The Aloha Chicken Project

[Deerfield Acres]

The top rooster is looking really interesting - and he doesn't contain any Swedish, right? While I'd love to see a ton of spots, he has a pretty decent look about him. He looks very much (in body) like a lot of the young "real" Swedish look like before they fill out. I would love to see him with some really spotty Sussex hens. The chicks would all have pink legs, and the Mahogany would surely overwhelm the first generation. Yet maybe his color would come back in future offspring. It's really interesting, he has a very different color in body and leg than a Sussex. If you just added more spots plus a bit more size and "roundness" too him, he would be really, really nice . . .

And I still love that bottom hen! Not sure what I'd breed her to here, possibly my pure Swedish roo, would make a fun cross. Her color is great, but she also has a very pleasing body shape too, doesn't she? Not "gamey" at all.

The others are nice too! But these two are especially interesting to me. Are you going to cross them together or is that cross just going to make chicks that are too small?

I'm toying with a couple different ideas for her. While I'm thinking things over, she's in the Aloha pen with the yellow legged guy. You are right in that he has no Swedish at all. He is part Aloha and part New Hamp. He is still growing so I think he will fill out well enough -- I would love it if he had more white! He started out with lots of white and it faded but at least he retained this much. His legs really are a nice bright yellow so I'm pleased with that as well.

So my thoughts on the beautiful round Aloha hen -- I love her shape and the lightness of her coloring. Right now she's in an all Aloha pen.I won't get much size increase, if any, of this cross, but I would like to see what the colors do. This roo is from the puffy cheek loudly colored roo crossed with a New Hamp. Not a quality New Hamp but a New Hamp just the same. I want to see what taking him back to each of the birds I now have will do. The solid red hen carries spots, so I'm hoping crossed with him I'll get some permanent spots on a red body. The two ginger girls, one lighter and one darker have lots of white to bring to the mix so I'm hoping with as much spotting as he carries, their chicks will get white spots that stick. The awful little hen that is just odd, I have no idea what's going to happen but I'm dying to find out.

After getting some of the Aloha to Aloha eggs, I'm considering mixing up the Alohas with the Germans once they start laying. Just switching up the roosters, so I would get a size increase, solid red birds that carry mottling with yellow legs, then take them back to any Alohas I have on hand to reintroduce the coloring. If I get any birds with lots of white from the hatch outs at Heather's, I would like to keep one or two to lighten things up once I have spotting on red seriously in place. This fall I could take the German crosses back to some really white Alohas that are usually smaller and then come up with something to really brag about to start 2014 with. By that time I should have a handful of Mille Sussex and 2014 should be my year to have Deerfield Alohas of good size and decent type. Crossing the red/white Alohas with yellow legs of a medium size, with the golden, extra large, Mille Fleur Sussex should lighten and brighten the red. It's a long range plan that I'm really excited about!

Back to the round Aloha hen. I may decide to put her in with my Swedish for a period of time. However, I may try it with the whitest spotted bird, who also happens to have more blue on him. His white spots are actually white and he has some white tail feathers so it may be worth a shot. He's a good looking bird, good size, wide back, no wry tail, bright yellow legs, great comb. He's a bit flatter in the chest than I like, but I'm partial to the roundness like the Sussex. I have another Swedish roo right now who is maturing much slower, has less white, black in place of blue. He has good structure, no wry tail, but I'm sure he's not fertile yet.

The Wellies are small enough that I really don't think they will contribute much to size and so I've ruled them out as not being of any use. I love their eggs though!

 

[alohachickens]

Oh yeah, that puffy cheek roo had lots of spots, as did his mom. That roo's mom is still next door at Raymond's. Your red roo's grandma is a SUPER colorful girl for sure. I should try and get new pics for you of "grandma hen" at Raymond's when I see her on his fence. So your gut is right, that hen with that rooster may not make huge chicks, but the "ingredients" will be there for really colorful chicks in their offspring.

The other nice thing about that cross, and that rooster (now that you told me who his daddy was!) is the spotty hen next door is not part of my flock. (I just tossed some of Raymond's eggs from next door into the eggs I sent to Kansas, on a whim!) and then you went and crossed her son to an outside hatchery NHR hen, that the offspring of that rooster will be much more distantly related to the eggs that I gave Heather to hatch. Outside bloodlines, yay.

