The Aloha Chicken Project

[draye]

Will have more hatching on April 2nd, April 8th, and will set more for April 14th. After that, my 'bators will be totally full, so I won't be able to set more eggs, until the April 2nd hatch frees up some room! I'm firing up not just the 300 egger, but the two foam tabletop models as well. (Genesis and Hova Bator with fan.) That way I will max out at 380+ eggs set for April.

Yesterday, I had 20+ chicks remaining, but I needed to move them out, because I have a special group (of Sussex crosses, and pure Swedish, for size improvement) that I want to keep and raise for next year's breeding flock. I have about 15 of those hatched so far. But they were milling about in the hatcher, becuase the brooder was full of "sale" chicks. I had to clear out that brooder ASAP so I could put my own babies in there!!!

So first I contacted folks on the Craigslist wait list. Two wanted to buy, one couldn't come over until later that evening, the other wasn't ready for chicks that quick.

Then I posted on CL, because I really needed them gone by that night, and it was like a feeding frenzy, but nobody could make it over right away. Arrrgh. Many calls, but nobody ready to drive over and buy right now. One guy said he'd be over, then called back and said he couldn't be over until that night. UGH. So I told him, sorry, the ad said first come first served.

Then there was like this chaos of mixed messages and two people trying to get here at the same time to buy the 20+ that were still here.

OMG what a mess!!!

Bottom line, had I had the room etc to hatch unlimited chicks, I think I would have sold about 100 chicks yesterday.

As it stands, between the shipment to San Diego and what was sold locally, the total Alohas hatched and sold in the last 3 days is: 130+

The really crazy thing, is I could be selling several times that many. The 300 egg incubator is just not enough. LOL!!!

That's a great sell. Most I ever sold from a single hatch at once was about 22/23. Got some ( 60 eggs set) COMING OFF TODAY. No Alohas though, don't have that breed.

 

[alohachickens]

Ooops, I forgot to include "my" chicks. Well, they aren't all Alohas, there are a few Swedish, a couple from the Buff Sussex pen, and probably about 10 Sussex/Aloha crosses. So, I'll count the Aloha crosses.

That's about 140 hatched from 3/17 to 3/21. I'm going to try to note the numbers hatched in the next 6 weeks until hatching stops. Will be fun to see how many make it!

This would not count the eggs hatched at Derek's. I think I've given him about 12-18 dozen Aloha eggs, so far?

Also does not count all the chicks I sold around Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's. Or the extra eggs given to local BYC'ers to try and hatch. So I'll just keep count of what comes out of my own incubators in the next six weeks. After that, will need to shut things down for the season, due to heat. But for now, the weather is perfect in AZ for baby chicks!

 

[HEChicken]

Sommer, if you sell them as chicks, how do you know which ones to keep that might turn out to be your perfect Aloha?

I haven't made any progress. Sigh. The Exchequers are FINALLY laying consistently though their eggs are still tiny. They're almost a year old!!! But, the NH rooster doesn't like them and never mates them so none of the eggs are fertile. I only have one pen where I can separate him and they but it is occupied right now. I do have plans to build another hoop coop and then I can put the NH and Exchequers in there and see if, given no other options, he will start to mate them. However I need about 6 solid hours to build the new hoop coop (I have all the materials) and the past couple of weeks have been crazy busy. Any time I think "today I might get started on it", that will be the day I'll get 3 calls reminding me about appointments I made for the kids and had since forgotten, and there goes another day…..

 

[5moore]

Of the 26 (or some where close to that) chicks I hatched in December from the flock of 7 that I got as chicks from Sommer this time last year I kept 9. One died Saturday, not sure what was wrong with her other than they were cold. The weather here has been crazy! Going from low 70's to 30's in 24 hour periods. Then nights are down in twenties. Even though they had been outside for going on three weeks, these three weeks have been up and down with temps. So I brought them all back in to the garage. This week we are supposed to be cold during day and night. The winds have been strong as well. All the others that were acting droopy are now acting fine once again. I had kept what I thought was 1 rooster and 8 pullets. I now have two roosters and 6 pullets, with another pullet possibly being a rooster as well. Of those 6 pullets, 3 look real promising.

