A landrace originating in Sweden, the Svart Hona or Svarthona shares the fibromelanistic trait of its famous ancestor, Ayam Cemani – they are almost completely black, inside and out. Many believe that the melanin in their meat has extra health benefits. Also called Swedish Black Hens, these birds are larger, more cold-hardy, and FAR more rare than AC. Their eggs are small-med, but they lay extremely well and have excellent fertility.
Our line came from a private breeder who started 10 years ago with genetics from both Greenfire and Ewe Crazy, the only known importers. Ewe Crazy used a GFF rooster for quite a while, so GFF is pretty much unavoidable.
People often try to compare Svarts to Ayam Cemani and forget that they’re a landrace created by natural selection, NOT a manmade breed like AC. That’s why the written SOP allows for variations like mulberry wattles and flopped combs as long as vision isn’t obscured. For Ayam Cemani, those would be hard culls. While missing fibro genes is definitely something to watch out for, it is not a massive concern with Svarts because they are SO rare and the org monitoring them just wants to get numbers up before culling for skin pigmentation.
We’ve only had them a few years and are working to reduce flaws. There hasn’t been anything major like feather leakage in adults, but some roos have had a bit too much raspberry in their wattles. A few had light combs the first year, but we think we’ve eliminated that issue.
About 25% hatch with light toe tips or mouths. We offer them as pets. It is VERY common and means that a parent might be missing a fibro gene. We also hatched two in 2023 with white wing tips. They grew out fully black, but it is considered a more serious defect. After testing this year, we THINK we found the culprit, so we’ll cautiously reopen our waitlist for 2025. We did add some new genetics this year, too, so we’ll have to see what these new birds are hiding.
We only keep the best of our growouts, so we hope to reduce these minor complaints as time goes on. They’re AWESOME birds and act like spunky little crows.
Svart Honas lay on average 250 small-medium off-white/cream eggs per year.
Svart Hona hens weigh about 5lbs and roosters about 7lbs.
Svart Honas are exceptionally cold hardy! Roosters have large combs, but we haven't seen any frostbite yet.
We have had 1-2 Svart Hona hens go broody, but it hasn't been super often.
Svart Honas were made to roam! They are a landrace breed selected to survive outside during harsh Swedish winters, and do not do well locked in a run 24/7.
Svart Honas are spunky, flighty little things. Roosters are feisty and protective, but we've never been attacked by one.
A few of the yearlings are finally starting to look a little bit less derpy 🙌
… definitely not all of them yet, though 😅
May 13
It’s officially spring! We caught our first non-pet basement snake of the season, checking out our newly hatched chicks 😅
#snake #gartersnake #rurallife #farmlife
May 11
Every year, Ken falls hard for one single baby goat - this year, the honor goes to Tanwen, Avalon & Smoothie’s teeny doeling 😍
#goats #babygoats #goatkids #goatlife #dairygoats #bottlebabygoats #mininubian #mininubians
May 11
It’s like a daily Easter egg (and chicken) hunt over here 😅
#chickens #heritagebreeds #rarebreedchickens #broodyhen #chanteclerchicken #partridgechantecler #backyardflock
May 11
We FINALLY got somewhat decent pics of Honey’s udder! That blonde roan coat of hers does not work well with our LED milk parlor lighting, and her udder always looks a zillion times lower and sadder than it really is.
May 10
Swiftie says, “Meh?!”
We’re starting the agonizing process of sorting through our adults & yearlings to make space for toooo many keeper kids!
So far, we’re listing a bunch of Mini Nubians of all ages & both genders, as well as a super nice BUT half-horned 2yo Oberhasli buck.
We’ve still got a few Mini Nubian and Ober bottle babies up for grabs, too, and will tryyyy to get updated pics this weekend!
May 9
Some of our does need a bunch of extras added to their feed to regain condition after kidding, but then there’s our bestie Honey here - she popped out triplets and still looks like a bulldog!
May 7
Tell us about your big bale feeders for goats! Our first attempt lasted for about a week before these crazies broke it down 😅
#goats #dairygoats #goatlife #hay
May 6
The good news is, our last Welsummer rooster is still fertile! The bad news is, he and his hen have a super low hatch rate going on. This is the only chick out of 2 dozen eggs we incubated. SO we can tentatively offer small groups of chicks this year, but sorry, no hatching eggs!
Our group originally came from Deer Run farm a few years ago. Their eggs have speckles, but they’re also dark - even darker than our Marans eggs were! Which wasn’t saying a ton, they were around 4-6 on the Marans egg color chart.
#welsummerchicken #chickens #heritagebreed #hatchingeggs
May 5
We’ve got our little Boomerang back from her unfortunate situation and she’s definitely thinner and her voice is hoarse from crying, but she’s happily eating hay and drinking a ton of water now. We’ve got her in quarantine while we work out a really nice pet home for her, with someone more experienced with goats!
