The Mysterious Orange Color - Part Two

Back in November 2011, exactly two years ago to the day, I did a Blog post about this odd "orange" color that had popped up in a couple of my roosters:

http://alohachickens.blogspot.com/2011/11/mysterious-orange-color.html

Today, I am no closer to figuring out genetically, exactly what this color is, or how to keep it going.

It's gorgeous, but exactly what is it?  A dark buff?  A light reddish brown?  A unique gene all its own?  The only references I've seen to this color are the Pumpkin Hulsey line of Game Fowl.  There is argument even among those who study chicken genetics as to what this color actually is.  The most noticeable trait is a bright orange color on the tail feathers, as even bright red or dark gold chickens typically have black tail feathers. In some, (but not all) Pumpkin Hulsey Games, the chicken is a solid orange color, even the tail and neck feathering.  Here is a solid orange Pumpkin Game rooster, minus any Mottling.  (Not my photo, found on BYC):

http://cdn.backyardchickens.com/d/d6/350x700px-LL-d6f93f0b_63027_pumpkin.jpeg

Whatever you call this color, it is still here in the flock.  Previous roosters with this color were Flame, who had puffy cheeks and slate legs, hinting at a bit of Ameraucana bloodline in his past, from an introduction in Year One to a blue-wheaten Ameracana hen I'd brought into the program as an experiment to try and introduce the blue egg gene.

Flame, the first "Pumpkin" mottled Aloha.
Funky comb, gray legs.  Eh, it's a start.

The next one to show up was Butterscotch, a small rooster whose leaner body type and bold spotting hinted at the early introduction to Exchequer Leghorns.

Butterscotch, the second Pumpkin colored Aloha.
Better comb, not much more spotting.  Still has gray legs.

While I did have losses of large roosters through the summer of 2013, including the loss of a really lovely pure Sussex, and Raymond's Roo (a gorgeous larger rooster with Buff Rock, Sussex, and NHR bloodlines) guess who survived the 117 degree temps like they were nothing?

Pumpkin Roo.

117 degrees?  Whatever.

The most recent in the lineage of orange roosters, he boasts the best spotting I've seen of the previous orange-mottled roos, with yellow legs to boot.  Body type is jaunty and stout with a long flowing tail.  Oh, and personality.  He has refused the coop all summer, and perches in a tree in the yard.

He greets me at the back door each morning making the most hilarious warbling and screeching dinosaur noises.  I've had to shoo him away from the patio numerous times, as he thinks it's hysterical to crow through the screen door into the house.

Pumpkin Roo, the third and best colored of the orange roosters.

There is a reason I've had troubles introducing size to my flock.  These "old blood" Alohas, while small, are true survivors.  They shrug off heat, they defy any illness, and can fly over your head and up to the highest perch to escape predators.  I was not surprised to find the feral (wild) chickens of Kauai'i were also this smaller size.

When I went on vacation a while back, a large and lovely hen defied me and escaped.  To be with Pumpkin Roo.  They had run free all summer, while she was just a chick growing up, and she did not want to end their relationship.  OK, I'd planned to put her in with the other rooster, but who am I to defy true romance?

I have one very small breeder pen off to the side, near where Pumpkin-Roo sleeps.  I plan on setting out tasty treats for him and his lady friend, to coerce them into the pen, and when I trap them, I'll also introduce a few other hens to this breeder pen.  He will get his very own New Hampshire Red hen, plus a couple of other medium or large hens that could use a bit of color.

I'm considering adding this lovely half-Swedish hen to Pumpkin's harem.

Another cute hen that may cross well with Pumpkin Roo.

With the size of the pen, I'll be limited to maybe four hens.  Any more might overcrowd the 5 x 8 kennel, though they will get free-range time.  Even when I have my chickens in segregated breeder pens, I rotate opening each pen on alternate days, so they all get a chance to roam, peck at grass, and flop around in the dust baths.

Despite being small, Pumpkin deserves a chance to carry on his genes.  He may be little in size, but he's big in heart.  A tough little survivor, and 100% Aloha.

A Very Tough Summer For Humans (And Chickens)

There has been little reported here, through the summer, because, well, it's been a rough year.  I'm happy to report that I am doing well, and so are the chickens.  However, I have lost two good friends to cancer in the last six months.  It's been a tough thing to deal with.

Also lost were a few good chickens . . . with temps of up to 117 degrees, it's hardly surprising.  The summer in Phoenix is long, hot, and brutal.  My lovely big hen "Nui" passed, and so did Raymond's Roo.  Up at Stephen's, we lost the fabulous new Sussex roo that I was so happy to welcome.  There were a few others here or there, but in total, I am pretty certain it was less than 10 total lost, and possibly as few as six?  Some were youngsters here, and I'm afraid I lost track.  But it was never anything alarming, one every few weeks.

Plenty have been hatched as replacements. I kept about 50 chicks to raise up of my own, and have been busy culling away in waves as they matured.  I currently have about 25-35 adult hens and several roosters.

Right now I'm still organizing the breeder pens.  It's late in the year to do this, I should have been more on the ball.  However, my newest baby girls just started laying in October.  I have two Sussex hens that are due to begin laying in December.  I set up Stephen with a bumper crop of chicks (I think possibly as many as 70-80 babies?) and those are also due to begin laying in December or January.  So it will be Spring that we'll see the best progress.

Speaking of progress, looking at the photos from last April, I am beginning to see some some great steps forward.

Here is a photo of what I would most certainly call a "finished" Aloha:

About time!  Getting to the Aloha goals at last.

