Naked Neck/Turken Thread

[Fire Ant Farm]

I'm just about to set up a breeder pen with this young Aloha rooster - I am hoping that he is mature enough to handle his own pen??

He's on the timid side, overall - and has been pretty mild tempered. Age-wise he is mature at over 6 months old, possibly 8 months? But emotionally I'm not sure if he can handle it, as silly as that sounds.



My other option with the solid Buff hatchery NN hen, is to cross her with him - and "re-start" the line again - but instead of crossing her with this skinny boy who was the most colorful roo that I had years ago, to start again with the above boy, who has a lot of white but is not "weedy".

Here are pics of the original super colorful boy so you can compare body type on him, against the above boy:







Or, I take the Buff NN hen, and I cross her with Robin, who is the above (skinny rooster's) son? Robin is a confident, proven breeder. Here's another pic of Robin:


So what do you think? Cross the big buff NN hen with the colorful youngster and hope he can "do the job"? Or put her in the little pen with Robin (her son) for a "linebred" cross?

Here's the girl again:


Top rooster with all the white (has no name at this point, first pic) or smaller NN boy, Robin?

Golly, it's making my brain hurt... They always say to build the barn before you paint it (speaking about body/type), but it's tough because in this case we are ALL about the paint!

Do I recall correctly that the older they get, the less white there is? That seemed to be the case with my little ones. (Although is it that reverse for Speckled Sussex?) I guess what I'm asking is, what changes do you expect to evolve for the little boy? I like the looks of the young white boy, and we already are wanting to work on size. And temperament is important to me - project or not, very poor tempered birds will end up culled here (honestly, mostly because they can be so much harder to take care of if they are injured, or check their nails, etc...).

Just my thoughts - I'd be interested to see what other folks think...

- Ant Farm

 

[Phill98]

@alohachickens, I'm sorry for just bumping in this conversation, but I have to say that this rooster looks great! His colour is what I think of when I hear aloha, even tought I think the brown that he has should be lighter- am I right?

And is he really that smaller than Robin? He looks quite big in this photo.

What I would do if he isn't really leghorn size-which he doesn't look like, is put him with the buff hen and along with her maybe other alohas that are bigger in size and have great color- your almost best ones-if you don't have other plans with them currently, because this rooster has the right amount of white-at least for my liking and having this colour on others is the goal, right?

 

[alohachickens]

This boy is the biggest of the two boys:


And yes, I would prefer his color be lighter. He is more like a super-duper-mega-spotted Speckled Sussex? Darker body color, but INTENSE amount of white.

Robin looks big - and he's not Banty - but he's the smallest of the roosters here which is why he is bullied.

I don't have a good pic of Robin with scale, unfortunately!

The other boy - shown in the pen with the hens - is Robin's daddy. Robin's dad was maybe 5 pounds, tops. Very skinny, with no "meat" on his bones at all. All of Robin's size comes from his NN parent. However - Robin is half NN, so bred back to a pure NN, the size would go up. Spots would go away in the chicks but they would be "carriers" and pretty color would come back again in future generations.

So Robin's "pros" are: Good breeder, light color.
Robin's "cons" are: Small size, not a lot of spotting.

Top roo's "pros" are: Better size, lots of white spotting.
Top roo's "cons" are: Dark color, does not have yellow legs (a factor I'm breeding for.)

Hen is a double NN gene carrier - so all chicks will have NN's regardless of "who's the daddy"

 

[DesertChic]

@alohachickens So do buff with silver tails not work? I've actually got three NN hens that are a nearly identical shade of buff to what you showed of your buff breeding hen, but they have buff or silver tails instead of black. The ones I have with black tails are a bit darker in color.

Sherbert - because she was the exact color of lemon sherbert as a chick.


Cocoa Puffs, my lightest buff NN hen (with silver tail) also carries the buff barring gene. Do you know how that would impact the spangling?



And Duckie, who's all buff.



Also - What about reddish-copper color with black tails? I've got one NN hen with a color that varies between red and buff with a black tail, and one fully feathered hen that's a gorgeous copper color with a black tail. Actually, I've got several NNs that are varying shads of red with black tails.


(I'm doing my research because I am very seriously considering taking this on, but I don't have nearly as much breeding experience as you do.)

 

[Phill98]

This boy is the biggest of the two boys: And yes, I would prefer his color be lighter. He is more like a super-duper-mega-spotted Speckled Sussex? Darker body color, but INTENSE amount of white. Robin looks big - and he's not Banty - but he's the smallest of the roosters here which is why he is bullied. I don't have a good pic of Robin with scale, unfortunately! The other boy - shown in the pen with the hens - is Robin's daddy. Robin's dad was maybe 5 pounds, tops. Very skinny, with no "meat" on his bones at all. All of Robin's size comes from his NN parent. However - Robin is half NN, so bred back to a pure NN, the size would go up. Spots would go away in the chicks but they would be "carriers" and pretty color would come back again in future generations. So Robin's "pros" are: Good breeder, light color. Robin's "cons" are: Small size, not a lot of spotting. Top roo's "pros" are: Better size, lots of white spotting. Top roo's "cons" are: Dark color, does not have yellow legs (a factor I'm breeding for.) Hen is a double NN gene carrier - so all chicks will have NN's regardless of "who's the daddy"

In this photo other rooster's legs look yellow so I thought he has them. Is he at least carrier? As for dark color-shouldn't the buff in hen make this brown lighter, at least red?

