The Aloha Chicken Project

[draye]

OMG . . . it's like I just can't stop taking photos of my chickens! LOL.

I just went out there and I'm trying to document the various hens that will be in the pens, so we can refer back to these photos later.

This is one of the pens I'm thinking of setting up. It would be THIS pure Swedish Flower rooster:




Penned in with my smallest, most colorful little Aloha hens.

When I say "little" here's a photo of one of the "little" hens next to a Swedish and Swedish/Sussex/Aloha cross hen for size comparison:




This cross on the test mating did result in good size increases on the babies.

Here's photos of most of the hens. It's really a LOT of hens for this roo to handle, but I'm actually short on roosters. (There is a phrase that I never thought I'd be saying.)

Hens:






















It may look like I'm posting photos of the same hen twice on some of these, but look closely at the patterns on the neck/tail/wings and you'll see these are all different hens.

Will have to get photos of the "other" hens later! But this is my collection of small, colorful, "old stock" Aloha hens. (Four are from Stephen's, he raised from chicks I gave him.)

If these 11 are the only ones going in then it should be okay. I had a White Rock on time that covered 13 hens. When I set all but three were fertile.

 

[15littlem]

Have you ever crossed a SFH roo over a BO hen, or vice versa?

 

[tazcat70]

So pretty Sommer!

 

[alohachickens]

I'm losing spots on some of my grow out birds.

Nooooooo!!!!! Isn't that like the MOST annoying thing EVER????

I'm seeing it more and more in the "pure" Swedish. The chicks are colorful. Adults, different story. Some have barely ANY white at all! So the Swedish won't fix this.

But ick, the bodies on some of those little Aloha hens are so small . . . .

The Swedish will help a lot on that, but we'll have to breed the chicks back to colorful Alohas or really spotty Sussex to get good Mottling. Unfortunately, by the time that I "lock in" the spots again after introducing good big chicken stock, the bodies are small again!

Though. I do have to point out, some of the "later generation" small vivid Alohas show a vast improvement in body type/shape AND color. They are still small but better quality:




Like the Mille hen above, who has yellow legs, deep keel, great "round" body and single upright comb. And is stupidly, ridiculously small. Ha ha ha!

Well, at least they are good layers! Even the smallest lays like a champ.

Some of my babies are losing color, too. BUT NOT ALL. So, yeah, there will be a huge color loss, yet about one third (of the 30) show promise of keeping some white:








You can see that three of these are showing a really respectable amount of white for pushing three months old. Mid-March we'll find out for sure, when they turn four months. That's when the Sussex should "spot up" and the Cheeto offspring generally lost their white. Speaking of Sussex, here's a neat pic, but I don't hold out a ton of hope on this one:




Pure Speckled Sussex pullet on the right, Aloha pullet of same age on the left. Generally, the buff ones with little spots like this have lost all the Mottling at four to five months old. What I love in this pic is how similar they are in size/form except for the dramatic color difference. If only she would keep the spotting . . . . but not likely from past results.

I am pretty sure this Buff one could be a pure Swedish hen, and you can see, not a lot of white on her, either:




This is one of the hens that does show promise:



I would like to grow ALL of these 30+ out to adulthood to see what happens, but unfortunately, I'm not set up to grow out that many at once! I usually hatch about 25 and have culled down to about 10 by this point.

So it's looking like I may have to cull way earlier than I'd like and start paring down on these, because I just don't have room. My "main" coop was designed for about 25 adults and it's full, and the other breeder pen is stuffed, too. So I've been compensating by letting the babies all roam my backyard. It's crazy out there! It's actually kind of fun and entertaining having a swarm of youngsters everywhere, but it's totally out of hand.

And now, my boyfriend's friend is staying with us for a while. No biggie there. Except, his adult 20's son may be staying for a bit too. With his pit bull. Ahhh, nothing like the stupidity of a twenty-something who feels the need to rescue a stray dog when he, himself, is technically "homeless". *Sigh.* To be fair the dog is pretty mellow, but he has never been around chickens. My adults are all cooped and safe, and the babies have their pen, but no way is that baby pen big enough to hold them in there all day long, day in and day out. And as "mellow" as the Pit Bull is, no way am I trusting that dog, either!!!!

So, I told the boyfriend that when he gets back (all of them are camping this week) if the son stays for more than a few days, we have to build another coop ASAP when he gets back. In the meantime, I'll have to close the doggy door to all dogs (including my chicken-safe trio) so the chicks can run the backyard, and have the kid take his dog out to our front yard to "do his business" during the day when the teen peeps are running amuck.

But yeah, looks like I need to re-home at least 10 or so chicks, right now, and it's going to be brutal trying to decide who goes, being as I don't know which ones are going to be hit with the dreaded "spot fade" next month, and which ones might actually keep their color? Hmmmm . . . . .

