Pros: Beautiful birds, sweet, yet savvy for free range
Cons: working out the kinks on type
Carmelita
The Aloha is the American answer to the Swedish Flower. Think Hawaiian flowered shirts.
It's a very hardy bird that can take the heat in summer and cold in winter. Some will brood and raise chicks. Their personalities are generally very friendly and curious. Ours don't hesitate to "chat" with us and always want to see what we're up to. The eggs are currently in the medium to large size range but we are working to bring egg size up. The Aloha hens are, in my opinion, more beautiful and will someday soon be more uniform in color than the Swedish Flower. I am working on breeding consistently ginger colored birds with white spangles that are more uniform than the Swedish and offer rounder, fuller breasts for a better dual purpose bird. The Aloha is currently about the same size as a Red Star but should be bringing the size up over the next year. This is a project bird and not yet recognized as a standard breed.
We've owned this for a couple years now and it's still going strong. Had a 39 hour power outage this week and this kept 57, 1 week old chicks warm and safe with no piling, while pulling a small amount of power from the generator that was running multiple fridge/freezers (7 kids). The next morning we moved their large brooder into an insulated part of the shop and set up both the EcoGlow50 and added a heat lamp so they wouldn't have to be shoulder to shoulder. There was a big jump in use of power. The generator could handle it but with the heatlamp risks and power usage, I've decided it's worth the investment in a second EcoGlow50. I have had heatlamps explode when I wasn't around and lost chicks that were attracted to the shiny bits. After this experience, I am ordering a second EcoGlow50 and eliminating the heatlamps. I've decided that, yes, they are a bit pricey but are worth it if you are going to be raising chicks over time.
