Swiss Chicken

     The Swiss Hen, or the Swiss Imperial Hen, is a breed of Chickens from Switzerland. It was developed by crossing multiple chicken breeds including mainly; white Orpingtons, and white Wyandottes.

     The Swiss is a dual-purpose chicken, that produces both meat and eggs in good quantities, and has showy traits too. It’s a solid white fowl, with a horizontal posture, a rose comb, red earlobes, and whitish-yellow legs. The Swiss is a relatively hardy breed, that makes a fine backyard chicken indeed.

     Swiss hens are good layers of creamy-brown eggs (around 170 – 200 eggs per year of weight 55 g per each), but they don’t tend to go broody. As it happened with many other heritage breeds, the Swiss’ numbers declined after the invasion of Broiler chickens. Fortunately, it goes now through a breeding program to restore its numbers. Not only that, but other objectives are also being considered in that program such as; increasing growth rate, disease-resistance, rapid feathering and the winter egg-laying activity.