The Aloha Chicken Project

[Deerfield Acres]

LOL. What if we just sent twice as many eggs with you, and the KS people met up to disseminate them? (I have no idea wheresabouts in KS they all live, so I am just talking out my bottom.)

I can accommodate hatching 310 eggs and I have the space to brood them. Sommer is going to send me her 100% Aloha eggs and keep her crosses since I will have my own crosses once the chicks grow up. However, I'm more than happy to have any % Aloha eggs you can spare. Just don't want to take eggs that someone else needs to get started with their own flock. I will cull heavily for the best of the best from what I'm given once they color up, etc. I won't be keeping more than 50 birds at most once I've culled. Just so you know.

by my understanding they both live in wichita. i can take as many eggs as yours and sommers hens will lay! i'm driving my van and there are 3 empty seats, not to mention the floor to ceiling space, and the stow and go, LOL

Bring on those eggs!!!!! I'll PM tazcat with details in just a few minutes.

Thanks guys! My 15 passenger van can accommodate whatever you send my way! Unless you think I should rent a U-haul.

 

[LarryPQ]

LOL. My poor girls will have sore bottoms.

 

[alohachickens]

Notinoz -

I don't know what is up with the small spots fading away.

I call the teeny white dot pattern "Sussex type spots" versus a different big BOLD splashy/patchy white pattern . . . though these names are not anything "scientific". LOL!

The Sussex breed, in general, gets solid brown for a while, and the spots kind of pop up later. For a while your chicks get solid brown, except maybe a little patch of white on the chest. It's discouraging and if you didn't know better, you'd think they were total "duds"!

But some breeds, like Exchequer Leghorns (these Alohas do have a trace of that in their background) and also the "real" Swedish Flower, they show big patches of white right away! The Exchequers would look like little penguins, all white underneath and then dark on top, and the black and white would kind of "mix up" as they grew.

It is extra confusing, because I have had chicks show little white dots that totally go away around four months, but I've also had other chicks in the past start out solid and then little white spots actually appear later! Cleo did this to me! This chick was SOLID GOLD without a trace of white on her as a chick, but around three months she got some small spots on her chest, and by six months old she looked like this:



But, THIS chick looked OBVIOUSLY spotted as a baby, and later on, his spots went away! By the time he reached four months, he was solid dark buff!
All that was left was one white wing feather:



Boy, was I mad when the spots went away. How cute was this guy???

I've had a few recently that looked like the above chick, and later they lost the spots. HOWEVER - these have been ROOSTERS. So I culled them when they went "solid". I have not yet had a hen chick with these spots. I would keep a hen that looked like this for sure, because obviously this is not a "normal" solid chicken. There is spotting here. If I had a hen like this that was really good in size and quality but her spots faded, I'd hang onto her anyway, as these spots are saying something!

what do you mean by sussex type white spots? i am about to thin my larger flock when i get back and dont want to let go of anything important, or keep anything thats going to lose their color.

 

[alohachickens]

Ok, I am caught up!

I have a question on the feathers. Do you envision them a fluffier bird like an Orp or a more like the NHR?

No - NOT fluffy - smooth! BIG and SMOOTH. Kind of like a Speckled Sussex with yellow legs and in a lot more colors!

Would love to keep the longer tail, which is what Sussex, original Alohas, and Swedish Flowers all have. I hate the stumpy tails of the Buff Rocks and NHR's but their bodies are so meaty and they are so good for adding size. I am hoping that if I keep it just a "dash" of Buff Rock and NHR, and balance it with equal parts Sussex and Aloha, that maybe we can keep their long flowy tails.

I went up to Stephen's today. Stephen had rescued a "culled" rooster that I bred early on. Good thing he did. If this guy had yellow legs, this is the body shape, comb, and tail I'm looking for:



Big upright comb, long flowing tail, stout body. This body shape but with yellow legs. Size - big as possible! Colors - All of them! Ha ha ha.

 

[alohachickens]

That reminds me -

Laree - the eggs I've been TORTURING you about, asking if they candled well, they are all eggs from THIS pair:



Foreground: Cheeto's sister. 1/4 Aloha, 1/4 NHR, 1/2 Buff Rock.

Crossed with: Second generation Aloha rooster, son of Vanilla. IF this hen carries color, there is a possible chance of getting a huge, colorful, yellow legged, true "Aloha" this year.

I hope I hope I hope I hope . . . . . those are the eggs in Laree's bator right now!

 

[alohachickens]

Oh, BTW, I have almost NINE DOZEN eggs saved already for you KS folks, from my own flock! Not counting anything we get from Laree . . .

Sommer

 

[alohachickens]

Notinoz - here is a pic of a hen with what I've been calling "Sussex Spots":



A dark chicken with little white dots. You'd probably call her "a brown hen with white dots"

But some Alohas can have big bold patches of white, instead:



Here is a photo of one of Stephen's hens that I took today. You might call her "A white chicken with patches of brown"

I think that BOTH types of white spotting are beautiful. One of the main goals of the Aloha project is to allow the white to vary from chicken to chicken. So even a very simple color combo like brown and white, could be anything from a totally brown chicken with tiny white speckles, to a mostly white chicken with just a few dark spots, and every possible variation in-between!

 

[alohachickens]

Sussex don't show their spots until later. It's annoying. Here are some pics of the half-Sussex chicks I've raised here recently:



A few weeks old. SO BORING, right??? Just a few white feathers under the chin.



Now two months old. Um, okay. Looking better.



SAME CHICK TODAY!

So watch out for those Sussex spots! This hen is now four months old. What a change.

 

[alohachickens]

BTW...I have Alohas hatching! They are from Steven's, Sommer's and my breeding peens.

Three are out so far. One is curiously black...

That black one is probably from the rooster and buff hen pair I showed you a photo of. That rooster is from my older stock. He probably has more Exchequer Leghorn in him that what we have now. That rooster would be about 1/8th to 1/4th Exchequer. It has taken me forever to breed out the Exchequer black and white!!! Go back a bit and start using the older bloodlines, and it figures it would pop up again. LOL.

I had given that rooster to my neighbor, because his color was such a dark brown and white, I figured that might be a problem. But, I had no idea his body type and size would be so nice when I gave him away as a gangly youngster. Stephen asked my neighbor if he could have him and the neighbor agreed.

 

[LarryPQ]

Further fluffing out reveals the chick is not black, but a deep dark brown chipmunk.

As for the eggs marked "Sommer" one has hatched already, maybe more, but I have not been pulling out the shells to check, since the chicks are still hatching. Slow bunch this time.