The Aloha Chicken Project

[draye]

i am thinking about starting an Aloha project in the spring... my mom has a large hatchery buff orp rooster with yellow legs (he was the only one out of the order with them) and i have about 8 SS hens and 3 roos... a couple of the hens have to much white to use in breeding SS so I'm thinking of crossing the 2 and see what i come up with... i have been following this thread from about page 10 and really like the results so far...

Yeah me too, I really like the results. Thinking about fining me a speckled rooster and mottled rooster to cross my EE's with and see what results.

 

[alohachickens]

i am thinking about starting an Aloha project in the spring... my mom has a large hatchery buff orp rooster with yellow legs (he was the only one out of the order with them) and i have about 8 SS hens and 3 roos... a couple of the hens have to much white to use in breeding SS so I'm thinking of crossing the 2 and see what i come up with... i have been following this thread from about page 10 and really like the results so far...

That would be awesome! Even if you did just the "first step" and bred nothing more than heavily spotted Sussex, with yellow legs, that would prepare you for the next stage, which would be either getting a roo from me (via shipped eggs or whatnot) or working with some Swedish Flower blood to start getting more new colors.

If I could go back and do it over, I would have taken a more scientific approach like this, and just worked at one thing at a time. Like, first, go buy a bunch of Sussex and pick out only the most spotted ones. THEN change the leg color to yellow, and not worry about removing the dark mahogany so much (of course if that happened as well, great, but you know what I mean.) Then, I'd work on altering the color of the Mahogany to something lighter, but using Buff Sussex, NHR.

Verdict is still out on using the Buff Rocks, in general . . . I am pretty disappointed in the fact that the spots tend to fade on the offspring at about 4 months. Right now, I have some chicks with one Buff Rock grand-parent (so they are only 25% Buff Rock at this point) and we'll see how strong this trait is. If they also lose the white spotting even with the pedigree that diluted, I'm going to go back to using New Hampshire Red to get yellow legs. I did try that early on, and YES, it works! You get red and white spotted chicks with yellow legs!

Note that I also have had similar issues with Buff Orp, though I have used them less. I have a hen here, whose mom was a Buff Orp bred to the original foundation Aloha roo. That buff hen was then bred to an Aloha roo and the hen was STILL not spotted, even though she is now 75% Aloha! So she's still here, and still has size due to her one-quarter Buff Orp, but I'm kind of thinking at this point, by the time you finally get the spots back, it would have negated the whole point of using an outcross anyway!

Still having major issues lightening the base color all the way to the pale buffy gold of Mille Fleur. I'm trying some new stuff this Spring, there seem to be some major "holes" in my understanding of this Mille color. So I'll be tying an entirely new approach to things! If it works, by next year I should have some better advice for everyone. So far, the solid Buff color seen on Buff Rocks and Buff Orps seems very resistant to the addition of white speckles on the feather tip. I am not sure why?

It looks like we may have better luck working with the Buff Colombian color instead of straight Buff. (That's the Buff color with the black tail and ring of black around the neck seen on a few breeds.) But, there is no one standard breed that has all the traits we need plus that color. Buff Sussex is the closest, would have to add yellow legs. They also have long tails. But they have been IMPOSSIBLE for me to find so far.

Buff Colombian Brahma will add size and the color, but you'd have to remove fuzzy legs and fix the combs, and add long tails. Lots of work there!

So, I'm working on some ideas here, but so far it's been tough to get rid of that Sussex Mahogany color! Within about a year, I should know if I have a solution or not . . .

 

[Deerfield Acres]

I finally got some pics (notice I didn't say "good" pics) of some of the birds that are currently growing out. When I went into the hospital, I had the kids put all the "grow outs" together, except for two pens of the smallest ones, so that they would have less work in feeding and watering. Anyway, today we're moving the last indoor group outside to the grow out pen next to the coop. The birds that were in there are now with the general population.

Indoor grow outs:






These are the three most interesting of about 20 birds inside. I have several like the far left bird. It isn't showing any white but it is an unusual buff color with black.

The birds that were in the outside grow out pen are the German New Hamps, a couple Wellies, and the rest are Aloha with either SSX, NH, EE or Buff crosses. I did get some puff cheeks on Ricky's babies and the EE crosses.

I'm really liking this guy.





This is another one of those funny buff birds but instead of black it's more charcoal.




She had to close her eyes -- oh well. She's pretty!




She had to turn her head. The pic is horrible but she's on the small side but her body is mostly white, not gray like the pic. Her head is darkest on top and fades toward her neck. She's really pretty but has puffy cheeks and is small. I suspect this was one of Rigsby's offspring.


I'll continue with another post just to break up so many pics.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Here are some more pics of the outside birds.

This one is looking promising, still young yet but nice. Most of my grow outs have white legs.




Here are a couple more spotty birds.



And another.



This is a pretty boy. I have a couple like him that I really like.




We made some "duck under" areas in their yard where they can be outside but out of the north wind. They really like them. This one is full of birds underneath and has this many just outside sunning themselves. So cute.




