Naked Neck/Turken Thread

[maralpz2006]

. .

. These are my two naked neck roosters, but im looking for pure naked neck rooster

 

[GabrielBane]

I love the size difference between these two. Hatched on the same day, she's my smallest NN, he's my largest.


Also @DesertChic , seems you were indeed correct about some shank feathering on my red boy!

 

[DesertChic]

. .. These are my two naked neck roosters, but im looking for pure naked neck rooster

Oh my!!!! These two boy are gorgeous!

 

[alohachickens]

Ouch, that is so sad the Aloha NN were lost. Draye lost most or all of his too, I think. I wonder if any of the other eggs I shipped out last spring, if any chicks survived.

I do have some spotty NN's here but I still don't have room for a specific (separate) NN Aloha pen and yes my neighbor still has some - but of the chicks I passed to them, they gave about half of theirs to a different neighbor of ours, across the street from us. Who apparently had some kind of issues, and they were lost.

In total maybe 10-15 spotty Aloha NN's remain here? Between my pen and my neighbor's yard. About 5-8 are in my breeder pen. This is out of maybe 50+ chicks held back last Spring.

Neighbor got two new (large breed) puppies - who have also been picking off chickens here and there, though the neighbor likes to pretend it's not happening. Sigh.

I do not still have the dad of last year's NN stock - in retrospect a big mistake to cull him. He was a Sussex / Aloha / NN cross, who was not very flashy, but turns out his chicks were. Used him because of his terrific size, and his chicks turned out lovely - borrowed back two of his daughter-hens to use in this year's program but don't have enough good boys.

I was going to keep his WONDERFUL son, who had more "flash" than his Dad, and was HUGE with the yellow legs that I was seeking. Sadly, he broke his leg jumping off the barn rafters, and I lost him at about 3-4 months old. I was OK letting go of the daddy, because I had the better son, but I did not count on losing Jr:


RIP beautiful boy.

I did get a FABULOUS "regular" Aloha rooster, and I just hatched my first group of chicks from him. He is the first roo in my program who has SIZE and tons of color. Not only is he the most colorful boy, he's the best sized.


(He needs yellow legs, but that's it, and that's minor. Everything else is great.)

I have him in with my very best Aloha hens right now, I desperately need about 4 "clones" that are very similar to him, as right now I've got about 40 hens but he can only cover maybe 10, tops.





Other Aloha roosters are nice, but not as big or spotty. The one NN rooster I have left is good color, but very small.

I'm getting a lot of pressure from my significant other to drop the chicken breeding, because it's keeping us from traveling and we have friends in other states where we can escape the 100+ degrees Arizona heat for 3 months a year - if it wasn't for the chickens.

If this happens, the Aloha program and the offshoot - the spotty NN's - will be lost forever - because I can't ever seem to find one single person who is able to keep a viable breeding program going with these. Things get in the way, situations change, they move, etc.

Breaks my heart to think of this spotted large fowl program being lost forever - as I've worked 8+ years now to create it. But I can't go on like this, I simply must find at least 2-3 other dedicated folks who can actually keep this going. I can't do it alone.

Do not count on me to have these available for much longer - if you want this to be a viable strain there needs to be someone besides me breeding them. Need help - serious help.

Not just "Oh a couple of those would be cute in my flock" but "I will build a dedicated coop for them and defend it from predators and hatch like crazy and ship eggs to others" help.

Here are a few pics of the gals I have here. Yes, I plan on offering eggs for possible breeders, when I have room for setting up a breeder pen, as there was a lot of interest in them last year. Eggs will only be available for maybe 2 months, and I will probably be charging about $35 per dozen plus shipping. People who are really serious about breeding would absolutely take priority over folks who want to try and hatch a few for a mixed flock. Would love to find someone who could cultivate and expand on this strain. It is in serious danger of being extinct, and will absolutely cease to exist if something happened to me tomorrow.




I did re-supply my neighbor by grabbing all of the NN chicks from my last big hatch last month. About 25 or so.

They reported about 10 already died, at one week old, due to rats in the coop. *sigh*.

And they haven't even faced the gauntlet of the two new dog-eating puppies. The chicks will have to survive living outside the brooder. *double sigh*.

Will keep passing on randomly hatched offspring of the NN hens to the folks next door, in hopes that out of 50 chicks, maybe 10 will survive to one year old? Better than nothing!

I can ship lives out of state during the spring - but it's such a hassle that will only consider going through the effort again for a serious prospective breeder, because in order to ship you have to buy chick boxes, coordinate the hatch with the Post Office, have them hatch on a Monday or Tuesday, and while technically, you can just drop them off at the local post office branch, I go through the extra effort of driving them downtown to the Post Office by the airport to minimize stress on them - which leaves me sitting in rush hour traffic for over an hour. (But it's worth it for the chicks to have a few extra hours at home, eating and drinking, toasty and warm, before they are shoved in a box and shipped across country.)

It would be $100 for a box of 25 chicks shipped. It makes the cost of the chicks only $1 to $2 a chick approximately, after $50-$70 in shipping fees plus the cost of supplies to ship them, LOL. (That's why I don't ship very often, much hassle, little money.) I only ship chicks "Express" mail which is much more expensive, but at least they survive better.

These are located in AZ and I am by the I-10 freeway, so if someone is passing through, like driving from Dallas to Disneyland and back, it would be an easy detour for picking up hatching eggs. Otherwise shipping is a hit or miss kind of thing on hatch rates. But I can sell eggs from the Aloha barn flock (which has about 6 NN hens mixed in) very affordably - like $10 per dozen - if I don't have to pack and ship them.

