The Aloha Chicken Project

alohachickens said:

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Somer, I have a hen just about the color of this one. She is 1/2 Naked Neck and 1/2 Easter Egger. I believe that she was from some buff Columbian Naked Neck hens that I had early in my flock. I was told that she is a Wheaten w/ Duckwing. This has led me to believe that wheaten is used to make Buff. No proof and certainly don't know much about genetics if color on chickens. I used her for a first cross to the Salmon NN rooster for my Green Egger Naked Neck project. With him she produced a pullet with about the sane color as herself and this hen you have. Again Wheaten, crossed the salmon NN rooster to a couple of Blue Wheaten Splash EE and come up with two more just like them. So with that color wheaten would that work for this project of Alohas?

alohachickens said:

I hatched and kept two other roosters from THIS breeder pen:


ABOVE AND BELOW PICS: LAST YEAR'S BREEDER PEN


They are smaller than the "Speckled Sussex" looking rooster, and they are much too small and the wrong color to be out of the white hen.Maybe the white hen is a Light Sussex over Swedish? Has the flat chest of a Swedish.
That means Mom is either the teeny tiny Aloha hen in front, who is Buff Mottled, and actually, has BUFF ROCK in her background (even though she's small)
Or the Mom of the hens is this large "Mystery Hen" who came from Walt's Ark but looks neither like Sussex or Swedish? I was super excited about this hen, but Stephen lost her up at his house, where she was being kept, over last summer. SIGH. (Double SIGH) Real blow, losing this girl:

POSSIBLE PARENTS

This hen was about the same size as a Speckled Sussex, but clearly did not look like one. Maybe she is a Speckled/Swedish crossed with Swedish/Speckled? Beautiful bird. What she is - unknown - but came direct from Waltz's Ark. Loved her!

So, got these two boys from the pen, both are nearly twins. (Always good to have a back-up!) Let's call them Thing 1 and Thing 2. Who do you think is the Mom? Buff Mottled Aloha, or Waltz's Mystery Hen? I would guess they are both from the Buff Mottled Aloha, just because of all the white feathers in wing and tail and the white legs and the close set of the legs.

THE OFFSPRING:







Another shot with other chickens for size:


Above: Thing 1 or 2 in background. New Pumpkin in front. You can see that Thing 1 or 2 is more "beefy" and much deeper through the breast than New Pumpkin, though New Pumpkin is not fully mature, to be fair to him. Also we can contrast with this rooster - who is probably full Buff Sussex, as I did have ONE pure bred Buff Sussex hen with the Buff Sussex rooster: But where did all that white come from? My Buffs don't have any white at all. Things that make ya go hmmm. See that girl next to him with the wide hips? Reminds me of the song "It's all about that base..."

That's what we need.

ABOVE AND BELOW: PURE BUFF SUSSEX?

So, you can see the above Buff Sussex rooster has much more MASS to his body, but Thing 1 and Thing 2 are more "flashy" overall, with nice big combs and long flowing tails.

Do you like them? Not sure about the width of the legs, seems narrow but the height is fantastic. I think they might be a good frame for the future Alohas. Jaunty and more like the Mediterranean breeds (Leghorn, Ancona) in style, yet more beefy and substantial.

Still don't have the colors right, but I wasn't going to cull them, when they were looking so good! These have been the "main roos" in the Aloha barn for all of September-December.

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alohachickens said:

In late December, we broke down the old coop, which had a few hens and THIS rooster:

CURRENT DOMINANT ROOSTER

What I like about this guy:

*VERY TALL
*YELLOW LEGS
*BIG COMB (easy to sex his chicks!)
*LONG TAIL

What I don't like about this guy:

*NOT AS "THICK" (Thing 1 and 2 are shorter but more meaty)
*TOO LITTLE SPOTTING (He shows spots but not an amazing amount of white)

Overall, while he is BIG BIG BIG - nobody would call this rooster small by any means! To me, Thing 1 and Thing 2 have more of a "compact" look to them. I suspect this boy is part Swedish, because the Swedish have a lot of lanky frame that is slow to fill out. However, he also has other stuff going on? Hatched from Stephen's Stock - which is heavy in Speckled Sussex but also has a lot of Swedish and New Hamsphire. Stephen has been focusing on size, and in this guy, it did pay off. He has TONS of height, though I'd like to see more meat on that frame.