I only was able to track the bloodlines because Raymond's hen next door was the only puffy-cheeked hen left, Stephen and I culled EVERY other one. So when you got the spotty roo with the puffy cheeks, it was easy to know who the mom was. In retrospect, it was a good thing because now we know the pedigree of your rooster!

BTW, Laree saw that hen next door (your roo's grandma) and went gaga over her. She says she's going a slightly different direction breeding her Alohas to Ameraucanas, to make spotty Ameraucanas. They have puffy cheeks and dark legs. I told her they sound great as a colorful thing to integrate into Ameraucanas, which really are just mutts anyway so why not? LOL. I haven't seen her latest generation of spotty Aloha "Easter Eggers" yet, but she says they look wonderful.

 

[alohachickens]

After getting some of the Aloha to Aloha eggs, I'm considering mixing up the Alohas with the Germans once they start laying. Just switching up the roosters, so I would get a size increase, solid red birds that carry mottling with yellow legs, then take them back to any Alohas I have on hand to reintroduce the coloring. If I get any birds with lots of white from the hatch outs at Heather's, I would like to keep one or two to lighten things up once I have spotting on red seriously in place. This fall I could take the German crosses back to some really white Alohas that are usually smaller and then come up with something to really brag about to start 2014 with. By that time I should have a handful of Mille Sussex and 2014 should be my year to have Deerfield Alohas of good size and decent type. Crossing the red/white Alohas with yellow legs of a medium size, with the golden, extra large, Mille Fleur Sussex should lighten and brighten the red. It's a long range plan that I'm really excited about!

I just did some research about breeding Banties to Big Chickens to try and understand the gene better. It seems to say that using a BIG rooster over smaller hens works better than the other way around!

This sounds totally correct . . . though it defies the logic in my head that says a big egg would make a bigger chick. LOL.

Anyway, when little "Oddball" the banty was bred to a BIG rooster, she gave us chicks that weren't huge, but weren't small either. Her son in particular (Vanilla) was really decent size.

However, when I took Vanilla's (smaller) son and bred him to the Aloha hens, the size went way, way down. Now I see that using a Sussex roo (or New Hampshire or whatever) would have helped increase size even more, and that's what I should have used with the smaller hens.

So yeah, if you kept the most colorful hens (even if small) and bred to a GIANT German New Hamp, bet you'd see a good size boost!

Another note: We tried a small Aloha roo over big Sussex hens, and we got only a few eggs to hatch, but Notinoz's hen "Petey" is the result, and she's really small.

Meanwhile, I took my little Aloha hens and crossed them with a big Swedish roo, and those F1 hens showed a really big increase in size.

And, giant Nui and Stephen's good sized Sussex/Aloha hens were made by crossing small Alohas with a huge (but not especially spotty) private-breeder line Sussex rooster.

So after this research, let's see how BIG we can find our roosters! LOL. That seems to help a bunch!

I feel like maybe we're finally starting to figure some of this stuff out. Though I know there's still a ton to learn, yikes . . .

 

[alohachickens]

And now that we are seeing that big roos make a big difference isn't going to be a blast to see Taz's "Jubilee Orp" giant roo crossed with colorful, tiny Aloha hens? LOL!!!

 

[alohachickens]

Chicks are hatching here!

It started as me wanting to hatch a group from this small, mostly-white roo over Stephen's pure (and very spotty) Meyer Sussex hens, to see if he added more white to the chicks. We planned on culling this roo, as his type was terrible, he was only a stop-gap until the next guy matured. (The better roo is in the pen now.) But, because we're working with such a small gene pool, I thought adding offspring of some "different" roos like Little Yellow Legs and this Small Gamey White guy might help expand the gene pool a bit, even if we get just one or two good chicks out of the mix. (At least hatch a few of the chicks before that roo was permanently deleted from the program.)

However, only 8 eggs had been collected, not enough to really see "real" results anyway or to judge if he added more white spotting or not. So, I added some eggs from Stephen's Sussex/Aloha hens with a Swedish roo over them from the breeder pen next door. Those chicks might be very large, being 3/4ths "big chicken". But that still only gave me about 15 eggs and I can raise a batch of up to 35 chicks at one time. Being as I cull so heavily, better to start with a lot more if possible.

