naked necks

[Achaeos]

FLYINGMONKEYPOOP,
How many eggs did not hatch from those birds? Ddi you get a 100% hatch rate from 50 eggs? Just wondering because if the rooster and both hens were all heterozygous then there should have been an average of 25% Fully feather birds, 50% heterozygous and 25% Homozygous for the Naked-necked gene. It would not make any diference how closely related they were. But you got 2%/92%/6% and 0%/100%/0%. Thats one slap in the face for the Punnett Square unless there is something going on to throw off the average. That 0%/100%/0% makes me thing that one parent was a Homozygous Naked-neck and the other was a Fully-feathered bird being in full and exact compliance with the truaty dusty Punnet Square. Perhaps there is another rooster involved?

 

[Skyesrocket]

Yes, naked necks come in all colors. My husbands favorite hen is a turken and one of her eggs hatched today and it is a cuckoo naked neck. My cuckoo marans rooster bred her.
Turkens are good egg layers and winter well here in NE Ohio.

 

[Kev]

Wow, old thread and missed monkey's post.

The idea of only the totally bare necked birds being homozygous is wrong. Most homozygous naked necked birds do indeed have a small bowtie on the neck. Heterozygous ones have a much larger bowtie with feathers that covers most of the lower front and obscures the crop also.. have test mated in various ways with great numbers of birds over many years and the results have been the same- for example a bird with tiny bowtie bred with not naked neck: 100% naked necked, but all have the huge bowtie typical of heterozygotes. Birds with large bowties bred with not naked necked threw 50% naked necked(large bowtie) and 50% not naked necked. Two parents with large bowties produce 1/4 tiny bowtie, 1/2 large bowtie, 1/4 all fuzzy has been very reliable.... perfect punnet results. This has been the same for many birds(related and not related), tested with both sexes etc.. Still, the idea of only the bare necks being homozygous is pretty strong out there. There is even an excellent poultry genetics website that uses a picture of my own homozygous hen as illustration of a HET... because she had a small bowtie. Oh well.

Completely bare necked birds are not common. My guess it is due to some kind of modifier on top of being homozygous.. in other words, more than one gene is involved. That would still work for really low percentages of total bare necks, especially if some of the breeders are not homozygous for Na(naked neck).. I tried for years to produce completely bare necks out of hatchery stock.... got some birds that had only one feather on each side of neck, but that was it. Then I got some eggs in an egg trade, chicks hatched out very obviously "backyard mixes"- everything was present on some of the chicks- crests, black skin, different comb types, leg feathering etc... to my surprise several of them also had completely bare necks. I bred them together and they freely threw total bare necks, although in low percentage, less than 50%. Crossing them with other breeds and unrelated naked necks did not throw any total bare necks. (making me think something else is involved) Eventually got rid of those 'mutts' and most of the crosses with them too.. no more bare necks showed up for years, however a couple months ago a chick with a total bare neck showed up, and she can be traced back to those mutts. She was out of a free range nest so I could not determine if the father could have been traced back to the same stock or not.

My guess for monkey's results, assuming no breeding from other birds, is the rooster and one hen was heterozygous(the one fuzzy chick is proof) but the other hen was homozygous, which can skew the % of naked necked chicks way higher than a simple punnet square if the results was being concluded on all 3 birds together. Also realize it is not true only the bare necks are homozyous, you would likely find a number matching Punnett if the bowtie size was looked at, compared and divided into tiny vs large. At least it's been my experience.

 

[Melissa034]

red, white, buff, and BLACK

 

[achaeos6]

Kev, that's what i was wondering. I want my turkens to be as little feathered as possible but there are never any like yours were. I would like to acquire some like that though. It sounds like a sharp eye can spot whether or not they are Homozygous or not with or without the modifying gene(s) that may be affecting them.