The Aloha Chicken Project

[LarryPQ]

Neurological problems could be anything from a spider bite to moldy feed. It is a hard diagnosis to pin down.

I get chicks with the weird dislocated hips every now and then. ~1 a year. I haven't had an Aloha do it though...usually Easter Eggers or BWAs. But, I suppose any chick could partially dislocate or injure a joint, and then as it grew the problem would get worse and worse.

 

[alohachickens]

going to attempt to post some pictures.

rooster on the swing


our above mentioned banty who keeps falling down, little mrs


hens at the watering hole. my favorite is on the very left, LOVE her color.


k, this is a blurry picture but i wanted to show some coloring, there are 3 spotted ones near the top. marshmallow is far left, most white, ROO. then snow in the middle, ROO. and pecker on the right, the one with the least white. she was the aggressive one from previous posts and i thought was a roo, but pretty sure she's a hen now. less aggressive, but still pretty dominant.

You have some really nice ones here! I love "Snow" from what I can see here. I know Marshmallow is your fave, but honestly Marsh has a bit too much white, but if the hens end up with too little white, maybe it would balance out? Or Marshmallow might be a good one to cross with big solid red hens the next generation? Get some cross-breeds to toss in with Snow. And if his size and type ends up better than Snow, he may edge him out that way.

Usually I cull the roos with barring or no white to start, and then let the pretty ones grow out for a while to see how they develop. (In other words, pick a few candidates and let them grow out.)

 

[LarryPQ]

Wow, Laree - you really did get a bumper crop of the "wild type" patterned ones again!  Crazy how much that "tree bark" color/pattern lingers on the Alohas generation after generation.

That particular pic was from a few weeks ago. The wild-type babies all have mottling now, but mostly on their chests. Some are the Speckled Sussex crosses.

The wild-type I REALLY mean are these:


The ones that never mottle-out will look like Hissy-fit, eventually.

 

[alohachickens]

Oh! Those are your Sussex crosses! Is it just the lighting or do mine look different from yours? Mine seem darker to me.

These are my recent Aloha x Sussex at about two months:



Here are mine a few weeks later:






My half-Sussex's are REALLY dark . . . . yours almost look a bit lighter? Maybe it's wishful thinking. It would be neat if there was some variation, I was frankly shocked at how strongly all my half-Sussex took after their Sussex parents!

 

[notinoz2007]

the picture was right after she fell down and stopped trying to get up, thats the way her leg happened to land. now she does walk on it, more like a hobble, and her toes on that right leg are curled under. she'd rather not walk at all if possible tho. she stayed hidden in the yard all day today and only moved about a foot to sit in the sun. i was wondering if maybe it was bad feed or could have been a moldy piece of cantaloupe or something i tossed in there without checking it first. or, if its displaced hip that could make a lot of sense because she squeezed herself out of the chain link run every day, and then back in again at night. i just know that i'm feeling very sorry for her and get sad every time i see her hobble or another chick peck her. so something has to happen soon.
actually my favorite is the one in the picture drinking, she has the black spots on her. i only have 3 that look like they'll show black spots, and hers are the best display. are you looking for black in your genetics? i might keep her and not consider her an aloha if not, lol. i thought you might think marshmallow has too much white, i agree, almost all his back and probably all his tail feathers will be white. snow has pinkish legs but if we breed him with pecky peckerson who has great color and yellow legs maybe we'll get some good turn out?

 

[hallerlake]

Quote:
Maybe runswithscissors wouold let me have a cockerel if she has extras.

 

[alohachickens]

actually my favorite is the one in the picture drinking, she has the black spots on her. i only have 3 that look like they'll show black spots, and hers are the best display. are you looking for black in your genetics? i might keep her and not consider her an aloha if not, lol. i thought you might think marshmallow has too much white, i agree, almost all his back and probably all his tail feathers will be white. snow has pinkish legs but if we breed him with pecky peckerson who has great color and yellow legs maybe we'll get some good turn out?

The hen in that picture, drinking, is just STUNNING! And she doesn't have too much black at all, some darker color is just fine.