Here are more pics - please critique away! What do you think of him? Nice bird. He looks to be heading in more of a "brick" shape than a "bowl" so I would guess you are right about the Swedish and possibly has some New Hamp in the background somewhere. I suspect he will flesh out into a New Hamp shape. Very interesting. Do we want solid white feathers or uniform spots, or does it matter? These guys have huge combs! I, being a Sussex fan, do like the more compact birds best, but this is good progress.

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alohachickens said:

Here, let me put the roosters in the same post! Who do you guys like better?

Tall guy:




OR - Do you like these boys?




The "Twins"

I am voting for the Things.

But I am curious what others think.
Currently, everyone is in the same coop, but the tall guy is dominant and gets most of the hens. Thing #1 and #2 still are covering some girls. The young colorful small Aloha boys rarely get a chance, but I've seen them sneak attack a hen now and then. Most of the time, the Aloha boys are rebuffed by the girls, who prefer the three larger roosters.

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draye said:

Somer, I have a hen just about the color of this one. She is 1/2 Naked Neck and 1/2 Easter Egger. I believe that she was from some buff Columbian Naked Neck hens that I had early in my flock.

I was told that she is a Wheaten w/ Duckwing. This has led me to believe that wheaten is used to make Buff. No proof and certainly don't know much about genetics if color on chickens.

I used her for a first cross to the Salmon NN rooster for my Green Egger Naked Neck project. With him she produced a pullet with about the sane color as herself and this hen you have. Again Wheaten, crossed the salmon NN rooster to a couple of Blue Wheaten Splash EE and come up with two more just like them.

So with that color wheaten would that work for this project of Alohas?

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She's really not Wheaten, though she kind of looks like it here! (The Dun is doing some funky stuff.)

I would not recommend the Wheaton in general for mottled - just my personal preference!

I can take the big tall guy out of the coop and give him back to the neighbors, I borrowed him from them to try with some hens. Got those chicks growing out now.

Then, the hens will be penned with "Chirp" who is small but very cute and colorful. Only because the little breeder pen that I have currently houses "Chirp". Chirp was raised by little girls and he is a "sissy rooster" who lets people carry him around and dress him up! Unfortunately, the other boys in the barn, they beat him up because of this.

So the Turken eggs would first be coming out with whatever DNA was in the barn, and then towards the end of the week in the breeder coop, they would be fertile with this guy's DNA:





Unless I can find a nice SAFE home for Chirp. But he's too sweet to go to random strangers! He's kind of small for a breeding rooster, though he is super colorful and very attractive overall. He does have yellow legs, a nice comb, and spotting. Honestly his size is his only flaw. Here's a pic with me (and I'm tall) to give you scale. He's not Banty but not HUGE either:

OK, so Draye and Deerfield are voting for the "twins" Thing 1 and Thing 2 as "Masters of the Big Coop"

Let's see if 5moore and HEChicken can weigh in!

(And anyone else who has an opinion?)

alohachickens said:

She's really not Wheaten, though she kind of looks like it here! (The Dun is doing some funky stuff.) I would not recommend the Wheaton in general for mottled - just my personal preference! I can take the big tall guy out of the coop and give him back to the neighbors, I borrowed him from them to try with some hens. Got those chicks growing out now. Then, the hens will be penned with "Chirp" who is small but very cute and colorful. Only because the little breeder pen that I have currently houses "Chirp". Chirp was raised by little girls and he is a "sissy rooster" who lets people carry him around and dress him up! Unfortunately, the other boys in the barn, they beat him up because of this. So the Turken eggs would first be coming out with whatever DNA was in the barn, and then towards the end of the week in the breeder coop, they would be fertile with this guy's DNA: Unless I can find a nice SAFE home for Chirp. But he's too sweet to go to random strangers! He's kind of small for a breeding rooster, though he is super colorful and very attractive overall. He does have yellow legs, a nice comb, and spotting. Honestly his size is his only flaw. Here's a pic with me (and I'm tall) to give you scale. He's not Banty but not HUGE either:

