Haven't done many updates, because I've had not one, but two incubator mishaps in recent years. No big deal, except these were with my large capacity Sportsman model, which holds almost 300 eggs. Combine that with a couple of under-performing roosters, and some losses of a few best hens and roosters due to heat - and the end result is still plenty of chicks overall, but not a lot of progress forward in my program. Lots of chicks have been hatched, but for a while I've been spinning my wheels not reaching new goals, such as improved size, improved leg color, better spotting, etc.
Alohas do not reach their full adult coloration until they are 4 to 5 months old, so the chicks that were hatched in November, December and February are just finally reaching their final mature coloration.
And, I'm here to post, at last some progress is happening!
The desired leg color (yellow) is popping up more frequently. Spots are getting bigger and brighter. Remember, I introduced some bigger, but solid color chickens into the mix, to improve quality and size. When you do this, you lose the spots entirely the first generation, and then they start to come back. If you introduce a lot of "not-spotted" chickens to the mix, it can take until it reaches the grand-chicks to see the color come back fully. Even if you hatch and raise chicks year round, this can take about two years to finally see the results.
Without further ado, let me introduce some of the newest Alohas that are being raised. The best of these will be used in the Fall 2019 breeder pens.
Note, this is not all of them. Not only am I getting some outstanding chicks, but the "good ones" are showing up more and more frequently!
I still haven't had a rooster here who is 100% what I've been looking for, but the good news is my friend in TX hatched an incredible rooster from some eggs that I gave her, and she in turn passed some eggs back to me . . . and some of the chicks that I'm raising right now are from these lines. I'll post more info on the Texas Alohas in another post.
Here's some photos of the young Alohas that are looking great in Phoenix AZ. Photos shown are all of "teenagers" - about 4 months old, so they still need a bit of time to fill out and grow.
