Niederrheiner Thread! All Colors!

[UberchicRanch]

Hi there!

Love the Niederrheiners as much as we do? Well this is your destination for all things Niederrheiners! Questions, comments, pics, vids are all welcome!

 

[hofhine68]

Hi there! I made it!

I love the Niederrheiners, they are the sweetest, friendliest birds! I am pretty sure I have a boy and a girl which means I will have to find them a new home. I cannot have roosters because of my neighbors.

The eggs came from Brinkhaven Acres and out of six Bielefelder and three Niederrheiner eggs, I had one Bielefelder and two Niederrheiners hatch. This was a second attempt at Bielefelders for me this past summer.

I tried some eggs from Red Hill Ranch (six Bielefelders and three freebie Bielefelder/Red Orpington cross). Only one of the crosses made it to a successful hatch (sad story with clumsy other hens). There was no growth in the Bielefelder eggs.

My first batch was under a broody Buff Orpington (Henrietta) and the second batch was under a Melanistic Mutant French Black Copper Marans (Vanille).

Out of the first batch, I have a Bielefelder cross hen (Panzer) and out of the second batch I have the two Niederrheiners and a Bielefelder hen (Petunia).

So here are some pics. When they hatched, one had a definite black dot on the top of her? head, and the other had a larger slightly pale patch on the top of his? head.
















And here is a video of the little male? I took last weekend eating some spinach out of my hand.

http://www.screencast.com/t/gKZy2EDFIPQm

 

[UberchicRanch]

Wow! @hofhine68,

I absolutely love those pics and vids of your Niederrheiners and Bielefelders! The chick in the video is definitely a young rooster, or cockerel. Which chick is that in the pics? The one with the black dot or the light dot?

I've actually never seen a black fleck in our birds before so that's why I was eager to check it out. I feel this thread should be the center for posting pics and tracking which chicks turned out to be hens and which ones turned out to be roosters.

As far as Brinkhaven you mentioned 1/6 Bielefelders hatched and 2/3 Niederrheiners hatched. Well the Niederrheiner batch is considered "average" at 60% hatch rate and you have a 66% hatch rate. Something obviously went wrong with the Bielefelder batch, with a hatch rate of 17%. A number of things could have happened. Did you candle the eggs to see if they were fertile or not?

As far as hatching eggs, there are 3 terms to know:
1. yolkers
2. quitters
3. winners

Yolkers are eggs that were never fertile. Quitters are eggs that were fertile but for whatever reason the embryo / chick "quit." Winners reach the finish line and hatch out. I'd be very curious to know if you know any of that to help with my stats.

Generally, I've had good experiences and bad experiences with hatching eggs in general. I had 0 chicks hatch out of 14 eggs from one farm. I found out that 10 of them were yolkers and 4 became quitters. Infertility was the issue there.

 

[UberchicRanch]

OH! And I forgot to mention - what are you going to do with your rooster?

 

[hofhine68]

The chick in the video is the one with the light spot. I wanted to get home before dark to get you some new pics, but work prevented it - the little girl doesn't have a dark spot anymore, but her coloring is a shade or two darker than the little roo.

With my Red Hill hatch - six Bielefelders were yolkers, three Bielefelder/Orpington cross were winners but two were smooshed by Blanca just days before hatching (my adopted old hen, who is a bit of a clod but still gives a huge green egg every day despite being four-plus years old). With that hatch I wondered if their Bielefelder roo was so fond of the Red Orpington that he was ignoring the Bielefelder hens.

With my Brinkhaven hatch - five Bielefelders were yolkers, one a winner; one Niederrheiner was a quitter, two winners. I had 100% fertility with the Niederrheiner eggs. Since this was my second try for the Bielefelders, I am wondering if the roos are particular about their ladies.

Last May I purchased a dozen FBCM from Mid Missouri Marans on ebay (survivalseedsowers). They sent eighteen eggs, and in an incubator we hatched six hens and six roosters, and six did not hatch. I didn't note whether they were yolkers or quitters. I kept three hens (Vanille, my melanistic mutant foster mama, and her sisters Little Foot and Copper Top). I traded the other FBCM birds for my mix of hens. The roosters were just beautiful. Vanille is not laying because of her foster chicks, and the other two are molting and look just awful. During most of the year they give me two, sometimes three eggs a week per bird. They lay beautiful dark eggs.

I think I want to sell the pair of Niederrheiners because I don't think the roo alone would be of much use to anyone. What do you think? I'm not out to make a pile of money, I just want to prevent them from being eaten (at least right away) - they are the sweetest birds and so very friendly.

I'm in Southern California.

 

[UberchicRanch]

Hmm yeah I wonder what happened with those Bielefelders...were the hatching eggs shipped with the Niederrheiners? That would rule out any shipping and handling issues that sort of look something like this. You could sell them as a pair. That could be more valuable together rather separately. You can try http://www.rarebreedauctions.com/ . eBay isn't really the place for a grown pair. You pretty much only see hatching eggs. We also occasionally adopt Bielefelders and Niederrheiners when they are unwanted. We would provide a haven for them.

Thanks for the stats! This helps us, as a breeder, as far as quality control and helping the breed's viability.

 

[hofhine68]

Yes, the hatching eggs were together.

I may have duplicated these pictures over on my "hi there" post but they should be over here with the Niederrheiners, too, for others who are looking for pics.

You can see how at one month, the girl's dark spot is gone, and the boy's light spot is gone, but the girl is several shades darker than the boy.

I was using this site to guide me (http://www.huehner-tv.de/zwerg-niederrheiner-3.html). I read German, but if you don't you can open the page in Google, and then right click anywhere on the page and choose translate. The sentences will have conjunctions and articles in the wrong places, and if the sentence sounds really wonky then Google translate has used the wrong equivalent to the word - so you will have to "fix" them a bit in your mind as you read, but it does help a lot to get the gist of what they are saying.

 

[UberchicRanch]

Wonderful pics! I think if I have enough hefeweizen it would somehow translate itself!

All kidding aside, I'll try to go through that website too to see what we could dig up. Thanks for the link!

 

[elkinsacres]

So Uberchic started the Niederrheiner thread - kudos!

I will post some pictures here. I have three Greenfire chicks, hatched 09/01. Pretty dang easy to tell which ones are which. I also have another three chicks from Sunbird, hatched a few weeks ago. Pretty sure I know what they are as well.

I'll snap some pics this afternoon and post them here...

 

[hofhine68]

Hi elkinsacres!

I can't wait to see pics.

They are the friendliest little things ever - they come right up and stand on my feet when I go into the run! (I can't let them free in the yard or the hawks/owls/bobcats/coyotes/mountain lions/bears will eat them. My two Bielefelder chicks are just as friendly.

:^)