The Aloha Chicken Project

[HEChicken]

Along those same lines of odd hatching, I took two of my pure Sussex hens, and I penned them for 2 days and collected 3 eggs.

I was experimenting in a way with my pure NH hens for this hatch. The question seems to often come up "how long do I need to wait before the eggs are purebred?" and I've seen every answer under the sun, but the one that predominates is that the hen will use the "freshest" semen to fertilize her egg. So, I put a trio of NH's in a pen together and started collecting their eggs from the first day. The only other roosters here are Barred Rocks so at hatch it is easy to tell which rooster fertilized the egg. Black chick means BR is the daddy, orange chick and it was the NH. I dated all the eggs so I'd know for sure. The earliest eggs by date (not by hatch order) all hatched out black chicks

It appears that the hens' eggs did not start getting fertilized by the NH rooster (even though I saw him mate them immediately they were penned together) until about day 5. My point is, if you only separated your pure Sussex hens for 2 days, there is no guarantee who fertilized their eggs.

In good news though, one "Aloha" chick has hatched and it is an interesting blend of colors. Brown predominantly but a sort of rusty reddish brown with white wing tips and a little white on the chest. Only one other egg is pipped. I sure hope there is more activity as the day wears on. I didn't set them until 10pm so their 21 days is technically not up until then but still, I thought there would be more pips by now as they were all active and moving at every candling up until the end.

 

[alohachickens]

I was experimenting in a way with my pure NH hens for this hatch. The question seems to often come up "how long do I need to wait before the eggs are purebred?" and I've seen every answer under the sun, but the one that predominates is that the hen will use the "freshest" semen to fertilize her egg. So, I put a trio of NH's in a pen together and started collecting their eggs from the first day. The only other roosters here are Barred Rocks so at hatch it is easy to tell which rooster fertilized the egg. Black chick means BR is the daddy, orange chick and it was the NH. I dated all the eggs so I'd know for sure. The earliest eggs by date (not by hatch order) all hatched out black chicks

It appears that the hens' eggs did not start getting fertilized by the NH rooster (even though I saw him mate them immediately they were penned together) until about day 5. My point is, if you only separated your pure Sussex hens for 2 days, there is no guarantee who fertilized their eggs.

Awesome scientific study on the purebred vs. cross bred fertility!!!

I didn't care which rooster fertilized the hen's eggs, on the Sussex eggs that I pulled. I just knew the hens were my biggest girls - absolute MONSTER hens - and I was hoping that maybe I'd get a nice big-sized rooster with color out of "whatever" roo mated them. All I have in the barn right now are colorful Aloha boys. None are big, but all have great spotting! So, I didn't really care who the daddy was, only that with Mom being so enormous, that I'd have a chance for a rooster with some decent size and (maybe) some OK spotting. So right before I went to set a batch of "keeper" chick eggs, I pulled my two BIGGEST pure Sussex girls so I could make sure I raised their chicks with my "keeper peepers" to see how they turned out.

It is just weird to me that all three of the Sussex eggs by two different hens did not hatch, even though the other eggs set on the same date - did hatch? The entire batch of chicks had a fantastic hatch rate, and the Sussex eggs were fertile and developing as well. But then, no chicks on the Sussex eggs? Very weird. I had near 100% hatch rate but the Sussex egg were all failures.

I'm getting ready to pen all of my big fat Sussex hens together and put various small colorful Aloha roos with them in rotation, so we'll see if this was a random fluke or a trend?

My frustration lies in that every time I try to use a BIG hen or rooster, it seems I have issues! LOL. I've had problems like this before. Like one year, I only kept ONE colorful Aloha rooster, and I only had about 3 big hens. I had about 10 small Alohas. So the rooster had a LOT of girls to cover.

The big hens laid very big eggs, vs. the smaller hens, so I could tell the huge eggs were the big hen's. When I candled the eggs, however, the BIG eggs were always blank. The rooster had a wide selection of hens, so he favored the easier to mount small hens. He just skipped the big girls, leaving their eggs sterile. Eventually, I penned him with the big girls alone and finally got a few eggs. But by then, I'd hatched out a zillion chicks by the little hens. So by sheer numbers, the small girls won out that breeding season. LOL.

It's just funny to me how much the little chickens tend to biologically have the advantage over the big heavy chickens!

 

[alohachickens]

In good news though, one "Aloha" chick has hatched and it is an interesting blend of colors. Brown predominantly but a sort of rusty reddish brown with white wing tips and a little white on the chest. Only one other egg is pipped. I sure hope there is more activity as the day wears on. I didn't set them until 10pm so their 21 days is technically not up until then but still, I thought there would be more pips by now as they were all active and moving at every candling up until the end.

Oooh exciting that you're seeing brown and white already.

I hope we do see more activity, as one or two chicks won't tell us much about how this experiment will play out!

Do you still have this breeding pen set up and are collecting more eggs?

 

[HEChicken]

My frustration lies in that every time I try to use a BIG hen or rooster, it seems I have issues! LOL. I've had problems like this before. Like one year, I only kept ONE colorful Aloha rooster, and I only had about 3 big hens. I had about 10 small Alohas. So the rooster had a LOT of girls to cover.