 

[alohachickens]

If these 11 are the only ones going in then it should be okay. I had a White Rock on time that covered 13 hens. When I set all but three were fertile.

I hope you're right, Draye!

My Swedish boy is kind of a goofball, and gets really scattered. If he was a person, he'd be the guy asking "Where's my glasses?" while wearing them on his forehead.

LOL!

 

[Deerfield Acres]

alohachickens, I wish you could ship your culls up here. I've got some people who would love to have them. It's nice this week but getting colder this weekend again. Larger birds should handle the chill better so it's something to think about. If you could find out how much it would cost to get them here, I'll consider covering the expense and the cost of the birds. We really could use some colorful Aloha girls. Shoot me a price and I'll check with my Chief Financial Officer.

 

[alohachickens]

alohachickens, I wish you could ship your culls up here. I've got some people who would love to have them. It's nice this week but getting colder this weekend again. Larger birds should handle the chill better so it's something to think about. If you could find out how much it would cost to get them here, I'll consider covering the expense and the cost of the birds. We really could use some colorful Aloha girls. Shoot me a price and I'll check with my Chief Financial Officer.

Culls? Sweetie, you don't get culls. Nothing but the BEST for you!!!! Next month you'll have big box of these headed your way.

I'm thinking of taking a few of the most "plain" hens and asking if my neighbor Raymond would like more? Every cull that I gave him last year is still alive and well.

That way if any of the boring hens do "blossom" with age, we'd still have access to them. And if they don't, well they would still have a nice home. I might leave a note on his door today.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

I was thinking of them being closer to maturity and from the looks of all those spotty birds, your culls may be something we could put to work. However, you know better than I!

 

[notinoz2007]

i wish i could come get a few but my yard is maxed out.
my friends in phoenix have the room if you would need to, or even want to, farm them out there. we found out last week that they have at least 8 roosters, probably more. and one looks just like my pullet turned cockerel, without the twisty tail. what do you think about using him for the project? he has fantastic size for an almost 4 month old. yellow legs, white spots - he is on the dark side tho, looks a lot like the swedish flower.
i am thinking the introduction of swedish flower blood is making it more difficult to spot the roosters at an early age. is that possible? of the 9 that i gave them a few months ago i was sure there was only one roo, maybe 2. turns out there were 5.

 

[alohachickens]

i wish i could come get a few but my yard is maxed out.
my friends in phoenix have the room if you would need to, or even want to, farm them out there. we found out last week that they have at least 8 roosters, probably more. and one looks just like my pullet turned cockerel, without the twisty tail. what do you think about using him for the project? he has fantastic size for an almost 4 month old. yellow legs, white spots - he is on the dark side tho, looks a lot like the swedish flower.
i am thinking the introduction of swedish flower blood is making it more difficult to spot the roosters at an early age. is that possible? of the 9 that i gave them a few months ago i was sure there was only one roo, maybe 2. turns out there were 5.

Great news, my neighbor Raymond is taking the culls! He is going to build a bigger coop, and I'll be giving him about 10 or so total. Five or six Aloha hens, various gold/red/light brown colors with small spots, to see if they keep the spots or lose them. And the two pure Sussex, because honestly I already know how minimal the spotting is on the Privett hatchery Sussex stock. There was a third female Sussex who was unusually light as a chick (she popped right out at me at the feed store, a bright spot in a sea of dark brown) but of course when that illness ran through, who is the one Sussex chick that I lost? Yep, her. ARRRGH.

I'll also give him two roos, plus two "probably roos" that I'm pretty positive are small but SUPER colorful boys. The two "for sure" roos I gave him are BIG, though they aren't as colorful as the two tiny probably-roos. I figure if he can keep all four another couple of months, see if the big ones keep their color, and if the small ones gain the size? LOL.

Notinoz, if you see any nice roos, take a photo! I would love to see pics of anything that looks promising. Although it's going to be hard to beat the two "keeper" roos that I held back from this batch? I'm so thrilled with my two new boys! They are so gorgeous!

The hens from this batch, so far just one really makes me say "WOW". The rest are just "nice". But hens can sometimes blossom late, so we'll see.

Yesterday, after I set aside the four roos for Raymond, and two for me, I was still left with a HUGE number of gorgeous extra boys. Instead of doing the usual Craigslist ad where I "dump" a bunch of the culled roosters dirt-cheap to someone who is going to butcher and eat them, I went through the extra effort to call Pratt's feeds and take 11 extra roosters and drive them over there. Not only did they pay me pretty well for them, (recouping a bit of the feed costs) this way a few of them may end up in safe homes.

Who knows? Maybe a random Aloha will pop up someday as a result. LOL! At any rate, they charge $12 for roosters, so at that price it makes for an expensive meal. Much more likely they will end up as flock-leaders as Pratt's only sells pullet chicks, so folks who can own roosters do come in there to buy boys.

So, happy news for ALL the culls.