Cherwill, sorry, that isn't ringing any bells with me. Is there any way you can get a short video of her doing it?
Karen - wonderful pics. I am loving Ricky especially - he looks perfect for the project to my very amateur eye. The little Aloha hen you gave me is so pretty its hard to imagine she was a reject for the project!
Ricky is actually #2 because of puffy cheeks, smallish wattles and white legs and he has more of an EE body type. Beckham is #1 because he is the right body shape, close enough on size, comb, wattles, leg color, well, the right everything except color. He carries heavy spotting because he was very, very spotted as a chick and has only lost the spots as he matured. Matching him with a Swedish should net some amazing results. If we put Ricky's size and color on Beckham, Beckham would be the perfect cockerel and thus, the name.
I cannot remember which Aloha you got, but probably size was the main issue. Color is one of the easier things to achieve. The challenge comes when you add all the other traits with the coloring. Having said that, I'm sure I didn't give you one of the worst birds because I was thinking that it would be good to have a hen elsewhere in case something happened to mine. At least that way I could buy some hatching eggs!
The Alohas are a bit different than the Swedish Flowers because we have some colorations that the Swedish Flowers do not. We are going for loud colors on both hens and roos. We have been successful in breeding bright yellows and oranges with white spots and we can get those results among the varied colors pretty consistently. We are still working on even brighter shades with larger white spots. The softer muted colors are also a bit different with ours having more variety in pastel yellows, peaches and soft grays that are sometimes spotted over a white bird. I like the Swedish a lot but am working on an American version that is a better dual purpose bird with more variety in the coloring. The Swedish Flower temperament is the pinnacle of success, to my mind. It is very openly curious about people and easy to fall in love with. I'm hoping to incorporate more of that temperament into my Alohas, who are already very personable birds. It's a really fascinating project. I got the lav orps in order to eventually achieve a white spotted lav or lav spotted white bird to add more color variety to the Alohas. I will keep them separate from the bright and loud colored spotted birds because I don't want to dilute the coloring on the loud colored birds. Added to pastel birds should yield some interesting results, I think.
Well, there you go. I'm busted. Now you know for sure I'm totally obsessed with these Alohas. My daughter says I live, eat, drink, sleep, walk, talk, blink, breathe and sneeze Alohas -- in a good way. I had to LOL at that. I do try to keep it under control but, oh well.
111 degrees was really hard on my little birds in the craftroom yesterday. They had begun to wilt so we had to swing into action cooling them down. Today, I'm going to put them in the house during the heat of the day because I seriously don't want to lose any of them to heat. One of my Wellies is still a little slow this a.m. so I'm just not going to take any chances. On top of all that, they got mites in the craftroom!!!!! So disgusting and how in the world did that happen? I've treated the wood that the brooder is made of several times and I sure didn't see this coming. I hate those things and this time I could definitely see them so I'm certain I have them. Well, had them. I powdered them all down, got rid of all the shavings, put in new shavings and powdered those, then sprayed down the wood with Poultry Protector again. I should be good for another 7 days and then I'm going to do it again.
Hope everyone's birds survive another day in the inferno!
