The Aloha Chicken Project

[alohachickens]

But I am a tad worried. No one LOOKS sick, but one of my pure sussex keeled over dead a few days ago. No signs of anything wrong. I found her in a nest box while gathering eggs. No crusty stuff on her beak, no lumpy egg-bound abdomen, no wounds. And she was fine the day before. That is the second sussex hen to mysteriously expire on me. While i know sometimes it just happens, I have not had any other unexplained deaths in other breeds.

I really just hope that no one else dies on me!

Tam'ra - that's exactly what happened to my very first Sussex, that I bought from Ideal, back in 2005 or so when I first got into chickens! They both died. Later, I went in on some with my neighbor, and both of ours died - AGAIN. Now, I know the reason my next two died, they were pecking at styrofoam leaning against the fence from the neighbor's yard. (That also killed two of my Alohas this summer, my boyfriend left out a foam cooler (ARRGH) and the hens pecked at it and later died.) So watch out for foam. But that doesn't explain why my neighbor's Sussex died? His Sussex likewise croaked for seemingly no reason at all.

Also, a lovely pure Sussex hen was up at Stephen's and the other little Aloha hens "killed" her. Now, I find that kind of odd - yes, I suppose that can happen and does, but for goodness sakes she was twice their size! To me it says something about the breed's overall health if they are that sensitive. Hopefully the feisty Aloha blood will help counter that.

Nui has the color and size of a Sussex, but hopefully the fighting spirit and healthy vigor of the Alohas. Nui is already bossing the adult Sussex around, and she's just a teenager! LOL!

Anyway - I have found the pure Sussex to be strangely delicate?

 

[alohachickens]

Hello All I'm Sommers friend Derek with the 5 cabinet incubators. I figured I should start posting some pictures of the chicks I have been hatching out for the Aloha Project.

Here are some of my 2-3 month olds

.

I see two with spots AND yellow legs - towards the bottom of the feeder.

Oh, and the rooster on the bottom right, walking out of the picture. What a strange one that is! All that white looks like a Confetti. But his patches of color look just . . . red?

I can't wait to see some of these in person, Derek!

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Tam'ra, I'm really sorry about your Cayanne. That's the pits. It's crazy how attached we can get to our birds. I have a SSX like her, I call her Sweetpea. She's a good sized hen but has less white than others but she's so extremely friendly that I can't even think about not keeping her. She's my first "pet" chicken.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Crazy Kansas weather is in full force today! It's really unusual for April -- this is more end of May, June weather. I've lived here most of my life and have never seen hail larger than golfballs and have only seen a couple funnels so I have high hopes we won't have any problems but we're keeping an eye on the weather.

I took a few pics of my SSX, just because I spent a lot of time with them this morning watching for any signs of illness because an individual I gave one of the birds to is having some trouble. I think it was just the usual SSX weak immune system and probably was stressed. I gave a group of birds to one person and then another took about a week to pick up his two from her. So a double move may have done it. Still, you never know.

Anyway, so I thought I'd show you the white I'm seeing on my SSX. For 9 weeks old, I've decided there's plenty of white and actually a couple of the roos are really good sized. One of the SSX made an attempt at a crow this a.m. It was hilarious!






Sweetpea is a pet. She's a good sized hen but not as white as some but I have to keep her because she is just so friendly. So I've turned her into a pet. There's a roo with a decent amount of white who is also extremely friendly but he has a small head. He usually sits on my left leg while Sweetpea sits on the right. Here's Sweetpea sitting on my knee:




Here's the friendly roo on my other leg:



All for now. There's a respectable storm that has a tornado on the ground that looks like may clip us (the storm, not the tornado) as it moves through but it's still quite a ways from us. We're between Derby and Rose Hill. Hope we don't get any hail -- afraid it will pulverize my strawberry plants. I also hope we don't end up in the basement with the birds. That would just be ridiculous!

Later all...

 

[tazcat70]

I hope you made it thru the storms ok. We did.

Crazy Kansas weather is in full force today! It's really unusual for April -- this is more end of May, June weather. I've lived here most of my life and have never seen hail larger than golfballs and have only seen a couple funnels so I have high hopes we won't have any problems but we're keeping an eye on the weather.

I took a few pics of my SSX,  just because I spent a lot of time with them this morning watching for any signs of illness because an individual I gave one of the birds to is having some trouble. I think it was just the usual SSX weak immune system and probably was stressed. I gave a group of birds to one person and then another took about a week to pick up his two from her. So a double move may have done it. Still, you never know.

Anyway, so I thought I'd show you the white I'm seeing on my SSX. For 9 weeks old, I've decided there's plenty of white and actually a couple of the roos are really good sized. One of the SSX made an attempt at a crow this a.m. It was hilarious!






Sweetpea is a pet. She's a good sized hen but not as white as some but I have to keep her because she is just so friendly. So I've turned her into a pet. There's a roo with a decent amount of white who is also extremely friendly but he has a small head. He usually sits on my left leg while Sweetpea sits on the right. Here's Sweetpea sitting on my knee:




 Here's the friendly roo on my other leg:



All for now. There's a respectable storm that has a tornado on the ground that looks like may clip us (the storm, not the tornado) as it moves through but it's still quite a ways from us. We're between Derby and Rose Hill.  Hope we don't get any hail -- afraid it will pulverize my strawberry plants. I also hope we don't end up in the basement with the birds. That would just be ridiculous!

