The Aloha Chicken Project

[draye]

What is interesting, Draye, is that one hen next door, actually had signs of mottling. Not actual mottling present, but she did display a bit of white on one tail feather and two other specks of white on other areas. This is commonly seen on Alohas who have one solid parent and one mottled parent. The mottling really doesn't show up on the first generation, but often there will be a little "tell" on a few stray feathers. So interestingly, this one hen must carry Mottling in her heritage. I am guessing perhaps some Speckled Sussex in her way-back parentage?

Have you ever heard of Mottled Naked Necks?

These are hatchery stock and would likely be from Privett Hatchery in NM, which is the supplier of our local feed store. (Which is where I am guessing she picked them up.)

Well, gosh darn, Draye, you should have mentioned that NN's carry Mottling. I never checked that thread before, and look what I found:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/301500/naked-neck-turken-thread/3660#post_8634541

Check out post #3666. Looks like this might work!!!

I never actually knew that they carried mottling until last year when I got this one from Cackle Hatchery:





Not a whole lot of mottling but it is there.

 

[5moore]

Here's a new breeding pen that I just set up. I guarantee this one will confuse you. LOL.





Yes, those are Naked Necks. LOL.

My next door neighbor raised NN chicks, and while most are brown, and a few are black, a couple were this lovely Buff Columbian color. One has vibrant yellow legs. The other has slate legs with a yellow overlay, so she carries yellow, but also gray legs.

As weird as it seems, the Naked Neck gene, from what I understand, is a simple dominant. Meaning, that half the chicks will have it, and the other half, won't. In this cross, all chicks should show yellow legs (with a few having a gray cast as well) and all will carry Mottling from the Dad. Half will have Naked Necks and half will not.

My goal is to keep the "regular" neck chicks.

Once I got over the ugly neck thing, I realized these hens may have plenty to offer:



They are big, plump, healthy, good layers. Clean non-feathered yellow legs. Single comb. I mean, if you add the spots, and take away the Naked Neck, the body type fits. And it should ironically be much easier to take away the naked neck gene, than to add the yellow leg gene and larger size.

The rooster has GORGEOUS color, with more white that most any rooster I've had. What he lacks is type. His chest is narrow, and even though he's taller than Pumpkin, he is not nearly as nicely rounded or shaped as little Pumpkin is. You can kind of see his lack of width in this photo:



Here is little Pumpkin by comparison:


Pumpkin is small in size, but has great "shape" to his body, and is actually fairly stout and compact. This is more in keeping with what I am breeding for. Good round plump body. Just bigger, as Pumpkin is maybe only 7-8 pounds, I am guessing? About the same weight and size as my New Hampshire hens. While Pumpkin has good mottling, you can see the other rooster has so much more. He's also taller than Pumpkin by at least one inch, possibly two.

So, I'm hoping the offspring from the NN pen, will inherit some of the hen's genes for light golden color and improved heft, while carrying the Dad's genes for incredible color. Yellow legs and single upright combs should be displayed in all. My neighbor who loaned me the hens will gladly take all the slate-legged naked neck babies! She is very excited.

The pen was set up Saturday and it can take up to two weeks to clear out the other rooster's DNA. So I will not be able to even begin to collect hatching eggs until after the 29th, or even first week of April, if I want to be super-safe to make sure I only have this roo's DNA in there.

Then a week's wait to collect eggs, and three weeks to hatch 'em. If I'm lucky, will get babies hatched by early to mid May.

Pumpkin is still my favorite! A little more mottling and size and he is perfect!

 

[alohachickens]

Pumpkin has the BEST personality of all my roosters, too. He's adorable. Right now, he is "free range" in the yard 100% of the time. He does not have a pen of his own girls, but I may put him in with the NN girls at the very end of that run. He does "tag" a few from the 3/4 Swedish roo's breeder pen whenever I let those out to free-range.

He will be re-homed with my friend Kathleen, along with Sprinkles the Sussex, and several of the very large half-Aloha half-Swedish hens, so that I may get eggs back from them to hatch out from this flock, at any time.

Kathleen has a beautiful garden and small coop, with shady hiding areas, on a full acre of land. She's had hawk issues in the past (eeek!) so she recently put a net overhead to keep them out. Provided that is effective, the flock should be safe. And if not, the life they do get will be wonderful. It's a beautiful space with grape vines growing on the chain link and shady citrus trees to lay under. Chicken paradise!

