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I would LOVE if Alohas were to lay blue eggs, but it's going to be a huge challenge to introduce that gene without adding a bunch of stuff that we don't want.
Here's my early experiments. I did cross an awesome Blue Wheaten Ameraucana with my "foundation" 1/2 Aloha, 1/4 Speckled Sussex, 1/4 Exchequer rooster, Vanilla. This hen was a super layer of huge, sky blue eggs. Very large bodied and extremely productive, good layer in all weather. Overall, the kind of genes you'd want in a new breed.
Her baby was solid blue, from the Blue Wheaten mom. The solid is because of course she carried for spots, but it doesn't show the first generation. Baby had chipmunk cheeks, slate legs, and a funky comb. Much improved size, laid pale blue eggs, and was bred to a pure private breeder, high quality Speckled Sussex rooster. The result was two gorgeous hens that were blue and white with lovely bold mottling.
Unfortunately, that's when the great whatever-it-was (mold I think) hit the flock, and killed almost all the Alohas. I gathered every egg I could find before all the hens died, and hatched a new batch of chicks from those. But, the two blue-mottled hens were lost. One made it for quite a while, however, and I was able to hatch her chicks. She had a lovely daughter that I gave to Raymond, and a very spotty, puffy-cheeked rooster chick from that hen, was hatched by the Kansas crew. Deerfield crossed him with some of her hens, and she may have a few of the descendants.
Anyway, by the time we got rid of the pea comb. slate legs, and puffy cheeks, all traces of the blue egg color were also lost!
Our best bet was the University of Arkansas project that had production-style brown leghorns that laid blue eggs. I was not able to get eggs, as they were only giving them to 4H kids in the area. I was hoping to buy some eggs or chicks from a 4-H'er, but I do not know what happened to that flock? Some breeders are working on the blue-colored blue egg layers, but we need the BROWN LEGHORN line that laid blue eggs. If ANYONE on here wants to pursue that, PLEASE feel free!!!! The Brown Leghorn would be pretty much our only chance to keep the blue egg gene strong enough, as we would only need to add spots and a little body heft. Leghorns already have upright combs, fan tails, yellow legs. You could keep the Blue-Egg Laying Brown Leghorn bloodline at 50% to 75% and still add spots.
Cream Legbars have the right body shape, pretty much, and yellow legs. However, they are dominant (100%) for Barring, so you'd have to remove the Dominant Barring gene while introducing the Recessive Mottled gene. Not an easy task!
A good way would be to (for example) take a Mille Swedish hen (light color, yellow legs, mottling, upright comb, all good) and cross her to a Legbar roo. The chicks would all be barred. None would have any spots. They would basically look like bigger Cream Legbars. They could not be bred back to each other, as that would result in more 100% Barred babies. So, you would need to outcross to something "not barred."
Let's say you kept the hen-chicks from this first cross, and bred them to a nice spotty show quality Speckled Sussex. The result would be chicks that would be half barred, half not-barred. Half would have spots, half would not. You'd want to keep the chicks with no barring and +spots. Most would have pink legs thanks to Mr.Sussex, as the yellow leg gene is recessive.
Now you have 25% Cream Legbar and 75% "something else" chicks. They would be big and impressive in this scenario, bigger than Legbars and overall, good chickens at least. But there is still a lot of work to be done, because the Legbar (and the blue egg color) has now become diluted down. By this point, any trace of blue or olive will have greatly faded.
But, let's say you bred them back to your first cross rooster - the 1/2 Cream Legbar, 1/2 Mille Swedish. This final cross should result in chicks that are (again!) half Barred, half not-barred, and half spotted, and half not-spotted. Some with yellow legs, some with pink legs. SO, a tiny fraction (I think statistically maybe 20% or about 2 of 10 chicks hatched) would have no barring, plus spots, plus yellow legs. Hopefully these would have an increased amount of blue-egg genes. The total percentage of Cream Legbar by this generation would be about 37.5% if my math is correct? These may have enough blue egg genes to keep the color, but of course, the issue would be how do you expand the gene pool in the future? You'd need others working with Cream Legbars with Alohas to keep the influx of blue egg genes coming in.
So, my thought is that FIRST we try to get our Alohas looking good. Then, we could work together to introduce the Blue Egg gene.
However, if someone found the U of A blue-egg-laying-brown-Leghorns, here is how that would work:
Take a few of the blue-egg-brown-leghorn hens. Add a nice big spotty Aloha or Sussex rooster. Hatch chicks. Cross the chicks together. Keep the ones with spots. DONE!
So, so much easier! Which is why I was so sad that they disbanded the blue-egg-laying-brown-Leghorn project before I had a chance to get any! *sigh*
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