I totally get that frustration! I experienced the same thing with my NH over Exchequer Leghorns. Initially my only rooster was the German NH rooster so I thought I wouldn't need to separate birds. The only white egg layers were the EL's so all I had to do was collect and incubate their eggs, right? Wrong. I filled the incubator and NOTHING developed. It seems the big NH rooster simply didn't care to bother with those little EL hens when he had so many others to tend to. So I had to put them in a pen after all and even then, out of an incubator full of eggs I only had 3 hatch.

Do you still have this breeding pen set up and are collecting more eggs?

I left it set up and collected another 26 eggs. My incubator only holds 20 so I'll be double stacking to put that many in. I let the birds out of the pen last Tuesday and sadly one of the hens was killed on Saturday. It was my LGD pups and I was furious, though not as mad as I would have been if I'd waited two years to get to this point of the project and they'd killed her right BEFORE I collected her eggs. They don't typically have access to the poultry but she flew over into their pasture and I didn't find out until I saw a dark object laying on the ground and it was her, long dead.

So I am now down to two hens and the 3 roosters. I can separate them again if need be but I'm really hoping to get some chicks out of what is in there now and the 26 waiting to go in.

I'll try to get a pic of this chick after its completely dry....

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
Well, as I said, the temp was a bit too low the whole time (didn't realize it until I calibrated after the hatch was over) - that would certainly explain it all by itself. Too many incubation-related variables leading to hatch timing, probably has nothing to do with the breed/chickens. But certainly - don't give up! Late is ok!

- Ant Farm

 

[alohachickens]

It was my LGD pups and I was furious, though not as mad as I would have been if I'd waited two years to get to this point of the project and they'd killed her right BEFORE I collected her eggs.

OMG can you imagine!??!

My worst chicken moment ever:

I had a gorgeous BIG spotty hen, of Sussex lines, just stunning! She was about 4 months old.

I had two chain link pens smashed together with maybe 3 inches in-between. I purposely moved them super close, so no chicken could fit in between the two pens.

Somehow - I have *no idea* how or why she managed to do this - this big teen girl smooshed her way between the two pens. In this incredibly narrow slot. She tried to escape by climbing upwards, then her feet went through one side, her wing through another.

I found her dead, hanging upside down, smashed between the two chain link pens. She had an entire 1/3 acre property to wander in, and the dogs were inside so nobody was there to harass her. Why on earth did she want to try and go THERE?!??

It was one of those days that makes you want to throw in the towel altogether - sigh!

 

[HEChicken]

Okay, chickie is dry and here are the photos.



This one shows the white on the chest and also a little white around that left eye.


And because brown chicks look so dark, I decided to put a black chick up with it so you can see the difference in color.

 

[HEChicken]

And now for the shocker. I was gone all afternoon and came home to find another "Aloha" chick had hatched. The color of this one stunned me. We need a drumroll smiley. It is orange. It looks pure NH. My first thought was that it had hatched on the other side and hopped over the divider somehow. Nope, the eggs I left on the NH side were all accounted for. My next thought was that I got the eggs mixed up. Nope. I checked the egg this chick hatched out of and it is clearly labeled from the Aloha pen. Not only that, there is a big difference in the size and color of the Aloha eggs compared to the NH eggs and this egg matches every other egg out of the Aloha side - and looks nothing like the NH eggs.

The grandsire is German NH so I guess this chick is a throwback to the grandsire. I will be curious to see if it carries the mottling gene per the grand-dam, sire or dam.

 

[HEChicken]

And now for the shocker. I was gone all afternoon and came home to find another "Aloha" chick had hatched. The color of this one stunned me. We need a drumroll smiley. It is orange. It looks pure NH. My first thought was that it had hatched on the other side and hopped over the divider somehow. Nope, the eggs I left on the NH side were all accounted for. My next thought was that I got the eggs mixed up. Nope. I checked the egg this chick hatched out of and it is clearly labeled from the Aloha pen. Not only that, there is a big difference in the size and color of the Aloha eggs compared to the NH eggs and this egg matches every other egg out of the Aloha side - and looks nothing like the NH eggs.

The grandsire is German NH so I guess this chick is a throwback to the grandsire. I will be curious to see if it carries the mottling gene per the grand-dam, sire or dam.

I take it back. Now that the chick has dried out and fluffed up I can see it is not orange like the NHs but much more yellow. And look at the little black dot on its head! Could that be a "tell"?

 

[alohachickens]

I take it back. Now that the chick has dried out and fluffed up I can see it is not orange like the NHs but much more yellow. And look at the little black dot on its head! Could that be a "tell"?

Wow, this is crazy! I have no idea what these two chicks will grow out to look like!

Is this it for this particular hatch? Are we going to have to wait for the batch of 26 eggs that you just put in to get more answers?!?

Crazy! I have no idea what the white chick with the dark dot on its head means - AT ALL. Doesn't look like an Exchequer, or like a NHR! Wow!