The Aloha Chicken Project

[fosterson]

Whoohoo! Looks like a nice, healthy hatch!

Update here: Aloha chicks are selling like HOTCAKES. Sold about umm, 80+ chicks last month and have a waiting list for the next group? OK, I'm only selling for $1 per chick, mind you. But fertility & hatch rate has been good, like 8+ out of 12 chicks are hatching. So that's still like $8 per dozen eggs - WAY better than I'd do selling as "eating eggs"!

I even had extra eggs, because I wanted to give a "gap" to raise a batch up for a couple weeks (for myself!) and the girls are laying like mad, short days and all. So I fostered most of those eggs out to local BYC'ers, who will hatch chicks and maybe give me back a nice hen. At least it's getting more Alohas into good homes.

Bad news, the chick thieves struck again. I had 18 babies that I got to about 2 weeks and decided I'd rather raise them than sell them (even though I did have buyers, figured I'd already fed them for two weeks so why not take it further.) The kids broke in and stole about 10 babies this time.

My new batch of chicks is from my biggest hens and a very colorful rooster, and these may turn out really, really nice. So I'm going to take them up to my friend Stephen's house. I got 33 babies including the ONE Buff Sussex egg! It hatched!!! Good luck telling it apart from the others, though. LOL. These are my BIGGEST girls so the babies from this pen are not teeny, the Buff chicks is blending in nicely at this point. The one other Buff Sussex chick, that the kids stole a few weeks ago, was huge, but I think it was a rooster. Maybe this time I got a hen chick and she's smaller? I don't know . . . we'll see if one suddenly grows larger or not? But I marked the egg and it's a shell now so the baby's in there somewhere!!!

At this point I'd probably install a web cam and see if I could catch the kids. That is ridiculous. *sigh*

Anyhow. Lost the gimpy chick -- it just gave out today for no discernable reason but it was never a feisty chick. Got 18 eggs in the 'bator now, but they're all EErs from a neighbor since my hens have completely gone on strike. The few eggs I'm getting aren't fertile. Ah well, spring WILL come. Eventually.

 

[HEChicken]

Darn - I'm so sorry to hear that thieves have been at it again Sommer. I'm with Fosterson about the camera - perhaps if you can get footage of them at it, the police will be able to take action.

I got my first Exchequer egg yesterday in at least 6 weeks. My NH cock bird has been more actively trying to mate hens recently too so

it is fertile. I'll save up 10 or so days worth (hopefully there will be more) and then try incubating them and see what happens.

 

[notinoz2007]

wow sommer, i cant get over those theiving kids. maybe a game camera will work? or an electric fence... i shudder to think what they are doing with them, because any rightly sensed parent would ask questions and have them return the stolen property.

i wish i could help with the special pen project - but right now the 4 chickens i have thinned down to seem too much sometimes. maybe by fall when all my traveling is done. til then i'll be checking in now and then. have fun everyone.

btw, goliath looks amazing.

 

[tazcat70]

Just a quick update, I have had my Jubilee Orpington rooster for a couple months. I am not hatching eggs right now, but he IS doing his job. Last fall, I also picked up 3 Buff Orps pullets, I figured they can go into the project flock too. They probably won't start laying until March or April, but that is ok. I decided no chicks in the house this Winter, and I am loving that decision!

Also, in a round-about way, I acquired Heather's Welsummer rooster. Thanks Heather for pointing her my way.

So a quick recap of where I am, what I have, and what my plans are.

For the girls I have 2 Aloha x Welsummer, 3 Welsummers, a Speckled Sussex, and 3 Buff Orps.
For the boys I have a Jubilee ORP and a Welsummer.

So the white legged girls will go with yellow legged boys etc....

For the most part, I won't be getting much in the way of color, but working size and type.

 

[HEChicken]

So glad that worked out Tazcat! He is such a nice boy.....

I like the idea of working size/type first - have to build the barn before you paint it and all that. That is really my goal as well. I got my second Exchequer egg already this morning so I have two saved up to incubate. Hopefully some of the other Exchequers will pick up and join whichever of them is laying so I'll have more than 5 eggs after 10 days. It is still fairly early to be incubating but I figure if I set them around Jan 20th, it will be into Feb before they hatch and then after 4 weeks in the brooder, it will be March and surely by then it will be warming up enough to transition them outside. And of course, this assumes that my New Hamp is even mating the Exchequers. I may have to put him in a pen with them so he has no other options, to ensure fertility.

 

[alohachickens]

Oooh, sounds like you guys have some interesting stuff up there. Taz, what an interesting flock you have.

The Welsummers are nice but a bit small, not Aloha small, LOL, but not as big as Orps, either. We had a hen here that Derek bred, she was an Aloha x Welsummer cross so was solid brown, and she was small, but a very, very prolific layer. I could always tell which eggs were hers because of the color. LOL. And she laid TONS of eggs! Every day, in all weather. Because of course Alohas are not slouches on the laying department, either. So she was very plain in looks but also very useful and practical. It was a great mix except she was very boring brown in color.

I love the Welsummer long tails and of course their eggs are gorgeous. So crossing them with Orp and Sussex is really not a bad idea to bring up the body size. My hens that were even just 1/4 Orp showed huge size improvement.