Oh, and about the black coloration . . . it's not that black is "bad" but it just has a tendency to overwhelm. So just be careful not to pick the darkest rooster in the bunch, or all the chicks will end up darker and you'll lose your reds and golds color variations, because black pigment is dominant over red. Notice how all my half-Sussex babies look exactly like pure Sussex in color? All their moms are Alohas, and umm, NONE are dark. So that color came 100% from the Sussex roo in that breeding pen I set up! And I had him over some of my LIGHTEST colored buff hens!!! He still overwhelmed their color . . . TOTALLY!

Check this out, here is the breeding pen:





And here is a baby of his:



HMMM. So, who do the babies look like? The light tan and buff hens? NOPE. Just like their daddy!

Isn't that WEIRD???

So if you pick a dark rooster, his color will be stronger than the lighter hens. Which is why I'm growing out THIS rooster:



By the way, does Marshmallow have yellow legs? I guess you'll just have to grow the most promising ones out for a bit, and see how the other factors like body size, leg color, and comb shape factor into the mix overall.

Oh, I can't wait! I have 10 baby chicks on special order at the feed store, 5 Buff Rocks and 5 New Hampshire Red purebreds. Already the babies (like this guy) are way bigger than my last generation, but with a few more Rock and NHR hens in the mix, should see another round of size improvement. I do think in one year the size issue is going to be all taken care of.

Weird note - the Cheeto babies all started out pretty much the same size, but now I can see more. Three are very clearly smaller in size! And about three are extra-jumbo in size. The rest are all robust but right in-between the two extremes. Exactly, perfectly, as you'd expect to see in a "big-to-little" chicken cross like this. Interesting to see this genetics stuff in action . . . .

 

[alohachickens]

Maybe runswithscissors wouold let me have a cockerel if she has extras.

I usually end up with a glut of roosters, LOL. And I looked at your BYC page and your place looks like a chicken paradise, ha ha. You'd have to figure that out but sheesh, I do end up with a lot of roosters. Down here, I also end up needing homes for "retired" breeders. I like to place the previous generation somewhere kind of safe - just in case I need to backtrack on the program, genetically speaking. But in order to move forward, I simply HAVE to move out the older stock, because I'm only on 1/3 acre and am limited to maybe 50 chickens total.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with my current breeding stock when it's time to re-home. These gals are tiny, but so stunning!!!

 

[Tam'ra of Rainbow Vortex]

Its nice to see so many pics of new chickens... Sadly ours will most likely be boring when we grow them out, but at least we have chicks now!
I haven't seen them in person yet, but I may go over to visit MaBo tomorrow to see the peeps. By then everyone should be out and about. I'll take some pics of them to post. Spotted or not, they will still be cute

 

[alohachickens]

I can't wait to see them! And yes this will be a boring generation as most of your half Alohas either lose their spots if crossed to a buff or red chicken, or turn into what look like really bad Speckled Sussex'es when crossed to those. But I can't wait to see the results next year when you cross them back to each other!

And hopefully there will be extra stock from Runswithscissors that might help boost your progress a little if she ends up with extra roosters to share? The "Cheeto Chicks" in the brooder here - four of them are clearly showing color! They will possibly be true full sized chickens as adults . . . . and Cheeto's babies will be included in Runswithscissor's new chicks to be sent out in oh, wow, one week? Though most of her stock WILL be too small and still need major size improvement from another "big chicken" bloodline, like NHR or something. That one little sliver of "big chicken" influence from Cheeto can't solve all the size issues in the flock.

I may start getting an occasional "big" Aloha this spring, from Cheeto's babies, but I don't think the size issue will be fully worked out for another year. If I keep a colored roo from Cheeto's babies and cross him with these half-Sussex, I'll get chicks that will be half Aloha, and half "big chicken" and those *might* be big enough? They certainly won't look banty-sized at all. But I don't think I'll be totally satisfied until Alohas are MONSTER sized. So far, the half-Alohas have been bigger, of course - but they still aren't impressive enough! I want them FULL SIZE just like the purebred large breeds. I may have to go up to 75% "big chicken" bloodlines in order to do that.

I'll be getting more Buff Rocks and NHR pullets this week, but those are just chicks! Won't be laying until next August, and then those will have to be bred to something colorful - which means October 2012 I'd be hatching more part-breds, but they'd still be solid color, mottled carriers. May/June 2013 is the very earliest that next generation of half-Alohas would be ready to breed.

That makes fall 2013 the absolute earliest I'd see the end result - really BIG mottled Alohas. Sheeeesh. Lots of work ahead!

Sommer