The Aloha Chicken Project

[fosterson]

Wow, he's a beaut', as they say. I think he might actually be splash, but I love the feathered legs! We'll have to wait for Sommer to weigh in, but what the heck. He's got nice yellow legs and a nice upright straight comb...those are two of the requirements! At worst, you'd have some eatin' cockerels and some egg laying hens And one way to know of he's got Marans in him is that his daughters will be 50% for brown if he's a halfbred and 100% if he's not

 

[alohachickens]

What do you think about this rooster for spotted/Aloha chickens? I bought him as a younster from a swap a year ago after being told he was a splash marans. Later after I learned a little more, I am thinking he is a marans/leghorn x. He has very yellow legs. I have several chicks from him on the white-ish side with slightly feathered legs. These are from EE hens.
From my Speckled sussex purchased eggs last spring I got 4 SS roosters and 1 hen. I kept 2 roosters with the most white. I have 5 NH red hens (after 1st 6 got cocci and all but 1 died), and 3 RIR hens. In the spring I plan on penning them together and haching some of the eggs.
I love reading all the posts from the project and can't wait to try for spotted chickens.

If you remove the feathered legs (which won't be too hard, just breed to clean legged birds and the trait will go away soon) his body type is lovely for the program. So he's a good start in the type and form. Nice size, upright comb, yellow legs, long tail. He really is a lovely guy.

Now as for color, he could be Splash? Maybe with some red "leakage"? Hard to say, I honestly have no idea. You said his chicks were "white-ish"? What color were the moms?

He could have some usefulness, if you want to keep him around, based on his nice body shape and form. More of the body type we are looking at than say, an Orpington rooster. Orps are huge, which is great, but they are loose feathered, have white legs, and short tails. So size is pretty much the only thing an Orp brings to the table. Orps are OK layers but often are not amazing layers for their body size. My smallest Alohas do not lay the biggest eggs, but they are very reliable and prolific.

This guy has feathered legs (easy to fix) but every other body trait works great for type. Now color on him is the big unknown?

The Marans have excellent body types, I just wish they had better colors for us to work with! So many are barred, (cuckoo) or blue/splash. But they have nice bodies and are nice layers, and mixed right, traces of Marans breed could be helpful in terms of improved egg size and quality.

 

[alohachickens]

Want to add - I would suggest trying to breed that rooster to the one Speckled Sussex hen you have left, and see what you get.

Let's call this Pen #1 with this roo over the one Speckled Sussex hen. If he is Splash, all the chicks would show gray (blue) on any areas that would normally be black. Note that the spots would go away - they are recessive. So you'd have Sussex crosses, with no spots, but they would CARRY the gene for spots and also carry the gene for yellow legs. Let's say you kept a rooster from this cross, becuase with only one Sussex hen, Murphy's Law says that if you hatch out a few eggs, most of them will be roosters. Ha ha ha!

Now in the other pen, call it Pen #2, let's say you had the most-spotty Sussex rooster in with NHR hens. All those babies would pretty much look like NHR but with white legs. (However, they would also carry the gene for spots and yellow legs, even though it would be hidden.) Let's say you keep all the hens from this pen.

Then you take the rooster from Pen #1 and cross to hens from Pen #2. In theory, half the chicks would show a return of spotting from the "hidden" Mottled gene, and half of those would also have yellow legs. But the beautiful part of this cross, is they should all be really nice in size, and if this guy is actually a Marans / Leghorn cross, with NHR and Sussex tossed in, they would probably be big, healthy, wonderful layers that any chicken owner would be delighted to have in their flock, regardless of color. That's a great mix of very practical breeds!

I have no idea what this rooster's color would do to the future generations of chicks, because we haven't determined what it is exactly. But I would say because the chicks would be a great "farmyard mix" you would not be doing any harm to see what happens. They'd be nice layers regardless of color. LOL!

 

[alohachickens]

I thought I'd post a little more on body type real quick - what I seriously need to do is a drawing but for now use this.

