Are Turkens Mutts like EEs?????

[Randy]

I've been looking for some purebread turkens (if there is such a thing) and haven't been able to find any. Everything that I come across is mixed colors. Made me wonder if they are like the EEs with the bl/gr eggs. If they carry the naked neck gene are they concidered turkens no matter what they are made up of????????

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Basically any bird with a bare neck is considered a turken. A naked neck is a pure breed that is in the standard and comes in black, white, and I think buff and red. I think there are some pure breeders out there. I know that Duane Urch ([email protected]) breeds them in bantam and Sandhill has them in largefowl red I think.

 

[Kev]

There IS a standard for Naked Necks. However you are correct to observe that it seems pretty much almost any naked necked bird is considered to be 'the breed'. . even if the bird shows signs of mixing such as crest, leg feathering etc.

The hatcheries make a point of having their breeder flocks 'deliberately mixed for color'. Seems a majority come out buff/orange with black tails though.. would be very easy to get this color standardized if not already.. Also common for their birds to have wrong leg color.. should be yellow but greens & slates are very common.

I've had a hard time finding breeders who have birds matching the standard- Duane Urch is the only one I know of, no idea if Sandhill actually has birds matching the standard. I have a white bantam cock from Duane and he does look nice.

I also want to add it is a very common myth that only the birds with totally bare necks are the ones pure for the naked neck.. birds pure for the naked neck gene but having very small bow ties are rather common. Unfortunately even the hatcheries don't select and breed the ones pure for the naked neck- birds with huge bowties(sign of being impure for NN) are extremely common.

 

[HorseFeathers]

I just had in interesting though... a turken cochin! Not sure whether to

or

or

 

[Kev]

Believe it or not, these are around.. easy to make too. Just cross with a naked necked bird and then cross the naked necked ones back to pure cochins and you will get mostly cochin typed birds with naked necks. Rather cute.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

When I was judging a little fair last fall there was a 'trio' of 'naked necks' and it was the funniest thing. First they were all pullets. Second no two of them had the same leg color, one had slate legs, one had white legs, and the other had willow legs. All three of them were that black tailed orange color.

I know Napalongtails made some naked necked cochins a couple years back, they looked pretty cool.

 

[NYREDS]

Naked Necks are standardized breed.
The birds called "Turkens" in the hatchery catalogs, are as you surmized, essentially mutts with naked necks. Like the famous Easter Eggers they come in a wide variety of plumage & leg colour combinations.

 

[pipermark]

There is nothing cute about vulture chickens