Will share pics of the remaining hens and (small) rooster later.

 

[GabrielBane]

@alohachickens gorgeous birds!! Heh, I live near the I-10 too.. I'm sure it'd be just a short drive away.

 

[alohachickens]

@alohachickens gorgeous birds!! Heh, I live near the I-10 too.. I'm sure it'd be just a short drive away.

Ha! Yes, practically around the corner from Phoenix! LOL.

 

[DesertChic]

@alohachickens You are seriously tempting me and giving me a lot to think about. I live south of Tucson, so getting birds from you would be no problem. BUT...and this is a big but...with my latest hatch I'm up to nearly 100 chickens and my husband's patience is nearing it's end, and I took on Silver Grey Dorkings this year for intensive breeding. That means I have 2 focus breeds, the SGDs and the Naked Necks (which would fit in with the Alohas quite nicely). Still...your birds are so amazing, I'd hate to see them die off. So....I'll be giving this some serious thought. If you reach the point of abandoning your project, please get hold of me if I haven't contacted you by then, okay?

 

[lpyrbby]

@alohachickens I'm all the way over on the other side of the country, so I would only be able to reasonably do hatching eggs, which we know how that may or may not fair. I'll share your post with another NN fancier. Not sure if she's even aware of the Alohas.

I just got into chickens this year and while I'm ready for more variety, I also need time to really consider a breeding program. I wanted to create a Brabanter/NN cross which is why I was interested in a jubilee coloration. Getting involved with Brabanters alone would require a breeding pen for them as well. It probably wouldn't be anything to create a second, since I'd be starting from scratch with a new building

I'll keep you updated on that, for sure. I don't want to say, yes I'll do it! and be one of the ones that just fall out of it.

 

[alohachickens]

@alohachickens You are seriously tempting me and giving me a lot to think about. I live south of Tucson, so getting birds from you would be no problem. BUT...and this is a big but...with my latest hatch I'm up to nearly 100 chickens and my husband's patience is nearing it's end, and I took on Silver Grey Dorkings this year for intensive breeding. That means I have 2 focus breeds, the SGDs and the Naked Necks (which would fit in with the Alohas quite nicely). Still...your birds are so amazing, I'd hate to see them die off. So....I'll be giving this some serious thought. If you reach the point of abandoning your project, please get hold of me if I haven't contacted you by then, okay?

Because you are so close, that could work out really well - as I could siphon off the NN chicks out of a "regular" hatch. A certain percentage of all the chicks hatched from the barn egg are NN's. I sell chicks locally (in Phoenix) for only about $1.25 each. It's the shipping and such that is the hard part. But, nobody is breeding them, specifically - so even though these spotty NN's sell great, they are scattered all over the valley in backyard flocks.

If it helps, tell Hubby that these did have a lot of buyer interest in a specific mottled NN strain. The first dozen "pure" spotty NN eggs that I put on Ebay last year went for $75. They dipped after that but I think they could hold their value at $20 to $40 per dozen for hatching eggs, depending on how much you wanted to improve them.

The spotted Turkens cross particularly well with black tailed buff Turkens. Alohas are on the smaller side, been working on sizing them up, so note they tend to drag the size down on your Turkens. They aren't Bantam by any means - hens are currently about 4+ pounds but they could be bigger. If you kept working on improving size and type by crossing with buff pure Turkens, the color will pickup on the next generation if you use that as an outcross.

Brown with black tail Turkens are more common, and that color also picks up spotting easily, but the colors are not as gorgeous. Spots go away when you cross to a solid color, but then appear again in the next generation. (In other words, spots "hide" unless both parents carry the gene.) Buff with black tail really "plays nice" with the spots, if you can find Buff NN's with a black tail. (Buff Columbian color, to be technical about it.)

This line was started with hatchery NN's likely from Privett's Hatchery from NM, crossed with my small spotty Alohas.

 

[alohachickens]

@alohachickens I'm all the way over on the other side of the country, so I would only be able to reasonably do hatching eggs, which we know how that may or may not fair. I'll share your post with another NN fancier. Not sure if she's even aware of the Alohas.

I just got into chickens this year and while I'm ready for more variety, I also need time to really consider a breeding program. I wanted to create a Brabanter/NN cross which is why I was interested in a jubilee coloration. Getting involved with Brabanters alone would require a breeding pen for them as well. It probably wouldn't be anything to create a second, since I'd be starting from scratch with a new building

I'll keep you updated on that, for sure. I don't want to say, yes I'll do it! and be one of the ones that just fall out of it.

I am not exactly sure - but I do not think Jubilee is the coloring on Brabranters?

Brabranter breeders would be the ones to ask.

I know very much what it would take to get Jubilee color on a NN however! If anyone is going for that, it's easy if you know what colors "play nice" with spots. (The "mottled" gene)

I'm thinking - however - that the Brabranter coloration is a whole other ball of wax from the Mottled color seen in Jubilee Orps? (or Speckled Sussex, same color different breed.)

If you pursue the Brabranter NN idea, it's going to be critical that you know what color NN to start with - would talk to Brabranter folks about the project and see what they say?

I struggled for years with my project - not knowing the easiest way to add spots. Could have saved myself at least 2 or 3 years of work if I'd known earlier! Arrrrgh!!!