In a couple weeks, a friend is going to loan me a sussex/dorking cross rooster. He is huge. So I will try to get some size into my flock.

We are starting to set more aloha eggs later this week. I will post pics later as well.

 

[alohachickens]

Sommer, if you sell them as chicks, how do you know which ones to keep that might turn out to be your perfect Aloha?

I don't know. *SIGH* So the perfect Aloha could be wandering around some stranger's back yard, right now!

The problem is, I have had some kind of low-grade "sniffles" type respiratory thing going around my flock. It's not anything horrid, but it's annoying, and it keeps going round and round the flock in cycles, about every 4-6 months when I raise a new batch of babies. Out of 15 chicks, I lost one, and I also lost two hens, this last go-round, where it hung around for about a month. A few chickens were sneezing, though most were unaffected. It's not super deadly, it's just persistent.

BUT, since *every fricking person* who comes over to my yard wants to purchase adult or started birds, I really need to clear this junk out. So it is with huge regret (and horror!) that I've made the decision to cull my entire flock this spring, and start over with a ginormous batch of peeps. Now, I know, that this may not work. Because I'd have to raise them on the very same ground the previous ones were raised on. (Again, *SIGH*) but I don't know what else to do? I don't have another yard, after all!

And since everyone wants to buy adult chickens, the only way to do that responsibly, is to have a "clean" flock. I have found pet homes for the adults. One home is with a friend who will be able to give me eggs back from them in the future. That is where Pumpkin and some of my top favorite hens will go.

Derek is going to try and get his pens built, and that will help, if he can actually keep them from being eaten? It's been um, like 2 or 3 years now, that he's been TRYING to get a program started. I have given Derek about 15 dozen Aloha eggs and he's going to try and raise them again.

Plus Stephen has his adult flock up there that is not exposed to this. (I made sure we stopped trading adults as soon as this took a foothold and all his new chicks, which are now 8 month old adults, were raised on their own as a fresh batch.)

So the general plan is to hatch an enormous amount of chicks, while culling down the adults, and putting the chicks in one of the coops, and hoping they will not be affected by this crud if the adults are not around. But it sure is terrible, because I love a lot of my adult flock members so much . . .

In the meantime, since I can't raise new babies side-by-side with adults, or they will be exposed to what I call "the creeping crud" the best I can hope for is tossing massive numbers of Alohas into Phoenix and hoping some of them survive in backyard flocks or find there way back "home" to me.

Which is what happened in the case of CheyAut, who found her "Apparoosta" at a feed store, and now she and her neighbor are raising 40+ Aloha chicks!

Hoping they can keep a small flock of the breed, and provide another source of Aloha genetics for us to draw from.

I can't be the only source of these. This project is still so precarious.

 

[alohachickens]

I haven't made any progress. Sigh. The Exchequers are FINALLY laying consistently though their eggs are still tiny. They're almost a year old!!! But, the NH rooster doesn't like them and never mates them so none of the eggs are fertile. I only have one pen where I can separate him and they but it is occupied right now. I do have plans to build another hoop coop and then I can put the NH and Exchequers in there and see if, given no other options, he will start to mate them.

Wow, this is so annoying! I've had similar problems with the Dun Sussex pen, here. And, now there are egg-eaters in the breeder pens at Stephen's which isn't helping. He's dividing his time between two houses an hour away from each other, trying to move his (many) animals from one home to another, with tons of barns and pens needing to be built and set up at the new property. Because of this, he hasn't been able to pick up and mark the eggs, and they started eating them.

So in the giant Dun Sussex roo over small Aloha hens pen, only got two eggs. One was sterile, shocking. (Snort.) The other was actually fertile and then it didn't hatch. ARRRRGH.

Now, I have seen big roosters mate small hens before. Before the Aloha project started, I was given a Frizzle Banty hen, and the two roos that I had would tag team her constantly. Wore off all her feathers, and I finally had to re-home her for her own safety!

