Almost 500 years ago, a pair of Spanish galleons ran aground on the isolated and windswept Scottish Shetland Isles. These ships had been returning from the New World, laden with exotic treasures - including poultry that, shockingly, laid blue eggs! These very birds, likely related to the South American blue-laying Araucanas, were then bred with local cold-hearty stock... and over the generations, the Shetland Hen was born.

 

Featuring beautiful blue and blue-green eggs, a tuffed crest (known as a tappit in their native lands), and an abbreviated single comb that skews forward to make room for that crest. As a landrace breed, they are a bird of many colors, including birchen, red birchen, partridge, silver, and everything inbetween!

 

Now one of the world's rare breeds, it was featured in the Slow Foods Ark of Taste as a breed in critical need of preservation. We obtained a small foundation flock of two young hens in red birchen and wheaten partridge, a black red cockerel, a partridge cockerel, a red birchen pullet and a silver birchen pullet, along with two dozen hatching eggs now in our incubator.

 

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