#goats #petgoats #mininubian #hopefulhappyending
May 4
Okay, gather ‘round the milk can, it’s time for real talk after some drama today!
We’re touchy and exhausted after driving 10+ hours and spending $2500 last week to try to save the life of a doeling we had planned to sell for maybe $250, and then driving another 5 hours crazy late last night for her necropsy.
We will fight to the death to provide the critters we raise the best lives and/or endings that we can.
The drama today involved a different doeling. This is being resolved now, thanks to the help of some very kind folks who helped to restore our faith in humanity, so we deleted it.
BUT this is a friendly reminder: if you purchase a goat from us and it doesn’t work out, please let us know and give us the chance to buy them back - the right of first refusal/buyback is in the Terms of Sale that we provide with each non-market goat. By buying anything from us, you are agreeing to our terms that can be found on our site & our OpenHerd profile.
We don’t guarantee that we’ll always be able to take a goat back, but we’ll try! Especially if it has only been a couple days and if they’re still in quarantine.
Sorry, we unfortunately can’t do the same with poultry - certain goat diseases are scary, but most bird ones are way, way worse, and we can’t risk our flocks like that.
May 1
We finally broke down and bought a Reolink so that we can stare at the goat kids remotely, without worrying about draining batteries like we did with Arlo. Our Arlo cameras are still awesome in places without electricity, though!
#securitycamera #reolink #goats #babygoats #goatlife
Apr 29
Despite everyone’s best efforts and last weekend’s extended stay at UW Madison, Raindrop’s poor doeling just couldn’t pull through whatever was going on with her. RIP Thru the Rain, aka “Pants” 😭
Apr 27
Two blue-eyed doelings for Green Gables Amazing Black Petunia and Mosaic’s Smooth Criminal *B!
One has dark brown moonspots that will most likely lighten over time and the other is almost solid black. It looks like both might be polled.
2025 Tally So Far: 16 Bucks, 19 does!
Just one doe left to kid in a couple weeks - Windscape JB Last Call!
Apr 26
Everyone is all, “spots, spots, spots!” But Honey & Denarius’ little chocolate girl sure is cute 😍
#goats #dairygoats #mininubian #goatkid #babygoat
Apr 25
Seriously though, baby geese are THE best! At least until they learn how fun it is to eat hair 😅
Apr 24
It’s hard to tell in this pic, but this right here is something we’ve waited 2 years for - two pipped Pilgrim Goose eggs! Most years, we grab and incubate all eggs, but last year, we let the geese try to hatch their own, and both groups picked terrible nesting spots & ended up with zero goslings.
Apologies to those on our goose eggs waitlists - now that it’s warm enough to safely ship, they stopped laying. But we’re incubating somewhere around 30 eggs, which will hopefully give us at least a few goslings! Pilgrims are notorious for fertility issues - ours usually have around a 75% hatch rate, which is considered really, really good 🤞🙏🤞
#hatchingeggs #geese #domesticgeese #waterfowl #pilgrimgeese #pilgrimgoose #heritagebreeds #rarebreeds
Apr 24
Our emergency that we mentioned last week was related to two doelings that we skipped posting yesterday - they both came down with digestive issues right as we humans were also fighting food poisoning or stomach flu or whatever it was!
Some people consider animals completely disposable and will immediately hard cull them if they prove to be a little complicated or cost more than a couple bucks to treat. We just can’t do that - maybe it’s from growing up with ultra-sensitive exotics and horses, but we feel that it’s our responsibility to do everything in our power to give every single critter in our care the best possible chance at life. If we didn’t, what kind of stewards would we be?
SO, after our regular vet (who is amazing btw) was at a loss, we packed up the doelings and drove the 3 hours down to UW Madison’s large animal hospital.
Over the past few days, they did a zillion different tests and scans and, as we all suspected/hoped, one doeling just had a bit of coccidiosis - there were zero oocysts on any of the fecals taken by us, our vet, or UW, and she was still acting off after courses of both Baycox and Albon, but she’s recovering now after ultra high doses of ponazuril.
Our other girl was more complicated - she had some sort of intestinal obstruction, but thankfully, it seems to have passed now! She’s still not fully better yet, but she’s getting there and both girls were cleared to come back home today 💜
Apr 22
We finally got updated pics of all but two of the older doelings! We’ll provide an update about those two later.
Some more or less cooperated, others not so much 😅 We’ll add deets to these pics on FB - some will be up for grabs!
#goats #dairygoats #kiddingseason #babygoats #goatkids #mininubian #oberhasligoats #guernseygoats
Apr 20
These two at 12 hours of age are already ridiculous troublemakers, trying their best to jailbreak and visit the doe herd 😅
We normally pull all kids at birth and heat treat/pasteurize everything, but we’ve got an unexpected emergency and can’t feed these babies as often as they need it today, so we’re letting Kirlia take care of them until we can step back in. Hopefully they’ll stimulate her to increase her production, too!
#goats #dairygoats #oberhasligoats #babygoats #babygoat
Apr 18
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