The Welsummer or Welsumer is a Dutch

breed A breed is a specific group of breedable domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist seve ...

of domestic

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl (''Gallus gallus''), originally native to Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is now one of the most common and w ...

. It originates in the small village of Welsum, in the eastern

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. It was bred at the beginning of the twentieth century from local fowls of mixed origin:

Rhode Island Red The Rhode Island Red is an American breed of domestic chicken. It is the state bird of Rhode Island. It was developed there and in Massachusetts in the late nineteenth century, by cross-breeding birds of Oriental origin such as the Malay wit ...

Barnevelder The Barnevelder is a Dutch list of chicken breeds, breed of domestic chicken. It resulted from cross-breeding between local Dutch chickens and various "Shanghai" birds imported from Asia to Europe in the later part of the nineteenth century; thes ...

s, Partridge Leghorns,

Cochins The Cochin is a breed of large domestic chicken. It derives from large feather-legged chickens brought from China to Europe and North America in the 1840s and 1850s. It is reared principally for exhibition. It was formerly known as the Cochin- ...

, and Wyandottes. In 1922–23, steps were taken to fix a standard after the birds began to show a good deal of uniformity. The eggs were originally exported for the commercial egg trade. Some stock was exported to the United Kingdom, and the breed was added to the British Standard in 1930. In 2001, a number of farms culled their flocks in connection with the outbreak of

foot-and-mouth disease Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (HMD) is an infectious disease, infectious and sometimes fatal virus (biology), viral disease that primarily affects even-toed ungulates, including domestic and wild Bovidae, bovids. The vir ...

Characteristics

Three plumage colours are listed for the Welsumer by the

Entente Européenne d’Aviculture et de Cuniculture Entente, meaning a diplomatic "understanding", may refer to a number of agreements: History * Entente (alliance), a type of treaty or military alliance where the signatories promise to consult each other or to cooperate with each other in case o ...

, of which only one, Red Partridge, is recognised in the Netherlands.

Use

Welsumer hens lay about 160 eggs per year; the eggs are dark brown and weigh about . Bantam Welsumers lay about 180 dark brown eggs per year, with an average weight of

References

{{Chicken breeds of the Netherlands Chicken breeds Chicken breeds originating in the Netherlands