Body type of a "show Orpington" - NOT what we want:

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGK/Orps/BuffColOrpBtyCkl.JPEG

Here's a hatchery Orp type roo, who is closer, and if you have to use Orp this is better for our goals:

http://cdn.backyardchickens.com/c/cf/cf98eda7_30256_chickens_023.jpeg

Here's a Buff Leghorn, who has yellow legs, long tail, but is too light in body to be of much use for meat:

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh16/Arie_nl/103_0651b.jpg

And here is this kind of mutt-looking non show quality NHR rooster who I've shared before who is SO MUCH AWESOME:

http://www.chickensgoatsforsale.com/gallery/New-Hampshire-Red.jpg

That gorgeous guy has a longer tail than most NHR and as you can see, phenominal size to boot.
Just add spots and he's in my eyes, abosolute perfection.

Your "swap meet mystery rooster" is pretty close in shape to Big Red there.

 

[horsiefly53]

OK, thanks, I get it! I will have to figure out how to work my pens to do that. I have 3 nice coops and pens, but coop 3 is full of bantys. Coop 2 is the one I planned on putting the spotted chicken project in the spring and now just has some of my free rangers, mixed flock. Coop 1 has my free rangers/mixed flock and the little door that opens to the yard. Then I have 2 hutches which I keep for broodies and chicks (coops 4 and 5), which now have a broody setting and a hen with 3 chicks. I used to just let the broodies set in the coops but I had to keep the eggs marked and then something started picking off the chicks. I also have a screen porch on the garage/barn that I stole from my husband that has the sussex/leghorn/australorpe/wyandotte flock, but it has no pen. I have sold most of the wyandottes off. The guy I got the sussex hatching eggs from also sold me the leghorn/australorpe/SLW/BLRW eggs, (a friend hatched those for me) which is now great for my egg business and for selling a few for feed $. I just wish more sussex had been hens!
So I am glad I can keep Charlie, my leghorn/marans (if that is what he is), because he is a really nice rooster. His chicks have been white with a few black spots out of I don't know what hens. I just stick some of the nicer eggs under broodies when I have them. I have a very mixed flock, lots of EEs, tho. I just know they are his chicks because of the leg feathering-and yes it is slight feathering. My other rooster is a BW Ameraucana.
And I have a cheapy incubator, but trying to save up for a better one.

 

[5moore]

So sorry to hear about your stolen chicks Sommer! That is so maddening to know someone took what wasnt for the taking.

On a good note..... hubby set aloha eggs 20 days ago and I have alohas hatching as we speak. 5 so far. It will be interesting to see what we get since there was three roos (one of which was the lemon cuckoo orpington). The other two roos came from the batch Sommer hatched and shipped me earlier this year. The five pullets I kept from that shipment from Sommer are laying machines! The temps have been very cold here for the most part, and it hasnt slowed them down at all. I'm very pleased with their laying. Will post pics of the babies in a couple days.

 

[alohachickens]

The five pullets I kept from that shipment from Sommer are laying machines! The temps have been very cold here for the most part, and it hasnt slowed them down at all. I'm very pleased with their laying. Will post pics of the babies in a couple days.

Good to hear! I am getting the same feedback here as well.

Example - the ONE chick that was Buff Orp, that was stolen - the rooster is in a breeder pen with several pure Sussex hens. Speckled Sussex, Buff Sussex, Light Sussex, plus the "Mystery Hen" that might be some kind of Swedish/Sussex cross (but has zero Aloha blood.) The rooster and hens that I bought from CA are now umm, 10 months old. WELL into "laying time" so we can no longer say they are too young or just getting started or whatnot. So the roo's in with seven hens total.
Stephen says he got maybe one egg last week. From the ENTIRE PEN.

Trying to hatch more replacments for the stolen chick . .. . but yeah . . . wow. The pure Sussex girls aren't helping.

