absolute jerk to everyone. Beating up the hens, other roosters, and attacking people and dogs. That was not the kind of attitude we wanted to keep for sure! We were not planning to name any boys we weren't keeping, but he earned himself the name of Stewpot #1 by being so terrible to everyone.

We finally settled on Willie (Nelson), who's the attractive grey and red fellow above since he is so very laid back and chill with everybody. And Golden Boy, the handsome fellow below who is the boss of the flock. Looking out for the ladies, showing everyone where the best food is, and only chasing something if he thinks you are trying to mess with one of his girls. I can respect that so we all get along well. Two roosters for fifteen hens should be plenty to allow this flock to reproduce themselves in the future which is the only reason for keeping any rooster here. The rest of the roosters, who by this late in the fall were starting to become quite a loud bunch, went to freezer camp where they did indeed produce tasty but small, three plus pound, roasting chickens.

When the flock was 5 months and 11 days old, this happened! I don't know if anyone else can be as excited about this as I was, but getting our very first egg was amazing! Thanks to Ghost. And I was lucky enough to see her come back to the barn from her foraging with everyone else, go directly to the nesting box, nestle around for a minute, and then produce the very first egg! I can't even explain how exciting that was after all the months of raising them and waiting and watching! Soon the other hens started to lay as well and we have lots of wonderful fresh eggs to eat now. 

As far as size, here's a comparison. I would say they are about a grocery store medium. A little smaller than your average grocery store large egg. The white egg is one of ours and about average for the hens. The brown is a grocery store large/organic/pastured one. Icelandic hens however are about 1/2 to 1/3rd the size of most more popular egg laying breeds, and eat a lot less as well, so the fact that they produce eggs this large is impressive to me! 

Icelandic hens, on average, lay .42 eggs per day. So approximately one every other day. Which, considering they are about a third the size of many laying breeds and hardly eat anything, is just fine with me. But I also had read they were good at laying through winter, cold, and short days. Right at the shortest day of the year, we got 15 eggs over two days. 6 on one and 9 the other. So presumably all 15 hens laid one each in that time. Which I am more than happy with!

There eggs are slightly varied shades of whites and creams. The ladies we named with color based names.

Henna.

Ruffina.

Blackie.

50 Shades of Grey.

Hazelnut "Hazel."

And the seemingly endless variety of patterns and colors in their feathers and various comb styles different birds have make just watching our little flock a lot of fun!

Willie.

Butterscotch.

Golden Boy.

Blondie.

Burnt Sienna "Sienna."

Honey.

Ember.

Goldilocks.

Ghost.

You get the idea. They are lovely birds that are fun to try to get good photos of!

Hopefully towards spring at least a couple ladies will want to go broody, but hopefully not the whole flock! And then we'll have some new little baby Icie chick hatched right here on our little homestead to share with you!

In the mean time we are enjoying eating lots of eggs and have so far been totally happy with our selection of these unique birds to have on our little homestead. They've checked off everything we wanted from our flock of chickens so far. Have you heard of Icelandic Chickens before? What is your favorite breed?