The Aloha Chicken Project

[Deerfield Acres]

This hen is big and colorful, which is why I tagged her leg as a "keeper".

If anyone is possibly that hen's offspring, I think she could be? But I really don't know!

Sure looks like it -- a beauty!

 

[alohachickens]

I vote for the twins as well!

Do you still have Cheeto? I didnt think you did.

I also love the hens body shape.

When I couldn't seem to put spots on his offspring, I pretty much culled them from the line. I would cross Cheeto with Alohas and with Speckled Sussex. And always, always, I would either get darker red mottled, or brown mottled chickens. OR - I would get *solid* buffs. But no matter how often I crossed Buff to Spotted, I could not seem to get Buff plus Mottled to "meet" on the same hen! It happened only a couple of times over hundreds of chicks.

However, the Buff COLUMBIAN color (which is buff with a black tail and black neck band) does seem to let spots show up with no issue! Which is why I nabbed the neighbor's Buff Columbian Naked Neck hen and put her with an Aloha rooster. Check out her grandkids, the spots came back no problem!!!






Not yet as light or "buffy" as the original Naked Neck hen, who was that super pale "butter" yellow.

I may try crossing her back to her own grandson. This boy is brother to the more "Sussex" looking Naked Neck rooster. Does not have the size, but boy did he get the color!!!

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Dad is probably Thing 1 or Thing 2 based on what was of breeding age and in the pen at the time he was hatched. Only the Speckled Sussex boy and Thing 1 and 2 were in the pen, and old enough to breed when the egg that this boy came from was laid, back in November 2013.

The tall rooster was still in a different pen (that was torn down last month) and did not have access to the Turken hens. The small but colorful Aloha roosters were not of breeding age, they are just barely of breeding age now.

The super pale yellow color on the Buff Columbians is so pretty. I love this one hen with the yellow legs, and she is still next door if I want to borrow her. If she can stay alive until June when these boys are old enough to breed . .. .


I sure would like to get spots on this size, with the pale yellow background and yellow legs.

 

[HEChicken]

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. After posting I've been offline all day until now and came back to more than two pages of posts!

I would vote for the "Things" over the tall rooster. His size is nice but if he is fully mature, he is tall but not well-rounded-out - or at least that is the sense I have from the photos and acknowledge that in person things can seem different. If he is under 9 months of age, perhaps he will continue to fill out as he gets older.....

 

[alohachickens]

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. After posting I've been offline all day until now and came back to more than two pages of posts!

I would vote for the "Things" over the tall rooster. His size is nice but if he is fully mature, he is tall but not well-rounded-out - or at least that is the sense I have from the photos and acknowledge that in person things can seem different. If he is under 9 months of age, perhaps he will continue to fill out as he gets older.....

He is a full year old now, so that is as "filled out" as he is going to get! I do have a few chicks by him growing out, and he would go next door where he came from, (borrowed from a neighbor that I gave Aloha chicks from last year.) Most likely,if I remove him from the pen, I'd have a chance to use him again if I changed my mind.

 

[alohachickens]

IF YOU HAD MY HENS, what kind of a rooster would you put with them for this year?

I've been thinking HARD about this one! I don't want to steer you wrong.

Here are my thoughts so far. You have plenty of white (primarily with the two mostly-white hens, one of which I saw yellow feet on.) Those two hens look like a good "base" to work with, and it sounds like you could even hatch more of the same. They don't have a lot of black (hardly any) so you might be "safe" crossing them to a really, really amazing Speckled Sussex, or possibly a Buff Sussex / Speckled Sussex cross, if Deerfield can provide a few extra hatching eggs?

If Deerfield has such eggs available, hopefully the Buff Sussex might "cancel out" a lot of the super-super dominant black coloring that the Mahogany coloring causes on Speckled Sussex chicks. If one parent was Mottled (Speckled Sussex) and one was Buff (Buff Sussex) then when crossed to your mostly-white Aloha hens, HALF the chicks would be Mottled - and all would keep their size and quality. It would just be a matter of culling the not-mottled, breeding back the offspring to each other, and "locking in" that special look that yours have already, but improving size and quality at the same time.

If Deerfield doesn't have this available, I could provide such a cross in my eggs, if given time to set up a breeder pen. (Could be a while since I'm short on pens here.) But I think Deerfield might be a better resource, being as she is working on the body type. After all, you already HAVE the amazing color on two of those hens!

Another idea - see if HEChicken can help. My first thought looking at your hens was "German New Hampshire". Okay, well, HEChicken already has Mottled Leghorn / New Hampshire cross chicks, and she mentioned that there are other unrelated New Hampshire lines, at her house. If she was willing to pen the two Exchequer / New Hampshire hens with a German NHR roo, the resulting babies would be 3/4 NHR and 1/4 Exchequer.

Here's the really awful and tricky thing about that. The Mottling is a recessive. That means, if you did this, you'd probably get red chicks, with some dark markings (from the Exchequer). Statistically, HALF of those chicks would carry the Mottling gene. However, unless you got SUPER lucky and had one of those chicks show a "tell' then there would be no way of knowing which rooster carried the gene. By "tell" - I mean - last year I crossed an Aloha rooster with a NHR hen and their "kid" looks like a smaller hatchery NHR. However, if you look really carefully, she has one tiny white spot on her tail and on her wing, which are clues that she carries Mottling.


This Turken / Aloha hen LOOKS solid - but check out the white spot on the tip of her tail. That's her "tell".