Meanwhile, I am getting ready to put *over* five dozen eggs in the 'bator from my 20-30 Aloha hens. I had five eggs yesterday from Pen #1 which I think has 8-10 hens. Not as many eggs in Pen #2 per chickens, about 4-6 eggs per day from about 15 hens, but that oen has my older Alohas plus a few baby Alohas that are just getting started. (Got one blood-streaked pullet egg from that pen yesterday.) So once you factor that about 8 hens in that pen are 2-3 years old and about 3 are teens, that leaves only about 5 that are "prime" hens anyway.

I had another chicken person who called about buying chicks say his hens (Marans) were not laying right now either. Another person who came by to buy chicks was impressed at the number of eggs on my counter because her Barred Rocks and RIR's are not laying much right now. So, the eggs might be smaller in size, but YAY bonus points for being reliable!!!
Going to set about 5-6 dozen eggs laid last week to make "sales chicks" for January 19th.

Help spread Alohas 'round the Valley, plus pay the feed bills here! LOL. Chick sales are going well. Sold 30 baby chicks yesterday.

 

[alohachickens]

So sorry to hear about your stolen chicks Sommer! That is so maddening to know someone took what wasnt for the taking.

On a good note..... hubby set aloha eggs 20 days ago and I have alohas hatching as we speak. 5 so far. It will be interesting to see what we get since there was three roos (one of which was the lemon cuckoo orpington).

Did you ever manage to get an extra Jubilee Orp? I thought maybe you were talking about that at one point. I would love to see some 3/4 Aloha 1/4 Jubilee chicks to see what that would do to size! I had a strain of Orp here, the GIANT hen "Nui" was 1/4 Orp and enormous. Larger even than the pure Sussex, though she was less than a quarter Buff Orp with the rest Sussex and Aloha.

Nui passed this last summer.

Would love to try and create another strain like that using a touch of the Jubilee Orp, to see if the size improvement is usually that pronounced.

 

[alohachickens]

OK, thanks, I get it! I will have to figure out how to work my pens to do that. I have 3 nice coops and pens, but coop 3 is full of bantys. Coop 2 is the one I planned on putting the spotted chicken project in the spring and now just has some of my free rangers, mixed flock. Coop 1 has my free rangers/mixed flock and the little door that opens to the yard.

I'm still on a shoestring budget, so you might have to do what I have to do most of the time. Put your chickens in the "mixed flock" and then alternate batches in Coop #2. It takes 2-3 weeks to get one roo's DNA into a set of hens. (A month is most safe.) So, what you do is take the few hens and one roo that you want to work with, put that batch in the coop, wait a month, and hatch chicks. Then while you're raising that group of chicks, swap out hens/roos, and do it again with the other cross. You'll have to wait a month to get the right DNA into the hen and rooster you need, but you'll get there.

I really do wish I had enough breeder pens to do all the crosses I want to try, all at the same time, but if you can't, you can't. It's OK to work within your means. You can still get there, it's just a little slower. My set-up is very ramshackle and low-tech and cheap and ugly. Someday I'll have nice breeder pens. Until then, it's dog kennels with tarps on top. Blegh, ugly but it works. LOL!!!

 

[alohachickens]

Just for fun, wanted to share!

One of my hens in Pen #1 - likely one of the Swedish x Aloha crosses - will sometimes lay an ENORMOUS egg. The last one did not hatch, but I just candled this one, and it has big, beautiful strong veins running throughout! Here is her egg compared with the "average" Aloha egg:




And my dog wishing I'd drop it for her. LOL.

SO excited to see if it hatches, because this batch of chicks due on Jan. 5th is MINE! Going to raise the chicks from Pen #1 up at Stephen's to see how the babies turn out. There are 60 eggs in there, which is how many I got from Pen #1 in ten days of collecting eggs. (Not bad for December laying!) The girls in Pen #1 have slowed down a little since then, from maybe 6 eggs per day to perhaps 4-5 but not shabby at all.

I have not seen any more ginormous eggs like this however. Good for the hen, I guess, LOL.