5 year Challenge Raising Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner Chickens

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In the fall of 2016, after purchasing Swedish Flower Hens, I found these gorgeous, dual-purpose chickens called Lemon Cuckoo Niederrhiener. Newly imported only 2 years prior, to the United States, they sold for around $30 a chick. My homesteading journey was just beginning and the prospect of selling baby chicks for such a price appealed to me. This post tells tell my story of raising Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner chickens.

As, I scoured the internet, searching for a place to purchase my own. I came across 2 or 3 farm websites who no longer sold them. Not thinking too much about the fact at the time, I now believe the farms struggled to reproduce them; quickly decided the breed would not be a good financial return on their investment.

Circle M farm offered a deal on chicks for only $20 each. I ended up with 8 chicks, 6 females and 2 males. While harder to distinguish males from females at hatch, by the time they were 4 weeks old the males were lighter and the females darker. All with a yellow look to them.

Table of Contents

2017

With great anticipation I set their eggs in 2017. Imagine my disappointment when time after time the eggs either lost viability early on or were not even fertile to begin with. I started looking for a different rooster.

The first year the hens regularly laid eggs. I remember thinking their egg production was to be commended.

2018

I purchased a rooster to hopefully gain fertile eggs to incubate. With the hens all enjoying an outside pen, I examined them using the translated standard from Germany. I choose the hen who best represented the breed and placed her in a separate pen with the new rooster. In this fashion I would now have 2 lines from which to add diversity to the gene pool.

Want to read the translated German SOP or Standard of Perfection? Click the link: https://www.dontclipmywings.com/lemon-cuckoo-niederrheiner-standard-of-perfection/

Disappointed again, as none of the eggs were fertile. I do not think I ever had a fertile egg from the rooster I purchased.

Raising Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner Chickens in 2019

Feeling a bit frustrated as 3 years into raising Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiners and I had not hatched a single chick. Could the hens be the problem? I knew my Swedish Flower Hen roosters were consistently fertile. Perhaps I would test the ability of the Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner hens to produce a fertile egg.

After tossing around the idea in my mind and looking over my Swedish Flower Hen roosters, I decided why not. I was not getting anywhere as it was. I might as well try this new idea of mine. If I did get any chicks, I could always sell them as crossbreds or egg layers.

The 5 chicks who hatched from the crossbred experiment.

The hens crossed on the black based mille fleur rooster produced 5 chicks using a Janoel 12 incubator. I had my answer, the roosters were to blame. In my conversations with others about this docile breed, I learned of the importance of trimming the vent feather of both roosters and hens.

Cisco and Clinch

I was hopeful with the addition of Cisco and Clinch to now have a chance at hatching Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner chicks. Timing has proved a difficulty in itself. The hens were 3 years old and not laying as regularly at this point.

Cisco and Clinch were not mature enough to breed the hens the summer I brought them home. By the time I put them in with the hens, the hens had stopped laying for the winter.

2020 Raising Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner Chickens

2020 I continued with my crossbred program crossing roosters who were 50/50 with pullets/hens who are 75% LCN/25 % SFH. Next weeks post will share details of my crossbred project I now call Lemon Flowers.

I combined the 2 hens who were 50% Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner in a pen with my remaining Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner Hens crossed on Cisco and Clinch. The black 50/50 hen went broody. Check out the chicks she hatched.

Notice how white 2 of the chicks are. I was testing Cisco and Clinches fertility using eggs from a pen which contained both pure Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner hens and 50/50 hens. I might have ended up with a pure hen also. As I hatch her eggs, I will have better idea. She is currently in with my only pure LCN rooster.

Moma Hen with baby chicks — The black broody 50/50 hen with 3 of the chicks she hatched.

I was disappointed in 2020 to have lost 2 hens, leaving me only one original Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner hen. The timing of when the hens laid eggs was not conducive to incubating. The 2020 season came and went.

2021

Imagine my delight when I finally had fertile Lemon cuckoo Niederrheiner eggs. I only hatched one chick in the incubator, but I congratulated myself on progress. The hen stopped laying before I could get any other eggs rounded up to incubate. She was approaching 5 years and no longer laid eggs as often.

Possum Attack

Its 4 am and I hear roosters crowing, while not entirely unusual I heard anther sound and listened closer. It sounded like a chicken in distress. I dressed quickly and took a moment to grab my pistol. It was fairly chilly out with a wind blowing. No time or desire to waste on warm clothes, I wanted to investigate.

Taking a quick glance at Aneta, our Great Pyrenees told me where the problem was located. In my headlamp I inspected the interior of the LCN outdoor pen. The rooster was huddled and then I see it. A possum was eating on my hen. My blood ran cold. I wanted a clear shot, and the possum was already on the move. After moving into a better position with the possum still in motion, I shot and missed. Wait! Was the hen breathing? She was but did not survive the attack.

I waited around for the possum to return and managed one more shot. Regrettably I appeared to have missed again. I apparently need to improve my skill. Certain the varmint would return; I moved the rooster into the barn. He did not seem to have injuries either, but unfortunately, I also lost him a few weeks later. Another setback in raising Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner chickens.

Trying Chicks from a Hatchery

A subscriber and fellow Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner enthusiast alerted me a hatchery was selling LCN chicks. Of course, hatcheries are not known for their excellent representation of any breed. Rather the opposite, no matter the breed. Given the difficulty of finding others breeding and selling LCN’s I choose to order chicks.

Notice the inconsistency in these 2 roosters. Both were from the hatchery chicks I ordered.

By the time fall arrived I was sorely disappointed. The inconsistencies were beyond obvious. There were not uniform or even anywhere near the way my original birds had presented themselves. Not a single one actually looked like a LCN.

Pictured are the 5 pullets from the hatchery. Notice the inconsistency also.

In the fall of 2021, I looked at pictures at pictures of Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheirs from the hatchery catalog. Definitely NOT what my original birds looked like. I would likely not be ordering a second time.

Click the picture below to read a translated version of SOP (Standard of Perfection) from Germany for Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiners.

Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner Standard of Perfection

Now what?

Left with only one pure LCN rooster, and possibly one hen, and no contacts with chicks available at the time.

My options:

sell them all and say forget it.
work with the obviously not pure pullets from the hatchery and cross them back on my pure LCN rooster
find the best representation from my crossbred project and my possible pure hen (hatched in 2020) to cross them back on the LCN rooster (hatched in 2021) I now have.
At least I knew what percentage my crossbred birds had of the LCN line.

With the hatchery birds I have NO idea what was in them or the percentage of LCN they possess if any. Chances are someone here in the United States had tried to recreate the breed using breeds the birds were originally created with in Germany. Cheers to them for trying, but full disclosure would be appreciated.

Raising Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner Chickens in 2022

For the beginning of 2022 I am starting the year crossing my lone pure LCN rooster on the 2 yellowest of my crossbred hens with correctly colored legs out of my cross bred project. One of these hens is potentially pure. The cross bred project chickens will be called either lemon flowers or flowering lemons.

One of the 2 hens who will be crossed with the pure LCN Rooster in 2022

I am on the fence about using the hatchery pullets to cross back on my full Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiners. With no idea what breeds went into what they are calling Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner. I do however know what percentage my crossbreds carry. For this reason, it seems easiest to work with the 2 hens from my crossbreds I have chosen who represent the LCN breed the best.