The Aloha Chicken Project

[draye]

If I remember right there were 18 NN eggs and 20 Aloha. I think there were 12 to hatch of the NN but not all NN. It seems like there around 14 of the Aloha that hatched. May not be quite accurate but very close.

 

[HEChicken]

When you do proceed, what are your plans? Cross the Exchequers with the NHR rooster again to make more chicks? Try to get more hens and a roo for the back-crossing phase? (Which at this point, the best we could hope for is next spring. Even if your coop was functional tomorrow, it would take a few weeks for the DNA to set, a few weeks to hatch the chicks, and then at least five months to grow the babies to laying. Sooooo . . . like they'd be mature next December maybe? At that point you'd have to wait until Spring to hatch more! Argh! The waiting is so ughhhh.

I was going to do the Exchequers plus the 3 hens I hatched last year all in the hoop coop with a NH rooster. To make things interesting, I'm going to switch out roosters each week and collect all eggs for all 3 of those weeks. That way not all chicks will have the same father, for what that's worth.

Unfortunately even December is optimistic with these guys. The Exchequers are REALLY slow to do everything. Slow to start laying (they didn't start until 8-9 months), first to stop laying in fall and last to start again in spring. So even if I could start tomorrow, it would be next March/April before I'd have the next set of eggs to work with. ughhhh is absolutely right!

 

[alohachickens]

I was going to do the Exchequers plus the 3 hens I hatched last year all in the hoop coop with a NH rooster. To make things interesting, I'm going to switch out roosters each week and collect all eggs for all 3 of those weeks. That way not all chicks will have the same father, for what that's worth.

Unfortunately even December is optimistic with these guys. The Exchequers are REALLY slow to do everything. Slow to start laying (they didn't start until 8-9 months), first to stop laying in fall and last to start again in spring. So even if I could start tomorrow, it would be next March/April before I'd have the next set of eggs to work with. ughhhh is absolutely right!

This is all so very strange to me, because when I had the Exchequers all those years ago, they were super reliable egg laying MACHINES. I had the hens for about 2 years, and they were my most reliable layers in all weather.

But we discussed previously - both of us had weird issues with chicks mailed from Ideal about the same time? I had that freak batch of Sussex. All died but a few. I mean, like 20 of them literally dropped dead! And they were raised at another person's house alongside his healthy chicks. My home-grown Aloha chicks here did great, hatched at same time. I should have contacted Ideal about the situation, but I didn't.

The very first batch of chicks that I got from Ideal, like seven or eight years ago, was from Ideal and included giant cochins, Ameraucanas, Speckled Sussex, Buff Polish, and the Exchequers. I was thrilled with all of them. Did not lose a single chick in the entire batch! All were vibrantly healthy. The Giant Cochins were worthless layers, so I sold those and kept the others. The Ameraucana hen didn't work for my Aloha program, so I gave her to my friend Larissa. Larissa kept waiting for her to stop laying, but she named the hen "Battleaxe" because she was crabby and old but would NOT stop laying big, blue eggs. She had her for many years, for all I know she still may be there. LOL!

I eventually sold the Exchequers to make room for the babies. I was super limited on how many I could keep at first, so I had to make room for their "kids". But it wasn't for a lack of health, or lack of laying. Something really weird must have happened at Ideal that time frame, is all I can figure? The Sussex chicks I got from them were quite healthy, years ago, too!

I don't think it's the Exchequer breed. I think it was THAT batch of Exchequers.

You know, if you're game for it, and have a few bucks laying about, maybe try some hatching eggs from another source?

I just checked Ebay and this seller has been listing auction after auction after auction - so clearly his flock is laying like mad!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/12-2-Excheq...265?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3aaa3ac471

His roo has lovely spotting, yellow legs, and a great long tail.

Or even more reliable, if you hear of anyone in your area going in on a box of chicks, see if anyone else has Leghorn chicks? I googled and it looks like "Meyer" has them:

https://www.meyerhatchery.com/productinfo.a5w?prodID=EXLS

Of course, that will do NOTHING to help this year! LOL. But anyway, it's not typical. So that's really really odd that yours have been such fussy layers.

