The Aloha Chicken Project

[HEChicken]

I'm wondering g what a cross with the Milles and the Exchequer would look like.

Unfortunately I'll probably never get a chance to find out

The Exchequer Leghorns have been abysmal layers from the get go. They didn't start laying until they were a year old and they are the first to quit and the last to start up again every year. I am down to two hens and I don't believe they are laying yet this year. They're 3 years old now and since I'll have to wait for a cockerel from these chicks to mature enough to mate with them, it will be fall at least. By then, if they ever start, they'll have quit again. So it will be spring of next year and by then they'll be four. I know leghorns in general are supposed to be good layers but these are hatchery ELs and who knows what Ideal did to them!

 

[Kev]

@Kev , at your leisure, can you take a look at these posts over on the Cream Legbar thread, with regard to genetics of Eumelanin? My rooster is from ChicKat and is son of Robin, and may carry this (odds are good looking at the chicks I've hatched so far - one pullet has already been named "Joan Jett"), and at least one of the mother hens (Paula, of blessed memory) was clearly melanized.

post #10145

post #10146

Skimmed from those posts onwards.. very active thread!

To be brutally honest.. that black chick is result of either misidentification of some sort.. or it is isbar-legbar cross (if I skimmed correctly, the person has both breeds right?).

All the back and fro about that chick is denial/based on wrong assumptions, sorry to say.. seems rude to say this but ahem..

Legbar crossed with isbar will produce a black chick.

A duckwing pairing of any sort will not produce any black downed chicks like that. Period. There are genes that can make a duckwing grow up very dark or even black/almost black all over but these never hatch out black, always striped pattern of some sort with the feathers coming in dark.

If the person has isbars.. this is the far simpler and far more likely part of the answer, in whatever way(is isbar or isbar cross etc).
Quote:

Lavender dilutes ALL pigments to a soft pastel color. Red, gold, buff, brown, black, etc. Porcelains are a great example of this, the only difference between porcelain and mille fleur is the porcelains have lavender.

Over Aloha pattern, the gold base would be diluted to a straw color- same as on porcelains, and any black would be diluted to lavender. Basically they would be a softer toned/pastel version. Either lavender tailed straw mottled or a high mottle porcelain(when the black barring is present- these would be diluted to lavender) I think they would be very beautiful!

It is a good question regaring lav amers. A solid lavender is a solid black chicken with lavender 'added'. Lavender is recessive, so a cross of lav with legbar would produce black or black with white head spot(this would be indication of barring) chicks.

All of those would be lavender carriers so you could get away by breeding them with Alohas, which would produce half black chicks and half cream/partridge/maybe a few chipmunk stripe downed chicks. If you don't want blacks, all of the black downed chicks would be immediate culls.

What to do with this second generation.. it would be best to keep as many chicks as you can for breeding because the chances are 50% for each bird to carry lavender and there is no way to tell which is which and you want to keep as many pullets as possible to POL to select for egg color. Then either breed a cockerel(s) with those pullets to hit on chicks showing lavender.. lavender mottleds is possible from this but numbers are pretty low. Or take your chances with keeping a fair number of pullets to POL and breed them to an Aloha to get half Alohas.. and a random number of them will be carrying lavender.

I would advise doing both- second generation cockerel with pullets, and pullets with Aloha roo.. I say pullets because it is 'easier' to keep extra pullets and you want to carry on the blue egg gene.. which is not so easily test-able in the cockerels.

Hmm, getting a bit long so I will stop now and see how this goes so far?

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:

Lavender dilutes ALL pigments to a soft pastel color. Red, gold, buff, brown, black, etc. Porcelains are a great example of this, the only difference between porcelain and mille fleur is the porcelains have lavender.

Over Aloha pattern, the gold base would be diluted to a straw color- same as on porcelains, and any black would be diluted to lavender. Basically they would be a softer toned/pastel version. Either lavender tailed straw mottled or a high mottle porcelain(when the black barring is present- these would be diluted to lavender) I think they would be very beautiful!

It is a good question regaring lav amers. A solid lavender is a solid black chicken with lavender 'added'. Lavender is recessive, so a cross of lav with legbar would produce black or black with white head spot(this would be indication of barring) chicks.

