Norwegian Jaerhon

I would love to try this breed! So different and auto sexing! Pretty too!

I have had over 25 breeds of hens in 3 years and this breed is the ONLY only to fly over my fence. I should have listened to the other reviews but I thought since none of my other birds ever flew over even though they could have that none would. Well this crazy girl is doing it almost daily and she wont fly back over so its a pain to get her back into our yard. I will be selling her ASAP. Pictured below is my bird and their yard. No one else has ever gone over in 3 years even though they all could!

I have 2 roosters I took in and enjoy them very much. Lovely color pattern! Our flocks free range all day, and they are very inexpensive to keep compared to other breeds. They socialize with my leghorns well, and have helped those hens become more friendly with us. I would love to add hens of this breed in the future. I have not found anything I don't like about them!

Highly recommend this breed. Lovely feathering which also allows them to hide well from predators (especially hawks). Tenacious foragers. Will happily roam at least twice as far from the coop than the other breeds. Really enjoy several acres of pasture and I wouldn't recommend them in a small run as they would be miserable. Very nice voices and easy to handle. No noisy or talkative, just subtle almost cooing sounds most of the time. Very clever birds.

One of the most productive birds I have ever owned.
I highly recommend them.

I love my Jaerhons. I purchased a pair at a local auction in March 2012 said to be from Sandhills' stock. I paid around $20 each. I then ordered a bunch from Ideal. They looked pretty similar to the adult birds I had. They are pretty good layers, but seem to change egg numbers based on weather. They may go for a week laying at about 75% of hens, but have an extreme weather day and they may only lay an egg or two out of 14 layers. Weather evens out again and egg numbers resume. The roosters are good looking and the colors can very slightly. The chicks are sex-linked with the pullets being darker with a white spot on their heads. The cockerells are a light yellow with a white spot on their head. They mature pretty fast and start laying around 18 to 21 weeks.

I am really delighted with this breed and wish I could afford to import more eggs to expand the gene pool here in the US. While we have both varieties here out of the original import, people often cross the two, and some confusion as to color has arisen as a result. The sports have been developed as a quasi variety of the breed by some hobbyists as well as Sand Hill, but I feel it would be prudent to cull any such occasional sports. For the most part by far, they breed true, and attention should be paid to the standard color and type descriptions in order to finally achieve recognition of this breed by the APA.
Trap nesting or reasonable record keeping of egg laying should be maintained by the breeders to ensure that this significant trait is not lost in the push toward standard conformation (as has unfortunately happened to several laying breeds). Leg color and comb side sprigs should also be subject to ruthless culling.