The Aloha Chicken Project

[notinoz2007]

this is him

 

[alohachickens]

I'm OK skipping on him, too. It's a shame but it seems some of the Swedish roos are turning out aggressive. Mine attacked me something fierce, but now my handsome Turkey will step in and keep him away if he tries to go after me! LOL! Good turkey boy!

My friend Laree had to re-home a Swedish roo for attacking her young son, and I've heard a few others on the Swedish threads mention aggression. Which is interesting because the Alohas have not shown this. Example, the rooster you brought over for me, from your friend's place, has never shown any sign of aggression. (He appears to be Aloha with a strong Sussex influence.) I have heard a couple of people mention aggressive Sussex, but my personal experience with Sussex has been good. Both the pure roos that I had on the property showed no aggression. Same with the Exchequer Leghorn crosses, but Leghorns are not known for aggression. I have seen some "posturing" from a couple of my Alohas here, but they have not physically made contact with me.

I was going to re-home the Aloha that you brought me, and also I have the half-Swedish half-Aloha roo who is mostly white, that I'm getting back from Stephen on Thursday. If you need a roo either of those may be options, but heck, as hot as it's getting now we probably won't get enough eggs to justify hatching. If it was me I'd try to save my neighbor's good graces for when it could do the most good. (In other words, if you are going to annoy them with a rooster, make it in October or something when the hens are laying strong and you can hatch out the most babies.)

I would suggest re-homing him ASAP so as to not annoy the neighbors . . . we have PLENTY of roosters to choose from, you should get one that works for your property.

 

[alohachickens]

ok sommer, disaster after disaster at my house.
i'm not sure what is going on but we have lost a chick every day for the past week. at first i thought they were too crowded, so i moved them to the grow out pen earlier than i planned. then i thought they werent catching on to the nipple waterer so put in an alternate water source. then i thought maybe they were getting too hot so i took out the heat lamp, but they are still passing away. usually i find one around 1 pm... .... they have plenty of food, water, temp is ideal, they have space to roam. i just dont get it anymore. the first 2 i kinda expected, they were small and i figured we would lose them early on. but these others are healthy and fine... anyway, i'm doing my best to keep them alive.

THIS just stinks! I wonder what is going on there? I wish I could help! We had some weirdness with some hatchery chicks that never were on my property, and went over to another BYC'ers house because I didn't want to mix them with the Alohas. (I can't tell a pure Sussex newborn from a half Sussex half Aloha newborn, ha ha ha!) We only had 7 survive out of 25 chicks. Yes you read that right. They have just been dropping off day by day. About a month old, now. Same deal, no reasonable explanation. A ton of people have also experienced this from time to time, it seems, read the comments in this blog:

http://boskydellfarm.blogspot.com/2008/05/baby-chicks-dying.html

What is weird is that most of the issues came with hatchery chicks, but not all. My last batch of Alohas are now umm, about 2-3 months old, and I didn't lose any that I recall? (Out of about 40 babies!)

So I can't figure it out, why some batches are so vigorous and some have issues. Same with hatching - a couple of months ago my hatch rate was awesome, now it's down to about 50-60 percent, even with eggs from various breeder pens. This last batch, I even split them off to use two of the table top incubators in addition to the big one, in case it was a bator issue. Same results, only about 50%-60% of the fertile eggs hatched out. Weird.

I need to get over to Derek's to pick out chicks, he says he's got about 300 chicks running amuck out there! (His Queen Creek property.) So if nothing else, we could go hand pick a few promising youngsters from those?

 

[alohachickens]

Just hatched these, was supposed to ship some to San Diego and our KS friends, but the postal person in charge wouldn't let them go, she said it was too hot. BOO!

So now they are going to Stephen's place.

 

[alohachickens]

Notinoz, duh, I forgot . . . we tried Tylan antibiotic on the hatchery Sussex, which finally did the trick and seemed to stop the endless flow of deaths. How many Aloha chicks do you have total? Let me know if it continues to happen, maybe we can try that for you next . . .

 

[notinoz2007]

last count was 26. i should count again, lol.
i havent lost any today so far

i'd be interested in going out to derreks when you go. we better go before it gets too hot tho!

 

[notinoz2007]

oh regarding hatching eggs. i started saving eggs from his pen last week when the neighbors stopped talking to me, lol. so i have 2 plus dozen. azkat is getting some for her broody hen, and i will incubate the lot probably this saturday, i have to schedule it around my many travel plans tho...

 

[5moore]

Sommer all the babies are doing great here. I'm going to try and take pics of all of them this coming weekend to post.

 

[alohachickens]

Sommer all the babies are doing great here. I'm going to try and take pics of all of them this coming weekend to post.

Oh that's great news! So glad we got yours out to you before they shut down the Live shipments . . . that guy who told me it was OK to ship if the night lows were under 80 degrees has now been replaced with a lady who is NOT ok with that, apparently . . . so future shipments of live babies are going to be even more tricky! The post office requires that the temps not be lower than 37 or higher than 85 for any leg of the trip. And here in early May, it was in the 90's out here in Arizona for the day temps, and you guys in Missouri were still getting snow! Holy cow, how am I supposed to account for those kind of temps??? Shoot!

Glad you KS and MO people are getting programs going out there, you are going to be well suited for shipping to the midwest and east, as you'll have more similar temps. I can still supply the SW and West Coast in the winter months . . . which would be a hard area for you guys to ship chicks to, anyway!

 

[alohachickens]

Here are a few photos of the Little Yellow Legs pen babies.

A bunch of them - but I'm getting ready to cull a few:


Going to cull the rooster that is closest to us, for not enough white. It's fading out as he ages. Also culling two hens for being smaller with not enough white. And culling a hen with an indistinct pattern plus gray legs. One or the other is tolerable but both is annoying. LOL.

So here's the better ones:


What appears to be a Ginger hen, with improved size, pink/yellow legs instead of gray, (carries yellow leg gene) and tons of white. Keeping my fingers crossed! Compare her to her sisters behind her, barely seen in this pic. See the difference, how bold her markings are? This is what I'm trying to get here. IF she keeps the white. Oh, and guess what? Expecting 106 by the end of the week, so now I have to start stressing over possible losses from the heat! Arrgh!