The Aloha Chicken Project

[alohachickens]

Overcast light was good for photos yesterday. Wanted to show more pics of the chest of Raymond's Roo. Yes, he is barred, but look at the amount of white on his chest and the lack of black color on there. He contains absolutely zero Swedish Flower blood. I have him in with my Mille Swedish hens (two purebred) and some light half Swedish half Aloha hens. I am hoping he will increase the amount of white on the chicks and keep the size and base colors light. Unfortunately, laying has slowed in that pen this last week. I guess the Swedish did not appreciate the 90 degree temps. Laying is still going like crazy on the smaller foundation Aloha hens and the Sussex.

 

[alohachickens]

As promised, photos of the Little Yellow Legs pen. I'll have to go back and review what hens were in the breeder pen, I can't remember if there were any Swedish in there or not? I have already culled 8 chicks. Six looked to be roos and they DID have color, and plenty of it. Two looked to be hens, were culled for having gray legs and too little white. There is one almost solid orange hen with dark gray legs in there that I missed, and I also missed one "cull" roo. If the kids come back I'll give them those two as well.

I kept two of the largest roos with yellow legs and tons of white, to grow out. One baby roo is great looking with tons of white, and bright yellow legs. He is also the most calm and personable of all the chicks.

Two hatchery NHR chicks are in the mix. One of them is the chick standing in the feed dish!!!

 

[alohachickens]

A few photos of the breeder pen with the little Pumpkin rooster. Not great pics, sorry!

The pic below shows a yellow hen behind Pumpkin who is a daughter of Cheeto.
She didn't get any white on her but her size is good and I know she carries the genes for spots and yellow legs.
The chicks for sure won't have black, but will they have spots? The Cheeto line has been known for "dropping" the color at four months.





Above: There is a half-Welsummer hen behind him. She is half Aloha and has a couple white feathers. Lays neat dark eggs. Bigger eggs than most Alohas.

I also ended up putting "Beauty" in there with him. Really wanted to cross Beauty with Raymond's rooster but she refuses to stay in that pen. I can not figure out how she escapes? I have covered every hole that I can find. Beauty is a chicken mastermind! But this pen has no escape routes so she's stuck in there with Pumpkin for sure now!!!


Beauty is the hen in front with her head down. She has very little black so their chicks should be pretty light in color. Beauty is "almost" perfect - so close to being a real Aloha. She is big in size and bright in color, but her downsides are she lacks yellow legs and I wish she had more spotting. Pumpkin may give her chicks yellow legs and more spots, but I'm afraid his small size will drag her chicks back down to the "old" too-small size range.

That's why I was hoping to pen her with Raymond's roo, he has spots and yellow legs AND bigger size. I sure wish I knew how she keeps managing to escape that pen! No other chicken has figured it out but her?

 

[HEChicken]

In the last few months I've been doing a ton of research on everything chicken related. Learning is so much fun! Some of what I read pertains to established breeds but some I think is applicable to starting out with the creation of brand new breed, and in the hopes of generating some useful discussion, I thought I'd bring a couple of things to the table to see what those of you who have been doing this awhile think about it.

Pullet Eggs
Many experienced breeders attempting to improve their breed of choice, state that they don't like to hatch pullet eggs. Among the reasons given: birth defects (curled toes, crossed beak etc.), overall weak constitution and an inability to define at the age of a pullet, whether she will mature into a decent representation of her breed. Some of these serious breeders won't hatch any egg except those out of two year old hens. This because they have fully matured (so type, color can be better assessed) and have gone through their first molt, molting out any remaining pullet coloration.

In our hurry to get to our destination, hatching pullet eggs has become our "norm" but I'm curious if any of you have found any of the above to have some validity here for us too?

Male Female Genetics
There appears to be a link between gender and what attributes are passed onto the offspring and I thought this might be particularly relevant to us. The female most heavily influences type, size, skin color, voice and temperament. The male provides the head and feather color. Combs and egg color seem to be a blend (that makes sense since an olive egger is a combination of a dark egg layer and a blue/green egg layer).

It seems we could use this information to our advantage, choosing females who have the best type, size and yellow legs, without worrying about their feather color, then choosing a male with great color, and not worrying so much about his size.

Comments?

 

[tazcat70]

Heather, I would like to know more about the male female genetics.

Here is a picture of my Aloha roo.

 

[HEChicken]

Heather, I would like to know more about the male female genetics.

Here is a picture of my Aloha roo.

Here is a quote from another thread on the subject:

Quote: What I don't know is whether the mottling gene is male, female or shared. I suspect shared since it seems that either parent can pass it on, but I'd really like to know for sure. I'll see if I can find out.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Sorry to just switch gears in the middle of a discussion but I just found out I'm next on the list for Buff Sussex!!!!!! I'm getting 10 of them and I'm so excited. They can't be shipped right now because they are in the middle of a snowstorm and low temps. As soon as the weather comes around, I'm up. I couldn't be happier. It's just been such a long struggle to find some of these and then a long wait. Finally, we'll have a Buff color that shouldn't fade when crossed with the Alohas! These birds are coming from Colorado.