Pumpkin hangs out by the patio, and greets me at the door every day. He walks with me and "supervises" while I feed everyone else. He is really a talker, and chatters away constantly. Has never made an aggressive move towards me. And yet, he is dominant over most of the other roosters, and despite his small size, his confidence makes them back down! A very special rooster indeed.

 

[alohachickens]

I never actually knew that they carried mottling until last year when I got this one from Cackle Hatchery:





Not a whole lot of mottling but it is there.

Very interesting. Just checked Ebay and a person on there has Jubilee and Mottled eggs for sale, but wants $45 per dozen, plus only shows photos of ONE hen. One photo, of one hen. Geez, I hate when folks do that. It would be like me showing a pic of one awesome Aloha and then selling eggs from the whole flock. LOL.

It makes sense to me that the gene would not present itself strongly. Mottled is a recessive gene, and most recessives tend to hide and lurk in the background, and need much coaxing to reach full expression. However, this is really interesting that the breed carries the gene.

If you wanted to try and work with raising mottled Turkens with yellow legs, perhaps I could ship you a few eggs from that pen. If you got anything awesome in the future (big, yellow legged, and mottled) perhaps I could get a few eggs back and remove the Naked Neck. LOL.

Now about the NN gene, I knew it was dominant, but I guess from what little I find it can be both single dominant and homozygous dominant. So that means either half the chicks in this pen will be naked neck if it is a single dominant. BUT if it's a homozygous (double) dominant, I may have ALL chicks with naked necks and have to remove it in Generation #2! Darn, I was hoping for a single dominant, so I could breed the gene out in one shot. Ah well, I guess I'd need to breed to Gen #2 level to add the color back in, anyway. And the silver lining is, the hens with naked necks, well, at least I'd know who their parents were when I'm trying to keep track of pedigree. LOL.

 

[draye]

Very interesting. Just checked Ebay and a person on there has Jubilee and Mottled eggs for sale, but wants $45 per dozen, plus only shows photos of ONE hen. One photo, of one hen. Geez, I hate when folks do that. It would be like me showing a pic of one awesome Aloha and then selling eggs from the whole flock. LOL.

It makes sense to me that the gene would not present itself strongly. Mottled is a recessive gene, and most recessives tend to hide and lurk in the background, and need much coaxing to reach full expression. However, this is really interesting that the breed carries the gene.

If you wanted to try and work with raising mottled Turkens with yellow legs, perhaps I could ship you a few eggs from that pen. If you got anything awesome in the future (big, yellow legged, and mottled) perhaps I could get a few eggs back and remove the Naked Neck. LOL.

Now about the NN gene, I knew it was dominant, but I guess from what little I find it can be both single dominant and homozygous dominant. So that means either half the chicks in this pen will be naked neck if it is a single dominant. BUT if it's a homozygous (double) dominant, I may have ALL chicks with naked necks and have to remove it in Generation #2! Darn, I was hoping for a single dominant, so I could breed the gene out in one shot. Ah well, I guess I'd need to breed to Gen #2 level to add the color back in, anyway. And the silver lining is, the hens with naked necks, well, at least I'd know who their parents were when I'm trying to keep track of pedigree. LOL.

Yeah, so far I've got no mottling in the offspring, but I haven't hatched a whole lot of them. Seems every time I get ready to set eggs they decide to slow down their egg production.
I think that would be neat to try to get those colorful Alohas into the NN pen. Let me know if you can get me some eggs and I might give it a go on trying for those mottled NN's. I will need to hold off for a couple of weeks though, got some that I'm setting for the Easter Hatch-A-Long. Also, will be setting some EE eggs and Wheaten Ameraucana eggs that I'm supposed to be getting in the mail, for my personal use on my EE's and maybe some full blooded stuff on the Ameraucana's.

 

[alohachickens]

Yeah, so far I've got no mottling in the offspring, but I haven't hatched a whole lot of them.

Both parents need to carry the Mottling gene for it to express itself.

Well, let me rephrase that. Both need to carry Mottling for the gene to express itself FULLY. On my crosses where I've taken a colorful Aloha roo and bred to a boring "solid" chicken, the baby sometimes shows one or two weird white flecks on a tail feather or something. It's just a little "clue" that the gene is present and waiting to pop out, if encouraged. That's what I saw on my neighbor's NN hen. (If she also had yellow legs I would have included her in the pen.)


Above: A pic showing one white feather tip on otherwise "solid" Aloha cross.


See? Not much else there to tell you the gene is present.


There's another one. This is the amount of white present on my neighbor's NN hen. See it on the wing and tail? (Past Aloha breeder stock shown.)

