The Aloha Chicken Project

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One of my Swedish was extremely gawky and slow maturing. He's still not the best of the group but he's much slower to mature and none of them are finished yet. He's not nearly as gawky as he was but he's still rather slight of head and too long in the neck.

The color change is so dramatic. That's just nuts!

This weekend I'm going to finish culling my extras. The birds are all laying really well now so it's time to get hatchin!
 
I don't know about the shanks? Could be the pic or could be that this guy is just looking goofy at the moment. In general I think he's just going through a really awful teen stage right now. LOL!

My pure Swede roo took FOREVER to fill out. Now at over one year old, he looks huge and incredible, but it took a lot of patience to get there! I don't think he started to look mature until he was 9 or 10 months old. While I hate the fading white from the Buff Rock, I do love how early those Rocks would fill out compared to the Swedes!

Oh, funny thing, the one really "unique" roo here who is orangey-buff with tons of white mottling and little/no black, who looks like ????? no other breed at all, is leaning towards the "early maturing" type . . . he's already jumping on the young hens and "breeding" them. (For all the good it does, considering they aren't laying yet.)

He's also doing some lousy squeaky crowing every day. It sounds terrible, but considering I need him to step in and cover some hens as soon as possible (since he's the most exciting colored roo I've had in ages) the "creaky hinge" noises he's making are music to my ears! LOL!

He is also not looking as "rangy" as the more Swedish-looking rooster, and is overall very attractive and stout even now, although to be fair, he probably won't be quite as large as the lanky guy shown above.
 
Photos of the "Little Yellow Legs" pen chicks. Can you find the two pure hatchery NHR's in there? I can't yet, but I'm sure I'll be able to find them again as they mature. LOL!




 
Was wondering what the parentage was behind these two.
chickensoct2009010.jpg
Obviously there was an EE involved, but what was the other blood mixed in?
 
15littlem said:
Was wondering what the parentage was behind these two.
chickensoct2009010.jpg
Obviously there was an EE involved, but what was the other blood mixed in?
Click to expand...
That's the funny thing, it's a complete unknown. These were bred from a small mottled hen of unknown ancestry. She was found in the back yard of some Hispanic neighbors, who due to the fact they spoke no English and moved within six months of me getting her from them, were only able to tell me that they got her "from the other side of town" but no specific address I couldn't find out where they got her and visit the farm, and without them being able to speak English, I could not play 20 questions with them, like "Were there others like her?" or anything.

What is more odd, is I later found two more (apparently unrelated) hens off of Craigslist, who also were of no specific breed, but also were smaller sized hens with tons of mottling. I purchased those and added them to the program. I showed one to HEChicken and she thought I bred her, but I didn't, she was "found".

Here is an odd story. Years ago (late 80's?) my aunt picked up a (taxidermy) stuffed chicken in a basket at a local antique store. It was a normal brown hen, small in size. I remember it because the comb broke and she had me fix it with clay. LOL. The thing sat on her kitchen table for years. It had no legs, it was just the top part of the hen made to look like she was sitting on a nest. Kids thought it was gross having a dead chicken sitting on the dining room table, but my aunt is eccentric like me so she kept it there anyway. It was neat at first, but eventually it started looking more worn and hideous until she finally threw it away.

I also used to do a lot of antique shopping in college (a few good finds supplemented my living back then) and I remember one store was selling stuffed baby ducks wearing hats. (Like what you'd have dolls wearing.) They were actually pretty cute and they came with a card explaining the baby had ducks died naturally, so folks would not feel bad about buying one. They weren't expensive, only $15, I think, but I was totally broke at the time, being a student. So clearly someone in Phoenix was doing some creative taxidermy with poultry in Phoenix in the late 80's and early 90's. From the look of the baby ducks (wearing pink hats) and how cute the hen was in the basket, I'm guessing the taxidermist was female, but I could be wrong.

So I went into an antique store just a few months ago, wander down an aisle, and there's another stuffed chicken in a basket! Brought back memories of the one at my Aunt's house. Like my aunt's, the years had not been kind to it, it was so ragged and horrible looking! But the weird thing is, it looked just like my Aloha Ginger chickens! This same kind of orangey-mottled color, small and gamey. But this stuffed thing was clearly many years old, so it couldn't have possibly been one of the more recent "culls" that ended up in the hands of a taxidermist. This looked like it was about the same age as my aunt's? It takes a while for a mount to pick up that much dust and look so worn.

I didn't want to buy it (it was hideous) but it looked exactly like someone had nabbed one of my Aloha culls and stuffed it. So, I took a photo with my cell phone. I have no idea how to post the photo here, or get it off of the phone, my phone is not a "smart phone" but one of the old-school types. But I did want to document it. If it's as old as it looks, it would prove that Aloha chickens (whatever they are) have been around AZ at least a decade, if not more?

Guessing they have some Game type stock, but beyond that, not sure what is in them. This is why I feel Alohas are more than just a mix of breeds but a unique strain.
 
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