But whether the eggs were fertile or not is the question? Hmmm. Gawd, I hate to think of having to do A.I. on a chicken, but I wonder if it's the only way???

 

[alohachickens]

In a couple weeks, a friend is going to loan me a sussex/dorking cross rooster. He is huge. So I will try to get some size into my flock.

I am glad you are still with the project. There is a real need for a breeder in the midwest. I could have sold a couple of boxes of chicks to people already this year, but the weather is just not cooperating. Here in Phoenix, the temps are about to hit 90. Above that temp, you can not ship. My friend in North Carolina says it went down to freezing again back there!

To ship, it must be above 40 and below 85, on both the leaving and arriving destination. So by the time it's warm enough in Virginia or Kansas, for example, it's too hot to ship out of here.

The Dorking, not sure what that color combo will do, but I Googled the breed, and the body type is perfect. Looks like legs are pink (of course!) but the overall shape of the body is lovely, with a gorgeous long tail. I think it sounds like a great cross to add to the project. I really appreciate you trying to work with improving them.

And yes, if you hatch 26 chicks, and even keep only the top 3, that means you are making progress. Takes a lot of work to find those "gems" in each hatch.

 

[alohachickens]

BTW, I did raise one batch of about 30 chicks, and kept the 10 most promising. To get around the "creeping crud" I raised them in the back of my Stock trailer, where they were not exposed to any of the other chickens! Then when the babies hit 3 months, and were getting too rowdy to be contained in there, I took them up to Stephen's and tossed them in with his adults. It looks like maybe 5 might make it into the program?

I just wish the "creeping crud" was not around, so I could be raising new batches of chicks to grow out, every single month. This is so frustrating!!!! It is very much cramping my progress here. ARRRGH.

 

[alohachickens]

Oh, and I am raising a new batch of 15 from 2 breeder pens.

Two chicks are hatched from the Buff Sussex pen. (Buff Sussex rooster, over 1 Buff Sussex hen, 3 Speckled Sussex hen, 1 smaller buff mottled Aloha hen, and one gorgeous mottled mystery hen.)

The rest are from a nice spotty rooster over two Speckled Sussex hens (from different lines from Sussex in Buff pen) plus one gorgeous large Swedish x Aloha cross Mille hen.

All chicks should show improvement in size and (except for the possible pure Buff Sussex hen) all will either show or carry for Mottling. I am hoping to get at least two nice big roosters out of this batch of chicks! (Crosses fingers.)

MORE good news. The Buff Sussex pen (seen below) laid 12 eggs for me in the last 2 weeks! FINALLY!!!! Just picked them up from Stephen's!


The hen in the foreground is the only well-marked Buff Mottled Aloha that I have bred to date. Oh, and I forgot, the one Dun Sussex hen is in there too! So that cross would not produce spots, but would possibly introduce Dun gene.

More pics of the hens in that breeder pen:




The fact that to date, I have hatched exactly four chicks from this pen, and one was stolen by that kid, has been a source of endless frustration for me this season. ARRRGH.

So to finally have a full dozen eggs from this pen of egg-eaters is a huge thing. I have a guy here in town who says he can build a "rollaway" nest box for me in trade for Aloha chicks. Going to try and see if he can get something done for me SOON.

In the meantime, I brought them a Flock Block to peck on, and I bought dummy eggs for them to try and eat (unsuccessfully) and also brought out a couple of extra nest boxes. Hoping that next time I visit, maybe I will get 10 more eggs? This pen could finally fix our size problems, plus add Mille color, plus add Dun color. If I can just get enough babies hatched and grown!

 

[5moore]

After April 20, I'm hoping the incubator will be free for all alohas. I'll be getting the rooster from my friend and we will see what we get. I was told the auction in Bethany Missouri sold some chickens a couple weeks ago that they were calling alohas. I had given a dozen roosters to a gal and her husband wasn't happy about it. I figure he hauled them to the auction.