You know what will be really interesting? If it is environmental, soemething to do with time/date of hatch but not the base Exchequer DNA, the the hybrid NHR / Exchequer hens should be great layers. It will be super interesting to see if the hybrids are performing great? I'd imagine the eggs (being as they would be by a NHR roo) would be light brown or cream, so it should be easy to see who is laying what, if the four of them were cooped together. Hmmm, that will be fun to see! Can't wait!

If you wanted to get super scientific and have pure NHR hens, you could pen two Exchequers, two hybrids, and two NHR's, and in theory the eggs will all be different shades. See who performs best! But that's just being kind of extreme. Ha ha.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

So just to let everyone else know I received 30 eggs from Sommer today. I had 2 broken and leaking and 1 cracked. I'm going to go ahead and use the cracked one with the membrane still intact. I have 28 resting in the turner. Keeping my fingers crossed for a good hatch. It looked like a knife had gone through the top of the box, twice actually.

I'm just really happy to be making some progress after a very slow 2014. I feel your pain HEChicken. As I type it is pouring rain out there. You know that strip of land between the basement and the swimming pool? There is now a creek running through there toward the chicken yard. The coop (really a shed fitted out for the birds) is high enough I've never had water in there, yet, knock on wood! The electricity just blinked off and back on -- not good. Ack! Thank goodness for generators.

 

[HEChicken]

I went out this afternoon and took some pictures. I am walking through a river to get from my house down to the coop. Out in the pasture, a heron is fishing - not in the pond, in the pasture. Fish are washing out of the pond in the overflow and the heron is finding them.



That is standing water you can see under and around the fence. This is in the chicken yard. The poor mother hens are doing their best to protect their chicks but it means they are standing around looking like drowned rats while their chicks huddle under them. In the dog igloo, another broody hen has eggs hatching today. What a day to come into the world. I also have two turkeys co-parenting about 15 poults. They are doing a great job and keeping them all alive somehow.

And here is the hoop coop. It looks like water got on the lens and is obscuring the worst of the standing water in there, but you get the idea. I took the tarp off this winter to protect it and haven't yet put it back on this year as it has either been super windy or rainy. The tarp wouldn't make much difference anyway, since the water runs into it from the bottom. If the rain ever stops and it dries out a little, I'll get the tarp on and some birds moved in there.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Wow, HEChicken! We still have more rain to go, but our electricity is holding up. I hope it stops raining before I head to bed so I won't have to worry about chicks in the brooder. That's the great advantage to having them outside with broodies. It just doesn't matter what the electricity does. I just wanted them more up close and it's hard to get my hands on chicks when the broodies are caring for them. I'm going to break down and let them brood next year.

 

[HEChicken]

Oh - I didn't mean to ignore your post! I'm pretty much at capacity now. Actually, to be honest, I have way more birds than I really want. I have a 10x10 coop with over 100 birds in it! It works because they are out free-ranging all day and only sleep there at night. I cut way down on feed once the grass greened up to encourage them to get out and forage more but even so I go through a boatload of feed between cows, sheep, goats, turkeys and chickens. Put it this way: the feed store now loads my feed into the back of my truck on a pallet via a forklift. My goal this year is to reduce the overall number of birds I have so I am not looking to add any more via hatching eggs or chicks, so will just have to go with what I have. I know most people would just build more pens and more coops but we are trying really hard to be a practical, working homestead. Our overall goal is to produce as much of our own food as possible, without it costing more to raise the animals than it would to just go and buy the food at the store. Adding more coops and pens would simply be an additional expense and add to my workload. Right now chores take only minutes in the morning to fill one feeder for the adults and a creep feeder for the chicks (who begin free-ranging with their mother at 3 days of age). Another few minutes in the evening to collect eggs. The more pens I have, the more time the chores take and the more there is to ask someone to do on the occasions I am out of town and have to have someone else fill in for me. For me the Aloha project is a little bit of fun within an otherwise purely functional flock. I kinda like the Exchequers in spite of their disappointing performance because they are colorful and so small that they don't eat a ton of feed.