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Yes, Chirp is very colorful. As long as he does his job is all that matters. As far as Wheaten I don't know, just going by what I was told. But that is the same color as my hen, she also has a bluish tint to her tail and also in her wing area. Could that be run that I have in my EE because I have EE hens with it also.

Deerfield - the Sussex rooster that I bought came from a person in the Los Angeles, CA area, who had bought the minimum number of "straight run" chicks from Walt's Ark.

She had re-homed most of the roosters already. I was excited when I saw pics because the Buff Sussex rooster DOES show Mottling! Just a tiny trace, but it's there.

I can only guess that maybe Waltz's Ark used a bit of *Speckled* Sussex to expand the Buff Sussex bloodlines, somewhere?

Here is a photo of the trio that I got from CA. She said the "mystery hen" was tossed in as a "freebie" by Waltz, and supposedly was from the "Red Sussex" pen? Which she said made zero sense, because obviously it was not a Red Sussex in any shape or form.

This is the trio that I got from her, that she got from Waltz's Ark. Her chicks were ordered Spring 2013:










I hate hate hate hate that we lost that spotted hen. And we got very few eggs from this breeder pen, because it was hot when they first arrived so nobody started laying until October 2013. At that time, Stephen began moving to Camp Verde and because of that, he stopped collecting eggs. The hens became egg-eaters when they would step on the eggs left on the floor. I was not able to get hatching eggs from this pen until Spring, when I finally discovered a "flock block" plus fake eggs got them to leave the eggs alone long enough to collect. I collected and hatched eggs from them around March of 2014.

We had moved them into the outdoor pen, and added the three Meyer Speckled Sussex plus the (white + dun) Cinnamon Sussex hen to the group. Grateful that I did manage to hatch and keep as many hens as I was able to. Some of them may be by the spotty hen, but it's hard to tell. The yellow legs are recessive, so even though she has yellow legs, since the roo has pink legs, the gene would probably not show?

Some of these MIGHT be her babies - I have no way to know for sure. But they were hatched at the correct time:



This hen is big and colorful, which is why I tagged her leg as a "keeper".

If anyone is possibly that hen's offspring, I think she could be? But I really don't know!

Another shot of the little Buff Mottled hen.

Her grand-daddy was Cheeto, who I tried and tried to get spots onto, but for some reason, his lineage seemed to "resist" the spotting?

Anyway, this was Cheeto. Gave up on the Buff Rock when they proved to be "spot resistant" unlike the New Hampshire Reds, who took spots readily!

CHEETO:


So the only reason I slipped that one Aloha hen in there, is that I was pretty sure this was her grandfather, and though she looked small, she had some "big chicken" in her background. The Buff + Mottled combo had been nearly *impossible* to get so I figured her spotting genes must be strong to let it through when so many would be solid Buff, but never get the spots on top.

CHICKS THAT I KNOW CAME FROM THIS PEN:















There are several more that I don't have pics of and a few that I'm not sure of, because if they came from the small Aloha hen they may look like some of the other Alohas that I hatched out. I had several Speckled Sussex (pure) hens with colorful Aloha rooster, and those would probably look similar to small colorful Aloha hen with the big Buff Sussex roo? (As the crosses both ways would be half Sussex and half Aloha.)

I vote for the twins as well!

Do you still have Cheeto? I didnt think you did.

I also love the hens body shape.

IF YOU HAD MY HENS, what kind of a rooster would you put with them for this year?