"Usually what I hear is 'I've got to have some of those,' or 'There's no way one of those will ever be on my place'," says National Naked Neck Society secretary and breeder Ed Haworth. "I just happen to be one of the 'I gotta have some of those,'" he says, laughing. Haworth currently owns about 50 Naked Neck chickens although over 30 years, he's sometimes had up to 400 at one time.

Naked Necks are also known as "Turkens," based on the false idea that a chicken was crossed with a turkey to create the breed.

However, the naked neck is actually the result of a single gene that affects the arrangement of feathers. Naked Necks have about half the number of feathers as a normal chicken.

Because the trait is dominant, other breeds that are crossed with the Naked Neck breed often inherit the bare neck trait.

Although Haworth adopted the breed because of its "uniqueness," he's stayed with them because of other characteristics.

Haworth says the unusual birds have a strong resistance to diseases such as Coccidiosis and Newcastle. Naked Necks are also both cold and heat tolerant. "When most hens stop laying, they'll be out hustling bugs and still producing eggs," he says. They are foragers and don't rely on humans to feed them. They lay large brown eggs. Because they're bigger than other birds such as the Leghorn or Plymouth Rock, they make good fryers, he adds. Without neck feathers, they're easier to pluck which may have been why the breed developed in the first place.

Many think the breed originated in an old province of Hungary and then were later perfected in Germany.

Haworth wishes people's perceptions that the Naked Neck is a mongrel would change.