I had a big PILE of eggs here, and the pure Swedish hens lay noticeably bigger eggs than the Alohas. (Aloha eggs are medium, the same size as Stephen's Meyer Sussex but my Swedish hen lays large or even "jumbo" size eggs.) So . . . I grabbed about 10 of those! They could be pure Swedish, if the DNA is from the Swedish roo, or dad might be the new (big) Aloha roo from next door. (I hope.) But even if I get more Mille Swedish hens, that will be OK, too. They would be great to breed back to colorful Aloha roos. I also picked out a few really big eggs from the Aloha pen that I suspect are from the half Swedish half Aloha hens.

There are about 32 eggs in there and already 4 chicks have hatched. (A day early.) I always forget that Alohas hatch in 20 days, even as our eggs get bigger that stands true.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Oh yeah, that puffy cheek roo had lots of spots, as did his mom. That roo's mom is still next door at Raymond's. Your red roo's grandma is a SUPER colorful girl for sure. I should try and get new pics for you of "grandma hen" at Raymond's when I see her on his fence. So your gut is right, that hen with that rooster may not make huge chicks, but the "ingredients" will be there for really colorful chicks in their offspring.

The other nice thing about that cross, and that rooster (now that you told me who his daddy was!) is the spotty hen next door is not part of my flock. (I just tossed some of Raymond's eggs from next door into the eggs I sent to Kansas, on a whim!) and then you went and crossed her son to an outside hatchery NHR hen, that the offspring of that rooster will be much more distantly related to the eggs that I gave Heather to hatch. Outside bloodlines, yay.

I only was able to track the bloodlines because Raymond's hen next door was the only puffy-cheeked hen left, Stephen and I culled EVERY other one. So when you got the spotty roo with the puffy cheeks, it was easy to know who the mom was. In retrospect, it was a good thing because now we know the pedigree of your rooster!

BTW, Laree saw that hen next door (your roo's grandma) and went gaga over her. She says she's going a slightly different direction breeding her Alohas to Ameraucanas, to make spotty Ameraucanas. They have puffy cheeks and dark legs. I told her they sound great as a colorful thing to integrate into Ameraucanas, which really are just mutts anyway so why not? LOL. I haven't seen her latest generation of spotty Aloha "Easter Eggers" yet, but she says they look wonderful.

That's really exciting to know that my roo has completely different bloodlines than Heather's hatch! That's awesome! I would really like to see a pic of the Grandma, too.

Laree must be having a blast with her spotted EE's! They take on spotting so well and already have the variation of colors in their background. I would love some pics of her birds.

I just did some research about breeding Banties to Big Chickens to try and understand the gene better. It seems to say that using a BIG rooster over smaller hens works better than the other way around!

This sounds totally correct . . . though it defies the logic in my head that says a big egg would make a bigger chick. LOL.

Anyway, when little "Oddball" the banty was bred to a BIG rooster, she gave us chicks that weren't huge, but weren't small either. Her son in particular (Vanilla) was really decent size.

However, when I took Vanilla's (smaller) son and bred him to the Aloha hens, the size went way, way down. Now I see that using a Sussex roo (or New Hampshire or whatever) would have helped increase size even more, and that's what I should have used with the smaller hens.

So yeah, if you kept the most colorful hens (even if small) and bred to a GIANT German New Hamp, bet you'd see a good size boost!

Another note: We tried a small Aloha roo over big Sussex hens, and we got only a few eggs to hatch, but Notinoz's hen "Petey" is the result, and she's really small.

Meanwhile, I took my little Aloha hens and crossed them with a big Swedish roo, and those F1 hens showed a really big increase in size.

And, giant Nui and Stephen's good sized Sussex/Aloha hens were made by crossing small Alohas with a huge (but not especially spotty) private-breeder line Sussex rooster.

So after this research, let's see how BIG we can find our roosters! LOL. That seems to help a bunch!

I feel like maybe we're finally starting to figure some of this stuff out. Though I know there's still a ton to learn, yikes . . .

Here's a pic of the German New Hamp roo I'll be crossing over my Alohas. He's big! I pretty much like everything about this rooster, heaven knows I had a ton of them to choose from. I like his back, his legs, the tail set is right for a German. He's still growing so he's going to be huge. He's making mating attempts with his non-laying hens. He is standing in a 2.5 foot section of his 5' square pen, just to give you an idea of his size.

