Naked Neck/Turken Thread

[Kassaundra]

Wow! Six to eight months??? That's some serious persistence. I'm suddenly feeling much less frustrated with my own girls.

I know it would be great is she would raise the chicks, but as soon as the egg hatches she runs for the hills literally!!! We thought after the first chick was abandoned she would learn, but nope. She is broody all the way, flattening, puffing, growling only leaving nest to poop and eat, "gathering eggs" if she sees them she steals them.

 

[DesertChic]

are these biel crosses? Which way was the cross? Because NN over biel= barred boys, non barred girls. Biel over NN all barred though. Both Dutch and Lance are barred, If you like barring I would recommend breeding one of those to the NN for color variety. (I think both are gorgeous- not very common to see buff barred...)

I think Ruby is staying Ruby. Tess might be Taz due to the darker red coming on the wings. in buff colored hatchery stock, it is very typical for girls to feather up light soft buff, with the boys feathering in a harder, darker shade of buff. Ruby looks to be a redder variant which has nothing to do with this dark buff/vs light buff.....

No Biel in these guys....just NN. Their daddy was a buff, but his siblings had a bit of buff barring even though he didn't, so I guess it was in the genes. It showed up in my other cockerel, Zazzle, too.



EDIT: Oh! And I do actually like the buff barring. It's been an unexpected and pleasant surprise.

 

[DesertChic]

how many per nest? More than two can trigger a broody inclined hen. That can include cases like there's a golf ball plus a couple other hens laid eggs in the same nest on the same day.. whammo, broody.

IMO golf balls are completely unnecessary or nearly so, as popular as they are. I don't even have them and most of the nests here are collected of all eggs daily, leaving the nests empty. Feel free to try removing them totally and see how it goes. Especially if the girls are cooped up or have limited access to free ranging.

I'll definitely try removing the golf balls since I'd originally only put them in there for training but was too lazy to remove them. I have lots of nests for them to use...at least 16 for all of my girls to share...but many of them seem to prefer the nesting boxes I built and put in the Bielefelder pen in the chicken cabin vs the ones that came with the coops I'd purchased. It's a nice compliment on my craftmanship, but it's gets a little hairy when so many girls want to use the same box. I haven't had time to construct more, but it looks like I'm going to have to. Oh....and they all free range all day long except for when I set up breeding batches, and they return to their individual homes at night. A few of my birds have decided to "re-home" to coops that made them feel more comfortable, but that doesn't seem to change their nesting preferences. Chickens are so darn funny!

 

[chickengr]

I finally downloaded all of the photos from my 6-week data collection day and I'm beginning to think that I may have as many as 18 cockerels out of 26 chicks.

Several chicks that I had originally thought were pullets are suddenly developing some serious wattles and combs at just 6 weeks. Here are the suspects in the NN category:


Duchesse....or Dutch?




Lacey? Or Lance?




Ruby or Rudy?



And finally....Tess is looking more like Taz these days.


Out of my five Australorp mixes, four are turning out to be cockerels, including this guy....one of my favorite NNs for both growth rate/size and personality:


This shot really doesn't do him justice. In the week since I took this, he's developed more interesting burst of white throughout his feathering, but at least you can see what's showing up in his muff and a bit in his wing feathers.

beautiful birds!

my NN pullets have always had big combs and wattles. not sure about dutch-esse (the pic is not clear) but the rest look girlish to me. remind me of my pullets that look like cockerels but started to lay.

this australorp mix guy is soooooooooooooo cute!

 

[chickengr]

how many per nest? More than two can trigger a broody inclined hen. That can include cases like there's a golf ball plus a couple other hens laid eggs in the same nest on the same day.. whammo, broody.

IMO golf balls are completely unnecessary or nearly so, as popular as they are. I don't even have them and most of the nests here are collected of all eggs daily, leaving the nests empty. Feel free to try removing them totally and see how it goes. Especially if the girls are cooped up or have limited access to free ranging.

I use the balls only when I move the nest. I collect eggs not daily but hourly and my dannie-bator got broody, lol. I think it is 100% up to them and their hormones. I wish I could make them broody when I want it.

 

[chickengr]

I traded a couple of non nn cockrels for some hatching eggs. They won't be nn but they are fertile. I am still having serious fertility issues w/ my birds eggs. I think Shakespear is firing blanks and the new crew are just starting to cover the girls. I have one broody that has been broody for 6-8 months STRAIGHT!!!!! She has hatched a couple of eggs but wants NOTHING to do w/ the chicks. I wasn't even counting her. We are going to move her over to Rudy's pen and hope the new surroundings finally breaks her. But the other girl will get the fertile eggs.

when I moved the broody to another place with younger chickens she instantly forgot what broody means, lol.

 

[chickengr]

my boring red NN pullet just laid a purple egg

I plan to breed her with my araucana boy hoping for grey eggs some time in the future! anyone has NN grey layers?

 

[flower]

Never seen grey eggs. Maybe some pale green eggs could be seen as grey by some people ?

 

[leliadax]

my boring red NN pullet just laid a purple egg

I plan to breed her with my araucana boy hoping for grey eggs some time in the future! anyone has NN grey layers?

I saw that gray egg photo and it was beautiful!!! I want a gray egg layer! Can you post one of the purple egg??? That gray one was awesome!

 

[leliadax]

I just had my first black naked neck hatch last night and I had to help another this morning and that little chick is in a cup in the incubator now cause he wasnt fully absorbed as far a yolk, I hope it lives, it was really badly broken from the cat dumping over my incubator on day 17...so these are little salvage chicks but so far all but 2 have hatched out of the 15 I saved.