First attempt at Rare Breed Naked Neck

Our venture into raising rare breed chickens is not off to the greatest of starts. Much like the piglets the we had less than a desirable number of live chicks from the 12 eggs we put in the incubator, one live Transylvania Naked Neck to be precise. As a control I did put in around 30 other of our own eggs which were of a mixed variety of which around 25 hatch, and all but one survived after hatching which I think is a pretty good survival rate.

The Naked Neck, although very ugly looking have allegedly the finest quality of eating meat of all poultry.

The Eggs where shipped from a supplier in New South Wales and when I performed the candle test, thats when you're in a dark room and shine a light through the egg to see if there is anything happening inside only three of the Naked Neck eggs seemed to be fertilized. Two never hatched..

So after a quick discussion with the supplier they happily shipped me another dozen eggs which should hatch next week.

So the single Naked neck that did hatch is with his other surrogate buddies out in the chicken shed waiting for me to build the pen that will allow them to spend most of their happy days out in the paddocks.

For further info on the Naked Necks

http://www.poultrymad.co.uk/chickens/nakedneck.html

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/poultry/chickens/turken/index.htm

http://joycefoods.com/poulet-rouge-fermier.php

The Chicken Run

Letting the chickens out in the morning is a scramble to see who can make it to the pigs paddock first to see what left overs there are.

New Chicks

Around 21 days ago I seperated what seemed to be a broody chicken and placed 8, what I thought were fertile eggs under the chook. Today we came out to 5 new chicks, 3 yellow and 2 black.

The circle of life

After returning from the Ararat Farmers market today I got back and put some more water in the pigs wallow to their appreciation and then rounded up the chickens to put them back in the coup for the evening. It was getting a bit dark and there was a dark shadow in the corner of one of the coups. For some reason the gate was shut on that pen and one of the chickens was motionless with its head stuck under a board looking like it was attempting to escape and had probably snapped it own neck. Amanda mentioned later that the black chicken was acting a bit loopy recently.

After disposing of the carcass I went to feed the Silkies which were still sitting on the eggs we planted under them and well over the 21 days that we had read about in terms of the incubation period. We did some reading last night about natural incubation and all articles pointed to leaving the hen to do what she does best. There was a broken egg lying next to them and my first reaction was the bloody things have eaten one of the eggs. I then noticed a little head poking out of the other side of one of the silkies. I did try to pry the silkies off to establish how many there were but was given a sever pecking as a reprimand.

Egg production up

The egg production seems to be looking up, Amanda yesterday gathering 13 eggs in the one day where as the lasses were only giving us about 6 a day which I thought was normal for the 7 hens we have not counting the 3 silkies or the one hen looking after the week old chicks.

Still on Silkies, since weve had the farm not a egg has been produced from any of them and all of a sudden we are getting one or two a day from those three ladies. This actually started just before the new birds arrived so maybe they got wind of the imminent arrival and figured if they didnt produce they'd be out. These birds came with the farm when we bought it and I need to find out what a male silkie looks like just in case one of them is a rooster and we can get some chicks from them.

Ive heard that silkies make good mothers and that if you have fertile eggs, silkies will mother them regardless where they came from. So thats exactly what weve done, in addition to the couple she has laid weve put a few more under her to see what happens.

New Chickens

Today we took a trip to Horsham to pick up some Chickens. While originally we intended to take the entire stock on offer, 10 minutes from our destination it suddenly dawned on me that I hadnt worked out what I would do with 15 or so eggs a day, so instead of 20 or so chickens we chose to take only 8 chickens, 2 of which were looking after chicks of 6 1 day olds and 8 1 week olds respetively. We also gathered 2 ducks and 2 roosters in the deal.