All of those would be lavender carriers so you could get away by breeding them with Alohas, which would produce half black chicks and half cream/partridge/maybe a few chipmunk stripe downed chicks. If you don't want blacks, all of the black downed chicks would be immediate culls.

What to do with this second generation.. it would be best to keep as many chicks as you can for breeding because the chances are 50% for each bird to carry lavender and there is no way to tell which is which and you want to keep as many pullets as possible to POL to select for egg color. Then either breed a cockerel(s) with those pullets to hit on chicks showing lavender.. lavender mottleds is possible from this but numbers are pretty low. Or take your chances with keeping a fair number of pullets to POL and breed them to an Aloha to get half Alohas.. and a random number of them will be carrying lavender.

I would advise doing both- second generation cockerel with pullets, and pullets with Aloha roo.. I say pullets because it is 'easier' to keep extra pullets and you want to carry on the blue egg gene.. which is not so easily test-able in the cockerels.

Hmm, getting a bit long so I will stop now and see how this goes so far?

That is SUPER helpful - I love your explanations! I'll need to go back over it a few times to figure out how I might do that, of course...

(You certainly have a point about the isbar cross possibility for the dark chick...)

Thank you SO much!!!!!

- Ant Farm

 

[alohachickens]

Unfortunately I'll probably never get a chance to find out

The Exchequer Leghorns have been abysmal layers from the get go. They didn't start laying until they were a year old and they are the first to quit and the last to start up again every year. I am down to two hens and I don't believe they are laying yet this year. They're 3 years old now and since I'll have to wait for a cockerel from these chicks to mature enough to mate with them, it will be fall at least. By then, if they ever start, they'll have quit again. So it will be spring of next year and by then they'll be four. I know leghorns in general are supposed to be good layers but these are hatchery ELs and who knows what Ideal did to them!

I am still absolutely baffled by this. The Ideal Exchequers that I got back in 2008 or 2009 were some of the MOST reliable layers I've ever had.

I'm still convinced something was amiss at the hatchery when you ordered - as we both got chicks the same time period - and while you had your terrible Exchequers, I had a batch of terrible Speckled Sussex, with the vast majority dropping like flies. I think something funky was in the hatchery at that time. Go ahead and cull now that you have your next generation mixes!

 

[alohachickens]

A friend of mine mentioned today that she needs to free up some space and wondered if anyone is interested in the following birds.

They are mille fleur leghorns. I'm thinking about getting the pullet in the background. She isn't as flashy as the cockerels in the foreground, but definitely has the mottling and it looks to me like yellow legs as well (which she should since they are leghorns). I know I wasn't going to add in anything to mine but since I started with Exchequer Leghorns, adding in another color of Leghorn doesn't seem like its straying too far from the original. And, since doing my project means a lot of in-breeding, I thought this might be an acceptable way to add in some new blood. What do you all think?

I like these. Why the heck not.

Like all Leghorns, they are teeny tiny but that's exactly where your New Hampshire Red bloodline would come in so handy, to improve body type. So the NHR / Exchequer mixes would carry spots and improve size. However, the dominance of the Leghorn will mean, not a heck of a lot of size improvement at first. LOL!

My friend is mixing Beielfelder and Cream Legbars (basically blue egg laying Leghorns) and the chickens are a more robust bird which is nice. And they lay green eggs. They are performing really well for her.

The Beiefelder (don't know if I am spelling that right - sorry) is mostly German New Hampshire, so your version would be along the same German NHR / Leghorn type cross.

Now what would be really funny is in a year or two to ship you some of her F2 generation BF / Cream Legbar mixes to blend with yours - to make blue green egg layers with Mottling. Oh yessss!

 

[alohachickens]

I have kind of an interesting looking chick among the youngest batch. The chick started out brown and yellow but as you can see, the wings are feathering out to be black/white, while the remaining fuzz on the body is still brown. Sorry about the picture quality. I cropped it to make it so you could see the different colors but that reduced the overall quality.


I'm not seeing any sign of mottling yet but still, I'm curious to see what happens with this chick as it continues feathering out. I've never seen this combo of colors before.