Yellow legs!




Overall, I'm really pleased with how the birds are turning out. The SSX/Aloha crosses turned out some nice looking birds and not as boring as I expected them to be colorwise. I have lots of plain reds that I'm waiting for spots to appear before I cull. It will be interesting to see how the German New Hamps add to the mix sizewise once they're mature enough. Non of these birds were crossed with my Swedish since the Swedish aren't mature enough to breed yet. They're getting close but all of these birds are either Alohas crossed with SSX, NH, EE or BO or Speckled Sussex crossed with Aloha, NH, EE, or BO. The EE mixes won't be a part of the program. I'm going to keep a couple of the prettiest ones for eggs and rehome the rest.

My best Swedish roo is stunning. I can't wait to cross him with my Alohas and see what happens! The Swedish are starting to get the idea that they want to mate but the ladies are having nothing of it so far. Hopefully, they'll get the hang of it by the time the girls are laying at full steam again.

That's it for now until we see how they size up!

 

[alohachickens]

Karen,

Great photos! I like the yellow legs on the bottom pic. Although it does not surprise me one bit that you'd be getting mostly pink legs at this point, because you're using a lot of Sussex blood so of course that will make sense.

I love the "duck under " piles! Mine use the boyfriend's garbage . . . er, I mean, "valuable boat rebuilding components" to do the same thing. They love to hide!

 

[alohachickens]

She had to turn her head. The pic is horrible but she's on the small side but her body is mostly white, not gray like the pic. Her head is darkest on top and fades toward her neck. She's really pretty but has puffy cheeks and is small. I suspect this was one of Rigsby's offspring.


I'll continue with another post just to break up so many pics.

Karen, both Stephen and I have had a few of these little "red head" chicks. It's a very odd color. I culled a few of mine, only to read a post on the "Calico Cochin" thread where a gal was super excited about getting a rooster like this. Apparently, she feels that this may be a super color producer. For those of you not familiar with Calico Cochins, those are basically Mille Cochins where the white got "out of control". If you look at the pics in that thread, those colors are exactly what I'm going for in Alohas! BIG amounts of white, not just teeny white dots like Speckled Sussex.

So, I was starting to think that the small size HAD to go along with this color, because all the red-head ones like that Stephen and I got were all tiny. But if you look on the post that I showed before, I did get a half Swedish half Aloha in this color. And that hen is NOT small at all! She's bigger than most full Alohas, though not as big as a full Swedish. About the size of an average Leghorn hen, I'd say?

I am seriously wondering what happens when you breed this color to a regular Sussex. (Or in your case, even a half Sussex half NHR) What is this color? Will it give us more white spotting than a "normal" Mottled bird? I honestly don't know what to think of this color at all! I have no idea (genetically) what is going on with it.

The gal in the Calico Cochin thread had a rooster in that color, that she was hoping she could cross with more "plain" hens and get lots of spots with. Unfortunately, he had an unrelated issue and she had to cull him. I'm hoping some others will get chicks in this color, eventually, and breed them in unrelated strains so we can see what this color is about.

I do feel kind of relieved, however, to see it appear in a totally genetically unrelated program (Bantam Cochins) that has the same color goal (super-mottled birds) so I hope it's merely a sign of concentrated color genes . . . the only way is to try pairing ones with that color, with more "boring" chickens and see what happens in the babies!

 

[alohachickens]

Speaking of color . . . here's a wonderful sight. Here are most of the Cheeto grand-chicks, plus Derek brought over about a dozen yellow-legged chicks that showed good amounts of white, from the babies he'd hatched at his place. (There are also three pure Speckled Sussex chicks in there, so if you see any dark brown patches that's what those are.)










Five years into the program . . . you know, if they'd just keep THIS amount of white into adulthood, I think I'd be done this Spring! LOL!

But if anything, this program has taught me, it's just never that easy.

Still, I have about 30 promising youngsters here. If I get just 5-10 good hens, and just a couple spotty yellow-legged roos with decent size, we could be looking at one really excellent breeding group for late Spring / early Summer. So numbers are here . . . even if I skim off only the top third, because some start to lose their white, I only need one good roo and even just four hens to make a huge impact. Any more that that would be amazing. A small few of the chicks are showing massive amounts of white, and I'm so hoping that they will keep a respectable amount of it into adulthood!

The waiting is going to be so tough!

 

[Deerfield Acres]

WoW! I can't wait till my flock looks like that! How exciting -- now to endure the fade phase and see what comes of it all. Can't wait too!!

 

[alohachickens]

What is really fun is if you click on the photos to enlarge them, check out all the yellow legs in there!

 

[alohachickens]

Let's see, they are umm, I don't know, umm . . . . . six weeks old? Eight weeks? They were babies around Thanksgiving because I was changing out paper on their brooder tubs over the holiday, ha ha ha. That means we should start to see if they fade by . . . . (looks at calender) . . . . late March. Well, that's in then. If anybody has decent color by end of March, they will be accepted into the Aloha project. Good luck baby chickies!!!