Later all...

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Glad to hear from you taz -- we're good too.

 

[alohachickens]

Crazy Kansas weather is in full force today! It's really unusual for April -- this is more end of May, June weather. I've lived here most of my life and have never seen hail larger than golfballs and have only seen a couple funnels so I have high hopes we won't have any problems but we're keeping an eye on the weather.

I took a few pics of my SSX, just because I spent a lot of time with them this morning watching for any signs of illness because an individual I gave one of the birds to is having some trouble. I think it was just the usual SSX weak immune system and probably was stressed. I gave a group of birds to one person and then another took about a week to pick up his two from her. So a double move may have done it. Still, you never know.

Anyway, so I thought I'd show you the white I'm seeing on my SSX. For 9 weeks old, I've decided there's plenty of white and actually a couple of the roos are really good sized. One of the SSX made an attempt at a crow this a.m. It was hilarious!






Sweetpea is a pet. She's a good sized hen but not as white as some but I have to keep her because she is just so friendly. So I've turned her into a pet. There's a roo with a decent amount of white who is also extremely friendly but he has a small head. He usually sits on my left leg while Sweetpea sits on the right. Here's Sweetpea sitting on my knee:




Here's the friendly roo on my other leg:



All for now. There's a respectable storm that has a tornado on the ground that looks like may clip us (the storm, not the tornado) as it moves through but it's still quite a ways from us. We're between Derby and Rose Hill. Hope we don't get any hail -- afraid it will pulverize my strawberry plants. I also hope we don't end up in the basement with the birds. That would just be ridiculous!

Later all...

Oh my goodness! I hated the tornado thing when I lived back there. The idea of y'all sleeping in the basement in a pile of chickens is kind of funny, though!

I am glad everyone is OK.

Your Sussex look just fine to me. They look a lot better than those other ones of mine that I showed you photos of, when those were the same age! Oh, and Sussex do continue to get more white as they age. Just an FYI. By five years, they will look REALLY spotted. But as sensitive as they are, I personally don't know anyone who's had one live past three years old?

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Kind of funny? OMGosh! Come now, it's the most ridiculous thing ever! Nothing says "crazy chicken lady" like hunkering down in a basement full of chickens!

This basement isn't even a part of the house so we have to make our way through the wind and rain, climb down the ladder and through a daylight window to get there. My word, that's silly. Our city house was a beautiful home with a walk out basement and full of dignity. We call our country place Green Acres because it's nothing like that house. We remodeled most of it but it's still just a two story country house with no basement and we can't even get cable out here, we have to have satellite which immediately goes out during bad weather. Even the blackberry won't work in the basement because of the steel reinforcements in the ceiling. DH had to climb the ladder to check for the all clear on his blackberry and even that wouldn't work. Finally, he hooked up the generator and checked the local stations (yup, we have rabbit ears) for the all clear.

My crazy kids absolutely loved the whole thing and what troopers! We had 4 dogs, 2 cats and 2 bunnies in crates with us, oh yeah and 90+ chickens. We had rehearsed earlier in the day getting everyone and everything to safety. It's quite a logistical undertaking, important papers, meds and all. I didn't have enough crates to bring my Alohas so that's got to be remedied. Of course, the main thing is getting the humans to safety but we had tons of warning with this one.

The kids immediately put down fresh wood chips, we laid blankets down and everyone got their favorite chicken to hold and we were just having a lovely time chatting and laughing our heads off at ourselves. My DH tried to keep his dignity by sitting in a towel draped lawn chair and he had this look of total disbelief on his face. He is totally city -- wouldn't even consider camping and here he was propped in a wood chip floored basement with all these animals and kids. My DH is just the most lovable guy, never even got irritable. We came up around midnight and the kids went to bed. DH and I kept an eye on the weather for awhile, showered and went to bed. What a mess to contend with this a.m. but it's one of those ridiculous memories that is now a part of what makes us unique as a family. The kids will never forget this one. Especially when the power went off and they fell asleep with the chickens. I have no aspirations of being a "cool" mom but I'm not boring, either!

I have turkey and duck eggs I'm incubating for a woman who had to go out of town but the power was only off an hour and a half at most so I'm pretty sure they're fine.

The tornado passed to our west, it was on the west side of Derby and we're on the east. The wind was wild!

When I heard it was heading toward Haysville/Wichita, I just felt sick. I have several friends who went through the Andover tornado and lost everything so I know that even with the low injury rate and no deaths, it's a lot to deal with. Glad I had my kids and adventure to keep me distracted.

 

[runsw/scissors]

I'm glad all was well Karen! Even better that the sense of ridiculous kept the fear and crazies at bay!

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Sommer, I've been looking at lavender Orps and wondering how you would feel about me setting up a breeding pen with a lav Orp roo and some Aloha hens. I know we are still focusing on the bright colors but it seems to me since I have the space and plenty of Alohas to start with maybe I could go ahead and start that breeding program as well. I'm still looking forward to more eggs in June/July from the Alohas but if I started the lav Orps around the same time as that group, I think it would work out nicely. Let me know what you think.