The Speckled Sussex are coming from Idaho and will probably make it within a week or two of the Buffs. These won't have tons of white but the white will be well placed all over, if I get the right chicks. It will be enough that crossing with a very white Aloha should work out and I'll have some really nice typey birds.

This has been the craziest spring! We have ice all over everything this morning and it was nice and warm just yesterday. What a bummer!



The subject of which bird contributes size is very confusing. I've been reading in my breeding books (from the early 1900's) that the cockbird contributes more to the size. I'll have to look up that passage.

 

[alohachickens]

HEChicken, I love that you are doing more research. Keep it up!

I did try an experiment last year to try and see who contributes more to size - the hen or rooster? It also was hopefully to help us learn more about how strong the Mahogany color in the Sussex was, and whether it can be overcome in just one generation.

So we took a buff barred, small gamey Aloha rooster, and crossed him to big, fat, plump spotty Meyer Sussex hens. And then, go figure, the second we get the pen set up for two weeks and start collecting eggs, the heat came on and the hens STOPPED LAYING. Arrrrgh! So I think we got only eight total eggs for the entire week? (Out of FIVE hens!!!)

Notinoz hatched the eggs, and I wasn't going to insist on her keeping the roos as that was not a cross for roos anyway! The result was only two hen. Both were small-ish, and one was really dark in color. So the size of the hen did not magically make the chicks bigger! It was a small test group however, so not really a good scientific survey. At least we tried! She kept the dark hen, who is actually kind of cool. It might be fun to see if she ever has bigger chicks someday, if crossed to another big rooster. Will the fact she is 1/2 "big chicken" show in HER babies? Hmmm!

Then, I crossed my small Aloha hens with the tall Swedish rooster. The chicks ended up in-between sizes. But yes, there was a very noticeable improvement in size on the first generation cross between large Swedish roo and small Aloha hens. So from this very small, very un-scientific study, I'm leaning towards the rooster having more influence on size.

As for amount of spotting or color . . . . ??????? In this test case, the hens were all dark and the roo was light, but the hen that Notinoz kept was extremely dark! Weird. Unpredictable Alohas!!!

 

[alohachickens]

Sorry to just switch gears in the middle of a discussion but I just found out I'm next on the list for Buff Sussex!!!!!! I'm getting 10 of them and I'm so excited. They can't be shipped right now because they are in the middle of a snowstorm and low temps. As soon as the weather comes around, I'm up. I couldn't be happier. It's just been such a long struggle to find some of these and then a long wait. Finally, we'll have a Buff color that shouldn't fade when crossed with the Alohas! These birds are coming from Colorado.

The Speckled Sussex are coming from Idaho and will probably make it within a week or two of the Buffs. These won't have tons of white but the white will be well placed all over, if I get the right chicks. It will be enough that crossing with a very white Aloha should work out and I'll have some really nice typey birds.

Buff Sussex Buff Sussex Buff Sussex!!!

WHOOOT!!!

Excited about you getting some good-quality Speckleds, too! Looking at the photo (that I just posted) of the "improved" quality Sussex rooster, well, he didn't have much for color but wow, he was huge and his body type really was outstanding! The rooster from Garry Farms has COLOR galore, but that other rooster had QUALITY. Now how do we get all of this on one chicken? Ha ha ha ha . . . .

I would love some eggs from a Buff/Speckled cross . . . that would be awesome.

 

[alohachickens]

Pullet Eggs
Many experienced breeders attempting to improve their breed of choice, state that they don't like to hatch pullet eggs. Among the reasons given: birth defects (curled toes, crossed beak etc.), overall weak constitution and an inability to define at the age of a pullet, whether she will mature into a decent representation of her breed. Some of these serious breeders won't hatch any egg except those out of two year old hens. This because they have fully matured (so type, color can be better assessed) and have gone through their first molt, molting out any remaining pullet coloration.

In our hurry to get to our destination, hatching pullet eggs has become our "norm" but I'm curious if any of you have found any of the above to have some validity here for us too?

Comments?

I have heard this and I feel that yes it has merit for sure! However, with the high mortality rate of chickens in general, we often don't have the luxury of waiting that long, unfortunately.

I do try to wait until the hens are a few months into laying to hatch the eggs if at all possible. Now the interesting thing is people are starting to observe that Swedish hens lay really huge eggs the SECOND year. This is certainly true with my pure Swedish hen. Last year her eggs were big. This year, here eggs are HUGE. I would think this could give her chicks an extra advantage - more room to grow, more food in utero, etc. So, I have been trying to hatch out every single one of these "jumbo" eggs. I picked some out to hatch in the group of chicks that I'm raising now. I noticed several chicks were really HUGE for Aloha chicks - very fat, round bellies. I wonder if these were her babies? No way of telling unless I could hatch out a small test group, and unfortunately, it's not effective to set up and raise just six or so chicks at a time when I could raise 25-35 for the same amount of effort.

But - I have never noticed a huge increase in size of Aloha eggs from year one to year two. Or even from month #2 of lay to year #2. I think pretty much "what you see is what you get" is how Aloha eggs go, so I doubt it makes as much of a difference on Alohas?

I am hoping that Notinoz and maybe friends of hers (or teachers at the school where she loans out her incubator) can maybe help us with some of these test batches. I think it could be a good way for science teachers to help teach students about genetics.