If I sent you eggs from that pen, and you kept a rooster, he would probably appear to be solid, but when crossed to your Mottled hen, you should get a few chicks that would be fully mottled.

What I would love you to do (if you were interested) is work on finding stock that is Buff with yellow legs, and/or is Mottled with yellow legs. Even if it has just a couple specks of white to start. My little Alohas could bring the color, but we can't get the size and heft from nowhere. That's what my program needs. Big, light-colored, yellow legged chickens. And the tails on a lot of the NN roos are decent. That's my only complaint with a lot of NHR's. They can have stumpy little short tails sometimes, and I do love the flowing tails on my little Aloha roos!

 

[draye]

Both parents need to carry the Mottling gene for it to express itself.

Well, let me rephrase that. Both need to carry Mottling for the gene to express itself FULLY. On my crosses where I've taken a colorful Aloha roo and bred to a boring "solid" chicken, the baby sometimes shows one or two weird white flecks on a tail feather or something. It's just a little "clue" that the gene is present and waiting to pop out, if encouraged. That's what I saw on my neighbor's NN hen. (If she also had yellow legs I would have included her in the pen.)


Above: A pic showing one white feather tip on otherwise "solid" Aloha cross.


See? Not much else there to tell you the gene is present.


There's another one. This is the amount of white present on my neighbor's NN hen. See it on the wing and tail? (Past Aloha breeder stock shown.)

If I sent you eggs from that pen, and you kept a rooster, he would probably appear to be solid, but when crossed to your Mottled hen, you should get a few chicks that would be fully mottled.

What I would love you to do (if you were interested) is work on finding stock that is Buff with yellow legs, and/or is Mottled with yellow legs. Even if it has just a couple specks of white to start. My little Alohas could bring the color, but we can't get the size and heft from nowhere. That's what my program needs. Big, light-colored, yellow legged chickens. And the tails on a lot of the NN roos are decent. That's my only complaint with a lot of NHR's. They can have stumpy little short tails sometimes, and I do love the flowing tails on my little Aloha roos!

Yes, I'm interested. I have something in mind to try if I can talk my dad into selling or loaning me his hens, they came from Murray McMurray and are supposed to be Production Reds but they carry some mottling kinda like the Speckled Sussex. Getting ready to headed home from work, we'll talk later.

 

[HEChicken]

Sommer, I moved onto Stage II tonight. I separated my NH rooster and my 7 Exchequer hens into the hoop coop. I'll observe and give it a few days to be sure the eggs are fertile and then I'll start collecting them to hatch. Wish me luck….

 

[CheyAut]

Pumpkin has the BEST personality of all my roosters, too. He's adorable. Right now, he is "free range" in the yard 100% of the time. He does not have a pen of his own girls, but I may put him in with the NN girls at the very end of that run. He does "tag" a few from the 3/4 Swedish roo's breeder pen whenever I let those out to free-range. He will be re-homed with my friend Kathleen, along with Sprinkles the Sussex, and several of the very large half-Aloha half-Swedish hens, so that I may get eggs back from them to hatch out from this flock, at any time. Kathleen has a beautiful garden and small coop, with shady hiding areas, on a full acre of land. She's had hawk issues in the past (eeek!) so she recently put a net overhead to keep them out. Provided that is effective, the flock should be safe. And if not, the life they do get will be wonderful. It's a beautiful space with grape vines growing on the chain link and shady citrus trees to lay under. Chicken paradise! Pumpkin hangs out by the patio, and greets me at the door every day. He walks with me and "supervises" while I feed everyone else. He is really a talker, and chatters away constantly. Has never made an aggressive move towards me. And yet, he is dominant over most of the other roosters, and despite his small size, his confidence makes them back down! A very special rooster indeed.

Cool, Kathleen was the one who first told me about your Alohas not too long ago

 

[5moore]

Sommer here is where I am at on the project. Hasnt been quite a year yet! It will be a year in May. Of the 34 chicks that Sommer sent me last May, I kept 7 (2 roosters and 5 hens) to go with the two hens I received from Deerfield. During the heat wave last year I lost one of the hens from Deerfield. So my flock is now 8.




Lots of orange.... lots of spots! AND lots of eggs!


Look at the tips of those feathers....WHITE! Love this hen, although she has willow legs.


My favorite roo!


My husbands favorite roo.... and he is dominant.

The lemon cuckoo orpington roo that I had in this pen for several months was lost during the extreme cold this winter. BUT I did hatch some of his chicks.
Speaking of hatching chicks.... I put 32 eggs in incubator in December. 26 hatched on December 28th.