 

[alohachickens]

@alohachickens So do buff with silver tails not work? I've actually got three NN hens that are a nearly identical shade of buff to what you showed of your buff breeding hen, but they have buff or silver tails instead of black. The ones I have with black tails are a bit darker in color.

Sherbert - because she was the exact color of lemon sherbert as a chick.


Cocoa Puffs, my lightest buff NN hen (with silver tail) also carries the buff barring gene. Do you know how that would impact the spangling?



And Duckie, who's all buff.



Also - What about reddish-copper color with black tails? I've got one NN hen with a color that varies between red and buff with a black tail, and one fully feathered hen that's a gorgeous copper color with a black tail. Actually, I've got several NNs that are varying shads of red with black tails.


(I'm doing my research because I am very seriously considering taking this on, but I don't have nearly as much breeding experience as you do.)

Top Hen - Not sure what is going on there? It could be some kind of Dominant White which (from my limited understanding) can sometimes "replace" black.
Or blue? I just don't know?

Blue, which is Black, but with an added dose of the "Blue" gene, takes on spots just fine. I try to avoid Blue for a different reason - won't get into that at the moment - but yes she would work.

I would just be careful not to breed two blues together, or you get Splash, and Splash looks like mottled, but it isn't mottled - gosh darn it I'm getting into it - LOL - anyway yes I think the middle hen would work great but try to keep only silver tailed hens OR silver tailed roos to avoid Splash.

Middle Hen - Looks like a "go" to me. Barring and spots happily co-exist on chickens. However, Barring will take over a flock, and that's not horrible but it's one of those things where once it's dominated the flock, that is the ONLY color - ONLY color you will get! For that reason, I will leave a couple of Barred hens in my flock, but make sure you cull barred roosters, and choose a boy with no barring.

Barred and Blue are both "dominant" genes - so if you want variety in your flock - like not-barred chickens, or chickens with some black spots - just keep it in the hens only and it's fine.

I like a lot of variety of color, so I try to keep it in check.

Ducky appears very Orpington-ish, which is going to chase the spots away. Babies would be nice chickens, just not spotted.

Here is what Buff Barred looks like with spots - you'd have to imagine the Naked Neck:






It is hard to see the stripes on the hen's tail but it's pretty easy to see in the rooster.

 

[alohachickens]

Oh, and I should clarify, in my experiments trying to get spots on Orps and spots on Buff Rocks, I did get a few spotted.

But this is what they looked like - literally the MOST white I was able to get:




Most had less spotting.

But when I started with black tail buff, in no time, I got THIS:

I have zero explanation why the black tail buffs work so much better for adding spots.

Just trust me - I banged my head into that brick wall for too many years. Trust me it's worth the time and effort to find black tailed buffs vs trying to start with Buff Orps.

 

[GabrielBane]

The barred buff with spots.... I am in love.

 

[alohachickens]

In this photo other rooster's legs look yellow so I thought he has them. Is he at least carrier?

As for dark color-shouldn't the buff in hen make this brown lighter, at least red?

This rooster, the bigger one - his legs are yellow but just barely. He's very heavy Sussex, hence the darker more Sussex color.


The hen has yellow legs, they are just faded.

Robin's color is much lighter, which is nice, but not enough spots at all!

He does have yellow legs.

Here is an Aloha rooster from my program, years ago, who has AWESOME color!

Many of these colorful ones are kind of smallish though. About Leghorn size.

Here, I will embarrass myself with a pic for scale. I am 5 foot 8 and kind of thick:

Smaller Alohas aren't Banty size, but not huge.

Bigger than Leghorn but not by much?

Newest ones are being mixed with quality Sussex to improve size and many are now in-between Sussex and Leghorn - maybe like Welsummers???

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Can I ask an unrelated question? I see the tips and part of the blade of this boy's comb are a little purple. I have a splash copper marans boy (Chunky Monkey) with an enormous comb, and his does this as well (sometimes extending to include the entire point, several points). At first I was concerned about "almost" frostbite (it happened after a night near freezing, and I discovered after the fact that their waterer had spilled in the bedding), but it never sat right with me, because the conditions seemed too mild. He got better, but he still sometimes has this "bluing" of them. Someone else suggested circulation issues - I'm not so sure about that, but who knows. The other three cockerels (GNH) in with him, same housing, have big combs and never show this. My Cream Legbar rooster also has a very big comb, and it sometimes happens to him as well.

Anyone - what is this, and is it something to be concerned about or that I should do something about? I want to say someone posted that they had seen it when a rooster got "worked up"...

- Ant Farm