And now that we are seeing that big roos make a big difference isn't going to be a blast to see Taz's "Jubilee Orp" giant roo crossed with colorful, tiny Aloha hens? LOL!!!

That is going to be a hoot for sure! Can't wait! Should be fantastic!

I would really like to have some of Nui and Beauty's chicks crossed with an Aloha roo with lots of white, in the mix that comes here. I love the look of both of them and even if their chicks aren't huge, I need more white here with all the New Hamp influence. If I can get just a handful of super spotty girls with yellow legs of a medium size, I'll be ready to cross the GNH/Aloha crosses with them and maybe get a nice surprise this fall. I would use the largest GNH/Aloha cross roo with the yellow leg medium size, tons of white girls and I think I would end up with something very exciting! Once I get even one large girl and one large boy with lots of white, with a decent comb, yellow legs and correct structure, I could linebreed and start to work on getting rid of the faults and producing consistency in type and color. I want large ginger girls first. I would love to see Alohas be accepted into the SOP with red, buff, or black bodies with white tipped feathers. I would also like to see a mille fleur color also.

I can dream, can't I?

 

[HEChicken]

The only fault I really see in him is his comb but other than that he is looking fantastic. Does he have a name? (DH wants to name him Paul or Atreida if he doesn't already have one, both of whom are strong characters in the book he is currently reading).

I am at the

stage of this hatch - you know the one where you keep telling yourself to just walk away and get busy with another project for a few hours but keep finding yourself drawn back irresistibly to stare at pips that haven't changed since 5 minutes ago? I had one chick hatch at 11pm last night. His pip was a giant 1" hole (literally) in the shell yesterday morning, then throughout the day I kept seeing movement through that huge hole. At 10:55pm nothing had changed and I went up to chat with DD and her two friends who were here for a sleepover, and when I returned at 11pm, he had hatched. He must have just braced his feet against the end of the shell and pushed and busted that shell right open - I have never [not] seen a chick hatch that fast. I went to bed expecting to wake and find multiple chicks but by this morning he was still the only chick. He is now 12 hours old and yet to be joined by a sibling. He is fluffed out and walking quite well, grooming occasionally but otherwise very quiet - not even calling to the rest of them to hurry up and hatch. He has a huge comb for a newly hatched chick and quite large feet, leaving little question as to gender. However there are quite a few other pips and still a lot of rocking so I imagine they will all get going if I can just quit watching them for awhile. The biggest surprise this morning is the egg that I said on candling looked like it quit on about day 10. I'm so glad I left it in because it is one of the pipped eggs this morning!!!

 

[Deerfield Acres]

HEChicken, I think he's supposed to have only 5 points, isn't it? I just got my SOP book yesterday but I've been so busy I haven't had much time to really enjoy it. I will name him Paul since he currently doesn't have a name! Paul it is.

I know what you mean about being anxious at this stage of the hatch. It's a terrible anxiety! I have to just walk away. Just remember, any chicks at all that we get from these eggs is pure bonus, so try not to worry too much.

 

[alohachickens]

Here's a pic of the German New Hamp roo I'll be crossing over my Alohas. He's big! I pretty much like everything about this rooster, heaven knows I had a ton of them to choose from.



I would really like to have some of Nui and Beauty's chicks crossed with an Aloha roo with lots of white, in the mix that comes here. . . . .

. I want large ginger girls first. I would love to see Alohas be accepted into the SOP with red, buff, or black bodies with white tipped feathers. I would also like to see a mille fleur color also.

That's a really nice rooster you have there! Looks fantastic!

I may be able to help you on the Nui/Beauty chicks? I have two Aloha roos here that would qualify as having "tons of white". One is the "new" boy, who is orange/white with tons of white. I thought he was going to be pretty large, but right now the growth on all the "teens" has kind of stalled out. They are five months old, so I don't know how much more they may grow? Currently, he's pretty small. But they still do have about one more month, so we'll see how it goes. Anyway, he's already hopping on the teen hens. Since he's been showing a lot of early initiative, I put a smaller ginger girl in there with him (in his own pen so he won't get picked on by the adult roos) to try and build confidence. I'm hoping to get him going early if possible. Nui and Beauty are really bossy gals, though! Anyway, I'm hoping that after a few weeks without any competition from other boys, he might "step up" fairly early.