Hopefully you can keep the long tails with the Welsummer and Aloha lines. The short tails of the Orp roos can't compare with long flowy Aloha or Swedish rooster tails!

With the Sussex, Aloha, and Jubilee Orp in the mix, you will get the gene for mottling floating around, and it's a nice "fresh" mix for sure. (As in, if you took that barnyard mix after a couple of years, and crossed with Swedish Flowers, for example, you'd open up the Swedish gene pool tremedously but keep a lot of the same general size and look of the Swedish.)

Taz, once you have some "foundation" hens built with good size and hopefully even with some Mottling genes floating around, I'd be happy to send eggs or chicks to try and get you the super-colorful rooster that won't destroy your size progress. Hopefully in a year or so, we will be seeing some serious improvement in size. It's up to the Buff Sussex to provide that, if they will cooperate this Spring . . .the Buff Sussex roo carries Mottling already and is a MONSTER. He's HUGE.

 

[alohachickens]

I got my second Exchequer egg already this morning so I have two saved up to incubate. Hopefully some of the other Exchequers will pick up and join whichever of them is laying so I'll have more than 5 eggs after 10 days. It is still fairly early to be incubating but I figure if I set them around Jan 20th, it will be into Feb before they hatch and then after 4 weeks in the brooder, it will be March and surely by then it will be warming up enough to transition them outside. And of course, this assumes that my New Hamp is even mating the Exchequers. I may have to put him in a pen with them so he has no other options, to ensure fertility.

Heather, your project is so darn fascinating to me, because it is so very "straightforward". You have some very clear genes here. Red vs. Black. Mottling vs. Solid.

So the first generation should be very predictable, because in the "color fight" Black trumps Red, and Solid beats Mottling. You should get solid dark brown or black chicks.

But Generation Two will be fascinating. In theory, you should have about one in eight chicks be recessive gene red + mottled. But will it really happen?? Out of SOLID BLACK chicks?

And after that, if you break out the red mottled ones, and breed those together, will they breed true? Or will the black pop up again later?

What other factors will be dominant? Example, NHR's have shorter tails than Exchequers. I wonder which tail length is dominant? Will there be notable differences in size after a couple of generations, as well? Can you breed to favor the larger NHR size at the same time as you are working on color? Or will they tend to even out to one in-between size that is neither Exchequer small, or NHR huge, but right in the middle?

I can't wait!!!

 

[horsiefly53]

*Mottled (recessive)
eg Black/Black Mottled, Blue/Blue Mottled, Lavender/Lavender Mottled, Millefleur/Buff Columbian
Solid + Solid = 100% solid
Solid + Mottled = 100% solid, all carrying mottled
Solid (carrying Mottled) + Solid = 100% solid (50% carrying mottled)
Solid (carrying mottled) + Solid (carrying mottled) = 75% solids (50% carrying mottled, 25% pure solid), 25% mottled
Solid (carrying mottled) + Mottled = 50% solid (all carrying mottled), 50% mottled
Mottled+ Mottled = 100% mottled

You all have probably seen this but it's helping me to understand.

 

[HEChicken]

Heather, your project is so darn fascinating to me, because it is so very "straightforward". You have some very clear genes here. Red vs. Black. Mottling vs. Solid.

So the first generation should be very predictable, because in the "color fight" Black trumps Red, and Solid beats Mottling. You should get solid dark brown or black chicks.

But Generation Two will be fascinating. In theory, you should have about one in eight chicks be recessive gene red + mottled. But will it really happen?? Out of SOLID BLACK chicks?

And after that, if you break out the red mottled ones, and breed those together, will they breed true? Or will the black pop up again later?

What other factors will be dominant? Example, NHR's have shorter tails than Exchequers. I wonder which tail length is dominant? Will there be notable differences in size after a couple of generations, as well? Can you breed to favor the larger NHR size at the same time as you are working on color? Or will they tend to even out to one in-between size that is neither Exchequer small, or NHR huge, but right in the middle?

I can't wait!!!

I think I would be more excited about it if I felt like I could make any progress at all. Those two eggs I mentioned? Well, that is still all I have. Exchequers just do not seem to be good layers at all - probably the worst of any bird I've ever owned. They hatched April 10th and were 8 months old before I got the first eggs. Then as soon as the cold weather hit, they quit altogether. That was 6-8 weeks ago and last week I finally got the first two eggs since that break, but after laying the 2 eggs, they seem to be on strike again. I've probably had a TOTAL of 20 eggs from the 7 hens who hatched April 2013. That is completely pathetic. Their only redeeming value at this point is that they are so small they don't eat a lot either but so far I feel like I've got a ton of expense wrapped up in them, between their purchase and shipping in April, and feeding them since then, to garner 20 really small eggs total. I sure hope they improve as we move into spring.

 

[alohachickens]

That is really surprising, because when I owned pure Exchequers (five years ago) they were very reliable layers. Better than the Cochins and Sussex but not as good as the EE'er. Same as Polish. I got mine from Ideal, as well. I wonder what the deal is? Could the breeding stock have changed that much in five years there?