I think I still have 6-7 of the adult hens. Then I have the 3 hens I hatched from them last year. So I have about 10 hens I can put in the hoop coop and that should result in quite a few eggs to hatch when the time comes. You're right that the daughters lay a light brown egg. I saw one lay one awhile back so was able to verify that, but I have so many that lay different shades of brown eggs that without seeing it come out of them, I'd never know which is their egg otherwise

But once they are in the hoop coop, it will be easy to tell which are theirs and which are the pure Exchequers.

The only reason I've hatched any chicks this year so far was to break broody hens. Fortunately I've had fewer of those this year than in previous years! I bet I won't have any broodies when the time comes to hatch more Aloha project chicks though, so I might actually have to brooder raise some for the first time in two years!

 

[HEChicken]

Wow, HEChicken! We still have more rain to go, but our electricity is holding up. I hope it stops raining before I head to bed so I won't have to worry about chicks in the brooder. That's the great advantage to having them outside with broodies. It just doesn't matter what the electricity does. I just wanted them more up close and it's hard to get my hands on chicks when the broodies are caring for them. I'm going to break down and let them brood next year.

Oh I totally LOVE having broodies raise the chicks! I can sit and watch them for hours as they take the chicks around and find food for them and show them the ropes. Right after the chicks hatch, I put them in a nursery pen for 72 hours. This gives the hen a chance to concede that no more eggs will hatch and learn the sounds of her chicks. Likewise, the chicks learn which hen is their special mama. Then I boot them out of the nursery pen. Usually the hens don't want to leave as they kind of like having a feeder full of chick feed at their disposal but I'm tough on them

. I have a chick creeper set up - nothing fancy, but it allows the chicks to continue to have access to feed without the adults birds eating it all. I took this pic of the creep feeder when I was out there this afternoon. An old shower door over the top keeps the feed dry in spite of the widespread flooding in the chicken yard. You can see some chicks under there right now. The white bird to the left is one of the Mamas. The mama hens quickly learn to swing by the creep feeder often throughout the day so the chicks can eat. That is what is so amazing about the whole process to me. The mama's get nothing personally out of visiting the creep feeder - yet they know their chicks need it so they do it anyway. AND - when the feeder in the creep is empty, the mama hens let me know. As soon as I go down there, they mob me, yelling loudly that they need to feed their chicks but the feeder is EMPTY.

This set up works an amazingly long time. You can see that the creep is just up on bricks. I can't turn the bricks the tall side up or most of my other birds will be able to sneak under there, so I have to leave it like this. The chicks can continue to crawl under there until they are about 12 weeks of age! I guess when you've done it every day of your life, you just keep squeezing under because after all, you made it yesterday, right?

By the time they are so big they really can't crawl under, I figure they're about old enough to eat out of the adult feeder. By then their mothers have long since abandoned them to their own devices so they do have to compete with the adults, but I haven't lost any juveniles to starvation so I guess they do. I know its usually recommended to wait until 16 weeks for them to eat layer feed but it isn't realistic for me to feed a flock of 100+ birds a more expensive feed that is only available in crumbles, just to meet the needs of a handful of juveniles. Plus, the cockerels are going to be butchered at 18 weeks anyway, so I'm not too concerned about their organs, and so far I haven't had any ill effects from pullets eating layer feed from about 12 weeks on.

One thing I love about letting the broody hens raise them is that the chicks learn from the get go that food is everywhere - not just in a feeder. Mama finds them bugs and teaches them which plants are good to eat, so from a very young age, they become excellent foragers. It is so fun to see a 5 day old chick chase down a huge grasshopper. Once he has it, his hatch mates will try to steal it so the chase will be on. Mama will never take it from them but will simply watch indulgently as her chicks fight over it.

 

[alohachickens]

I love your "creep feeder" idea HEChicken! And, I just had my boyfriend build me these two "broody boxes" or "chick cubes"! I wanted a place where I could stash a hen and chicks during that critical bonding period, and keep feed and water nearby for the babies. But I was wondering how to integrate them into the main flock? Especially the feed idea, how to provide food and low water when the adults scruff around the shallow water and kick stuff in it, and eat all the chick feed. What a clever idea! I think I'll try it - a creep feeder in the main barn! Wow! I can just put bricks underneath this!

 

[Deerfield Acres]

So, Sommer, do you recommend "resting" the eggs for 24 or 48 hours? Draye, how long did you "rest" your eggs before incubating?