I also have Raymond's roo, who has barring but everything else is there. Yellow legs, lots of spots. However, Beauty is too crafty and found a way to escape from that breeder pen. (True Aloha blood there!) None of the other hens have figured that out. So now I have to figure a way to shore the pen up. Luckily, Nui is OK hanging out in any pen as long as it has food in it. That girl loves her chow! Ha ha ha.

If Nui and Beauty freak the young rooster out, or if you don't want the barring from Raymond's roo, we've still got the more mature mostly-white roo (half Swedish half Aloha) over Stephen's spotty Meyer Sussex hens. Do note that none of these would have yellow legs, and according to the Punnet square, only 1/4 will carry the yellow leg gene. But they could have lots of spots! And they'd be 3/4ths "big chicken" so they will have size.

I would like to get you some of these chicks (or eggs if it gets too hot to ship live) by mid/late May if possible. It could work. It would be kind of iffy the later we go into May, but I do remember my first batch of chicks was shipped to me from Ideal in the month of May, so chicks do ship in/out of here in May sometimes.

With the brutal Phoenix heat on the horizon, I really want to get some of this "latest and greatest" generation put away in other "safe homes" just in case. Come May, we're entering our dangerous time.

For Aloha colors, I'd like to see the "Ginger" color (which is mottled with . . . something? No one has been able to tell me genetically what the base color is) and Mille of course, plus Confetti, and red-and-white colored . . we have to come up with a name for the red and white color. Checkered? I don't know? But the red and white, ideally I'd love it to be a really flashing more "exchequer" patterned red and white color. I have a roo here who is small but colored really nice like that.

I also have two hens that are mostly yellow and white - one nicely spotted and one with fewer spots. I'd love to get some kind of yellow + white color but not sure how to get that shade reliably just yet.

And black and white could be a lot more fun with the Dun gene. It could give us chocolate/white chickens, plus one dose chocolate would be coco/white. (How cute would that be? Hot cocoa with marshmallows, ha ha.) Two doses of chocolate makes "Khaki" which is not as yellow as buff but could make a passing resemblance to Buff/White if we wanted to take the cheater's "easy" way to making a buff mottled something. LOL!!!

But since Black is so dominant, and we have so many good potential black-colored breeds to work with already (even just a Java/Exchequer mix could give us really nice dual-purpose black and whites in one generation) I'm OK putting that project on the back burner for a while!

 

[HEChicken]

Thought I'd drop in with a quick update on the Aloha hatch. Of the 18 eggs originally set, I discarded 1 clear at the 10-day mark. 17 went into lockdown and so far I have 15 live chicks. One more egg is pipped and rocking. The last egg I thought was a dud but I swear I saw it rock a little while ago so I'll leave it a little longer.

What has surprised me with this hatch is how drawn out it has been. I'm used to eggs under a broody hatching on day 19, and in my incubator on day 20. But a large number of these Alohas haven't hatched until day 21. I would have thought the temp in the incubator was a little off, if I hadn't had that one hatch on day 19. So - I guess these guys just take their time more than some other breeds?

The other surprising thing is that they don't respond to food and water the way I am accustomed to. Although chicks *can* go 72 hours without eating or drinking after hatch, my experience with past hatches is that they are willing to partake if it is offered to them immediately. These guys have so far shown pretty much no interest. Normally if I dip a chick's beak in water a time or two, a light bulb goes off and when I set them down, they drink more by themselves. So far the only water these guys have had is when I've dipped their beaks - when I set them down they just stand there, or move back under the EcoGlow. Also, I usually get them interested in eating by putting a little food on the floor of the brooder and "pecking" with my finger, the way Mama Hen would peck to indicate she has food to share with them. Most chicks respond to the pecking by running over to see what I am pecking at, but these guys don't seem to understand that cue at all and just cock their heads from where they are standing and look at me. Oh well, I guess they'll get it eventually, when hunger and thirst set in.

Anyway, I'm thrilled with the hatch rate from these eggs, considering the distance they traveled to get here, and the sometimes bumpy road they took.