The higher order neutral functional differential equation $$\frac{{\mathrm{d}}^n}{\mathrm{d}{t}^n}\left[x\left(t\right)+h\left(t\right)x\left(\tau \right(t\left)\right)\right]+\sigma f\left(t,x\left(g\right(t\left)\right)\right)=0\left(1\right)$$ is considered under the following conditions: $n\ge 2$, $\sigma =\pm 1$, $\tau \left(t\right)$ is strictly increasing in $t\in [t_0,\infty )$, $\tau \left(t\right)<t$ for $t\ge t_0$, ${lim}_{t\to \infty }\tau \left(t\right)=\infty$, ${lim}_{t\to \infty }g\left(t\right)=\infty$, and $f(t,u)$ is nonnegative on $[t_0,\infty )\times (0,\infty )$ and nondecreasing in $u\in (0,\infty )$. A necessary and sufficient condition is derived for the existence of certain positive solutions of (1).

The work characterizes when is the equation $y^{\left(n\right)}+\mu p\left(x\right)y=0$ eventually disconjugate for every value of $\mu$ and gives an explicit necessary and sufficient integral criterion for it. For suitable integers $q$, the eventually disconjugate (and disfocal) equation has 2-dimensional subspaces of solutions $y$ such that $y^{\left(i\right)}>0$, $i=0,...,q-1$, ${(-1)}^{i-q}{y}^{\left(i\right)}>0$, $i=q,...,n$. We characterize the “smallest” of such solutions and conjecture the shape of the “largest” one. Examples demonstrate that the estimates are sharp.