Naked Neck/Turken Thread

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
Haha yes! Have mixed feelings about them- never went for short legged breeds in all my decades as a chicken hobbyist. Yet here they are as a big surprise.. Was worried about health, yet they are very healthy, very active- would be great foragers, worried about how'd they do with start of egg laying- someone mentioned problems with that in their dwarfed birds.. found a huge egg in their pen so they apparently have no problems with that- either they have a different dwarf gene or..?

when are your eggs due to hatch?

Well, they certainly are neat (and I know how much you love interesting things to work on in your chickens).

Dock down is on Sunday. The 10 fertile GNH x Tank eggs (form the 12 I set) are all SUPER active and looking very good. The Marans x Goodwin eggs for some reason have lost a massive amount of moisture, so I have them in the hatcher at 65-70% (one had lost as much as 19.5% at day 14). We'll see if any of them make it.

I'm probably going to set the Puppy eggs and the Olive egger x Goodwin eggs this weekend when I lock down the others. Please don't ask me where I'm going to put all these chickens - I'm in denial at the moment...

- Ant Farm

 

[DesertChic]

Moved the short leg dwarfs to their own pen and took pics today. Not the best pics..

There you go...playing the enabler again. See those birds, I will DEFINITELY be crossing my NNs with my Dorkings. I love this look!

 

[Pensmaster]

Moved the short leg dwarfs to their own pen and took pics today. Not the best pics..

Cool looking.

 

[Pensmaster]

Well, they certainly are neat (and I know how much you love interesting things to work on in your chickens).

Dock down is on Sunday. The 10 fertile GNH x Tank eggs (form the 12 I set) are all SUPER active and looking very good. The Marans x Goodwin eggs for some reason have lost a massive amount of moisture, so I have them in the hatcher at 65-70% (one had lost as much as 19.5% at day 14). We'll see if any of them make it. :/

I'm probably going to set the Puppy eggs and the Olive egger x Goodwin eggs this weekend when I lock down the others. Please don't ask me where I'm going to put all these chickens - I'm in denial at the moment... 

- Ant Farm 

Seems I know someone like you. My Christmas present is loaded to the gills with a "trial" run. The ones I really want to start have just started laying again.
Wherever will I put all these chicks. Hmmmm maybe the garden space, the other garden space.

 

[Georgia Boy 1970]

Moved the short leg dwarfs to their own pen and took pics today. Not the best pics..

Cool looking birds Kev.Can'the wait to see what comes out of that pen.

 

[Kev]

Well, they certainly are neat (and I know how much you love interesting things to work on in your chickens).

This made me laugh!

Quote:
How exciting! how are you measuring the moisture loss? by weight? I never weighed the eggs but have noticed many times the airspace in eggs from broody hens seem excessively huge compared to what the incubation charts show. Yet they hatch and thrive wonderfully.. so here;s hoping the eggs will do well anyways.

That is a perpetual question for all of us by the way!

 

[Kev]

There you go...playing the enabler again. See those birds, I will DEFINITELY be crossing my NNs with my Dorkings. I love this look!

LOL! Any pics of the dorkings? the name makes me giggle by the way....

 

[Kev]

Cool looking birds Kev.Can'the wait to see what comes out of that pen.

Thanks to you and other commenters.

Truth is.. I am not sure what to do with them.. goal is to test the genetics. My current guess is maybe sex linked dwarf passed on via the freedom rangers- their father was a freedom ranger- black ranger cross. He has kinda short looking legs but not excessively short like these- here he is:



Bred him with a new hen last fall.. to my surprise none of the chicks had short legs. Maybe not enough chicks, maybe the dwarf source really was a NN hen he was with previously.. But no short legs or dwarfs in the NN side for many generations..

One way to test is by breeding an unrelated rooster with those dwarf hens, if this throws dwarfs that will be a huge surprise and may mean it is a new mutation.

Already have plans to breed the rooster above with other hens- he is very nice and big meaty bird yet he is not a pig, Eats very little actually. This plan will also basically work as further evidence if he has the gene or not and if it is a new mutation or not.. sex linked dwarf is not a new mutation and some broiler/layer breeder stocks have the sex linked dwarf to reduce space and save on feed.. because they can be used in crosses to throw full size layers or broilers for the market.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:

There you go...playing the enabler again. See those birds, I will DEFINITELY be crossing my NNs with my Dorkings. I love this look!

LOL! Any pics of the dorkings? the name makes me giggle by the way....

Me, too!

BTW, @Kev , I found myself wondering... any breeding issues with your short legged chickens? I know the Dark Cornish can sometimes...

- Ant Farm

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

You wanted pictures, and everyone got tons of BOSS this evening (it's getting cold tonight), soooo...

Buffy (in a bit of an ugly molt):



Snape in front, Puppy left, Trinity right, and Switch behind:

Sweetie (she has come out of her molt with a LOT more black on her feathers...):

Eating BOSS, form front to back: Sweetie, Puppy, Switch, and Buffy:


Two of Switch, tried to catch the edging on her feathers and her red head.


Not a good shot, but this is Trinity, who looks pathetic in her molt. She has a raggedy naked butt.

I already shared photos of Mystique the other day, so none of those. Skipping the NHR girl Polly. She's just a sweet red chicken and (gasp) no naked neck!
And for fun - I found this in the Tank/GNH coop today. This whopper weighed 90 grams (3.17 oz).

I am thinking that there's a chance that the single egg I got from the NN coop MIGHT have been Switch instead of Puppy. It looks slightly different, and I think she's the only other one in any shape to lay (and her comb is all red like Puppy's). I guess we'll see if it hatches!
- Ant Farm