This one looks Mottled to me?

Or rather, "Pied".

Originally, all the info on Exchequers called their color "Pied" and said it was a different gene entirely from Mottling. Later sources seemed to say it was the same gene? Huh.

Anyway, it's looking like it is getting the "Penguin" markings of the Exchequer - that eventually blossom into a pattern at a later date. At least that is how it looks to me?

Here's a pic from a Blog of an Exchequer chick:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_r8TlO-vsN...vI/88PS2VYHlRc/s1600/chicks+6+jul+10+(11).JPG

Maybe could be kind of similar?

 

[HEChicken]

Now what would be really funny is in a year or two to ship you some of her F2 generation BF / Cream Legbar mixes to blend with yours - to make blue green egg layers with Mottling. Oh yessss!

Yesssss - indeed! This has been a crazy year for me so far. I realized my flock is aging and all of my green and really dark chocolate egg layers are at least 3 years old. I figured in a year or two, they'll have stopped laying and all I'll have a boring, brown eggs. So, in addition to hatching rather a lot, I went to the feed store and got two EE and two Cuckoo Marans chicks. Then my friend offered those Mille Fleur Leghorns and I'm getting them on Thursday. And, another friend gave me a half dozen olive eggers. I'm thrilled to be getting a colorful egg basket again but feeling overwhelmed by how many chicks I'm raising. (Plus, my incubator is now full with turkey eggs and a broody turkey is sitting on another dozen outside.)

But back to the BF/CL mix....that would be an interesting direction to go with this project, as I do like the colored eggs. And what would be better than a flashy chicken, than a flashy chicken that lays flashy eggs?

Oh - on the ELs....I'm not going to worry about culling them. The nice thing about these tiny leghorns is they don't eat much. And, as small as they are, they're hardly worth the trouble to process them for meat. And, I do like the flashy colors of them around the place, even if they don't lay much. Speaking of laying though, I did find one in the nest box yesterday and later there was a white egg so at least one of them is finally laying for the year.

This one looks Mottled to me?

Or rather, "Pied".

Originally, all the info on Exchequers called their color "Pied" and said it was a different gene entirely from Mottling. Later sources seemed to say it was the same gene? Huh.

Anyway, it's looking like it is getting the "Penguin" markings of the Exchequer - that eventually blossom into a pattern at a later date. At least that is how it looks to me?

Here's a pic from a Blog of an Exchequer chick:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_r8TlO-vsN...vI/88PS2VYHlRc/s1600/chicks+6+jul+10+(11).JPG

Maybe could be kind of similar?

Interesting. Its been so long I guess I forgot how the EL's feathered out

I'm still keeping an eye on this chick but it hasn't changed substantially in the past few days.

 

[HEChicken]

Okay, the hatch being raised by the broody hens are growing up. There is one I really like. Many have mottling. Here are some pics.

This is the one I like best.


This one has a lot of spots but all black/white.


This is the chick that was chocolate colored as a chick but the wings feathered out black. You can still see some chocolate colored feathering on its shoulders, but other than that it is just black/white.


Another black/white with a lot of mottling.


This one is mostly black but you can see a lot of white spots. More in person than the camera was picking up.


This one at least has more color and you can see the white spots on the wings and chest.

 

[draye]

Okay, the hatch being raised by the broody hens are growing up. There is one I really like. Many have mottling. Here are some pics. This is the one I like best. This one has a lot of spots but all black/white. This is the chick that was chocolate colored as a chick but the wings feathered out black. You can still see some chocolate colored feathering on its shoulders, but other than that it is just black/white. Another black/white with a lot of mottling. This one is mostly black but you can see a lot of white spots. More in person than the camera was picking up. This one at least has more color and you can see the white spots on the wings and chest.

Nice looking chicks. They are showing some mottling so bred together or to some mottled birds you should start seeing more mottling.

 

[alohachickens]

Okay, the hatch being raised by the broody hens are growing up. There is one I really like. Many have mottling. Here are some pics.

This is the one I like best.

Is this from the NHR / Exchequer Leghorn experiment?!?!?

If yes - WOWEEE!!!