This Buff hen's "tell" was a single white feather tip on her back.

SO - if no "tell" appeared on any of the 3/4 NHR and 1/4 Exchequer chicks, you would have to maybe keep 2 or 3 roosters, and try a test breeding. See if when you bred any of the roosters to your Aloha hens, if the roo carried Mottling, half the chicks would have spotting. If all the chicks were solid, then you'd know he was a dud. That's a TON of work, though! LOL.

I would like the others on here to weigh in. I know it's cold and taking photos of chickens is tough, to get good photos of their build you have to crouch down and take the photos from their level. I spend hours in my coop some days and they just won't cooperate. LOL. BUT, if you can get good photos of your hens, maybe Deerfield and HEChicken and others can suggest what is the best rooster in terms of build and structure? Let's hear their opinions!

 

[HEChicken]

I tried to get out today and take pics but didn't get many good ones. It is frigid here today and the wind is howling. I think at the time I was out the thermometer read 16 but Siri tells me that with wind chill it was about 3 degrees. The hens themselves weren't cooperative. Only one was really out and about and she got increasingly suspicious as I "stalked" her. Another was huddled in a corner (laying down) and pics of her wouldn't have been good, nor could she be enticed to move. I'll try to get some better photos another day. All three actually look almost identical - the only difference between them is that one of the hens has white ear lobes. Here are a couple anyway - not great photos but at least you can see her from both the front and as she ran from me.





It would be no big deal to add these three to the hoop coop when I separate out the Exchequers with a NH rooster, so I will plan on that. It will be easy enough to tell them apart since the EL's lay white eggs while these hens lay light brown eggs. If I can separate them in the incubator, I will even know which chicks are which after they hatch. Fingers crossed the EL's start laying soon so we can put this plan into actual.

 

[draye]

I tried to get out today and take pics but didn't get many good ones. It is frigid here today and the wind is howling. I think at the time I was out the thermometer read 16 but Siri tells me that with wind chill it was about 3 degrees. The hens themselves weren't cooperative. Only one was really out and about and she got increasingly suspicious as I "stalked" her. Another was huddled in a corner (laying down) and pics of her wouldn't have been good, nor could she be enticed to move. I'll try to get some better photos another day. All three actually look almost identical - the only difference between them is that one of the hens has white ear lobes. Here are a couple anyway - not great photos but at least you can see her from both the front and as she ran from me. It would be no big deal to add these three to the hoop coop when I separate out the Exchequers with a NH rooster, so I will plan on that. It will be easy enough to tell them apart since the EL's lay white eggs while these hens lay light brown eggs. If I can separate them in the incubator, I will even know which chicks are which after they hatch. Fingers crossed the EL's start laying soon so we can put this plan into actual.

Those plastic (clear) trays that strawberries come in, they have lids attached, work great for departing clutches at hatch. I usually can get 6 to 9 in a two quart box. The one quart ones will hold three or four eggs.

 

[5moore]

Sommer I have a friend who raises speckled sussex, she is going to let me know in the next couple days if she has a rooster of breeding age for me. I messaged her yesterday about it cause this was my thinking as well. The two whiter hens are a great size. The two that are more red are a little smaller than the whiter hens.

Today I was able to take some pics of the four I have in my grow out pen. These four are just at point of lay. I know one is laying for sure. They have yellow legs and great size. Once the weather warms up more I am going to weigh them. These 4 girls and 1 roo was hatched September 6 2014.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

alohachickens, 5moore, I am collecting eggs from my Speckled Sussex (Ideal) hen/Buff Sussex cock currently. This hen is a decent sized bird with evenly distributed spots. So 5moore is welcome to them, if she's interested. I will have more later in the season, I'm sure, but the ones I am collecting now will go in Monday. This hen has been uncharacteristically healthy also. I had two other Ideal chicks but they turned out to be cockerels with not much spotting so I didn't keep them. I haven't used any antibiotics at all on these birds, just the usual dusting and worming.

 

[alohachickens]

I tried to get out today and take pics but didn't get many good ones. It is frigid here today and the wind is howling. I think at the time I was out the thermometer read 16 but Siri tells me that with wind chill it was about 3 degrees. The hens themselves weren't cooperative. Only one was really out and about and she got increasingly suspicious as I "stalked" her. Another was huddled in a corner (laying down) and pics of her wouldn't have been good, nor could she be enticed to move. I'll try to get some better photos another day. All three actually look almost identical - the only difference between them is that one of the hens has white ear lobes. Here are a couple anyway - not great photos but at least you can see her from both the front and as she ran from me.





It would be no big deal to add these three to the hoop coop when I separate out the Exchequers with a NH rooster, so I will plan on that. It will be easy enough to tell them apart since the EL's lay white eggs while these hens lay light brown eggs. If I can separate them in the incubator, I will even know which chicks are which after they hatch. Fingers crossed the EL's start laying soon so we can put this plan into actual.

These actually turned out very nice. They look a lot more "robust" in build than the pure Exchequer Leghorns. They look like lovely chickens to me. They have those happy upright tails that I adore, too. LOL.

Kind of weird, looking at these black and brown chickens, that *in theory* if you had a roo from the same Exchequer/NHR cross - their brother or whatever - supposedly even though you'd have a flock of what looked like black and red chickens, according to Punnett Squre models, the white spotting would come back again in the babies. At least a percentage. I wonder if it really would work.

HEChicken, did you ever find a "tell" on either of these hens? A stray white feather tip, on a wing, or tail, or whatever?