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I am honestly not sure what causes it. I noticed that some of the "Swedish Flower Hens" had extensive white mottling, see the LAST TWO PHOTOS on this page here:
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Swede/BRKSwedeSpot.html
Notice the last two photos? Ones captioned "A couple more flower hens" and "Another Flower Hen"
Anyway, I was just cleaning my backyard out one day, a couple of years ago, and noticed the neighbor had this strange little banty hen - she totally reminded me of Flower Hens! I do know a lot about horse/cat/rabbit genetics, but hardly anything about birds. (That plus five years of 4-H experience is about all I've got - certainly no expert here!) So I tried outcrossing her, and even though I don't know exactly what is going on, I have figured out that the genes are recessive - because the oddball Banty's "kids" didn't look just like her, but when I backcrossed the lines, all of these CLONES of her calico/confetti/whateveryoucallit color started popping up!
Now I see that the Swedish Flower Hen has actually been imported to the U.S., which is fantastic, but I'm going to carry on with Alohas. I am going a little bit of a different direction with the Alohas. I would (ideally) like a body heft and depth very similar to NHR and Buff Rocks, and also I like the very, very vibrant colors - I see myself moving away from the browns and heading into as much red/orange/gold tones. I'd like Alohas to be super-plump and really vibrant. Like, leave it to Americans to make everything they touch and make it bigger and as gaudy as possible, LOL. If Swedish Flower Hens were like a field of colorful flowers, ideally Alohas would be like the Las Vegas Strip. LOL!!!
However, in terms of size I have a
looong ways to go. These guys are not true "banty" size anymore, they are currently pretty similar in body size to the (unrelated) Exchequer Leghorns that I used to have a few of. Maybe four to six pounds? But if you look at my web site, there is a HUGE size difference between my Alohas and the purebred Buff Rocks. I see it taking fully another two years (minimum) and possibly three or four years to
truly increase size. That's because with the colors being recessive, you have to outcross to bigger birds, and then cross back to bring in the color again. That means when you do that way, by the time you backcross and bring the color BACK in, the chicks would only be 1/4 "big chicken" like NHR, Buff Rock, etc, etc.
What is absolutely SHOCKING to me, however, is the similarity between what I'm doing and the Swedish Flower Hens shown on the Greenfire Farms site, in terms of colors. I've already had red/white/blue mottled; and there is one brownish hen, with her head turned away, that I swear the plumage looks EXACTLY like Kona, the daughter of the little odd banty. So here I am, kind of floundering around, somewhat clueless but kinda educated, and
BOOM - I'm actually getting somewhere!
Thanks to that odd little banty, I might add - there is simply no way I'd have made this kind of progress without her. Although I might add I've been working my tail off over here, breeding (literally) hundreds of chicks, and following that big advice - breed
extensively, and cull
ruthlessly. (Don't get me wrong, all my extra Aloha stock has found good homes elsewhere, but it is maybe one out of 30 chicks hatched so far on average that has made it past the culling process.)
I see about three Confetti hens out there already that have a bit too much black for my tastes, so will probably find a good pet home for those girls. Really excited about Caramel, she's a light tan with white mottling and hardly any black! Plus some of the best Confetti hens are really striking. Just will be a bummer to have to wait for my new NHR cross roos to mature, they are my first attempt to bring in some really BIG size in . . . took a NHR roo and crossed with small mottled hens, and kept the babies. All of them are solid brown, because mottling color is recessive, but they should
carry mottling, and at only 3 months old, they are already as big as the adult Confetti hens? I can't wait to see how it turns out!