Note the overall body shape.  Deep keel, upright fan-shaped tail, yellow legs, upright single comb.  I will always, always welcome a bigger, fatter, body, but this is completely acceptable.  I believe, for her pedigree, she is half Swedish Flower hen, or possibly, her mom was Nui, who was Aloha with Sussex and Buff Orpington.  Both hens were crossed with Raymond's Roo.  Raymond's Roo was mostly Aloha with a good amount of Buff Rock and a lesser amount of New Hampshire Red, with the remainder "old school" gamey-type Aloha.  This hen would be about 25% old-blood Aloha, and about 75% "big chicken" of various breeds.

She is only six months old, has more white than her pure Swedish mother, and all Mottled chickens will shed out to show more white with each passing year.  I'd like to see more white overall, but this would be acceptable for the low end of the Aloha standards.  (In other words, this is about the minimum amount of white I'd want to see in an Aloha.)

Her size:  BIG.  As big as, or bigger than, hatchery Speckled Sussex.  No trace of Banty size or gamey type.

A shame that we lost Raymond's Roo, as this is obviously a cross I'd like to repeat to infinity . . .












Other hens that are "near misses"

  Beautiful, I love the not-mahogany but still dark brown color with the golden shadings in the neck.  Great body.  Terrific upright tail set.  The tail is fantastic and exactly what I had in mind for this breed if we can keep it.

Needs a lot more white, plus yellow legs to be an Aloha.  Still a "keeper" and I can't wait to see her chicks.  Heavy Swedish Flower influence.

Another nice big hen.  She needs more white but her light brown color is very neat.

I am seeing Swedish Flower but New Hampshire Red could also be present.

  Here she is with very first hen shown in the first photos above.  

Note the tail is more tapered, does not have the nice square "fan shape" of the hen behind her.

She has pink legs instead of yellow.  Very close, but the hen on left is better overall.  

This hen has Barring like her dad (Raymond's Roo") which is OK in moderation.  (Don't cross a barred chicken to another barred chicken, though.)  The tail could use some work, it is longer at the top and not as upright or fan-shaped. But still great size, plus yellow legs, will see how her chicks turn out!

Another shot of the Barred hen with a 100% Speckled Sussex for size comparison.

As you can see, she is BIG.  Her large size and light color are her best features.

Here is the brownish spotted hen shown above, alongside a hatchery purebred New Hampshire.

Size is good, but not as big.  Someday, I'd like to get Alohas as large as the New Hampshire which is why the NHR is in the breeding pen!  Her chicks will add size to future Alohas.

I also have three pure Speckled Sussex hens in this breeder pen.

This hen, "Sprinkles" is from Stromberg's Hatchery.

And this SPOTTY girl is from Ideal Hatchery in TX.

She is due to start laying in December.  Can you say SPOTS???

This is the amount of white that I'd like to see in all Alohas at five months old!

And finally, the rooster!  I had my eye on this flashy boy from six weeks onward!

He is a little bit smaller than a Sussex rooster, but not ridiculously small.

His size will "down" the size on the BIG hen's chicks - but not by much.

Tons of white, and lots of "ooh la la".  Which is to say, great shape and long tail!

I will be adding a few more hens to the pen, but that is pretty much going to be Breeder Pen #1 this season.  

Updates on Pen #2 and #3 to follow!

Little Yellow Legs Babies

Here are the chicks from the Little Yellow Legs pen.  So far, they have exceeded all my expectations.

I keep reminding myself that chicks will change a lot in color so I'm trying not to get too excited.  After all, we had the color completely drop from the feathers of the "Cheeto" chicks who likewise looked very promising at this age.  But it is so difficult not to do the happy dance when you see something like this in your flock:

There are two like this, and both appear to be hens.  (You can see the second chick behind this one.)  Both have yellow legs and both contain ZERO Swedish Flower bloodline.  (Good in terms of extending the gene pool in the U.S. while keeping the Swedish "look".)  I only wish that I had hatched more of whatever these are.

Some other promising chicks:

Not as much white on the above chick but she has fabulous light coloring.

This light brown chick has a large white chest and I wonder if she could color up later like a Sussex does?  Could this be a Sussex - without the dark Mahogany?  Also has the yellow legs I'm breeding for.

There is still much to learn about the Mottling gene.  Chicken color experts now say that the gene is the same whether it shows up in Sussex, Swedish, or Exchequer.  But here's the weird thing.  Sussex chicks start out solid dark brown on top, with white chests, and at four months the spots "spread" from the chest to the body, where they appear as tiny white dots on the feather tips.  Swedish chicks are born with tons of white all over, especially on the back.  But as they reach adulthood, a lot of the spotting just "falls off" the Swedish Flowers, and they are often left with just small white dots on some feathers.  And on Exchequer Leghorns, the babies start out looking like tiny penguins, with white undersides, black on the back.  The white spreads out around four months giving a 50/50 black and white "checkered" chicken.  The amount of white does not really change at all on Exchequers, it just kind of moves around on the body.

If this is all the same gene, why does it behave so differently?  Since my Alohas carry traces of all three of these breeds, plus an "unknown" Mottling factor from the Mexican stock, there is no way of telling how these chicks will eventually feather out.  The original Aloha stock, they would feather out with white on the back much like the Swedish Flower chicks.  However, unlike the Swedish, the foundation Alohas would not lose most of the color.  They would stay extremely spotted much like Exchequers.  It will be interesting, then, to see how this pen changes.  These chicks are mostly Aloha, but there is a bit of Sussex and a touch of Buff Rock from Cheeto's lines.  

And, while I told myself not to pick any roosters out from this batch, as they will surely be too small, of course there is the most adorable yellow-legged boy around.  Tons of white, and the most docile, friendly, and outgoing personality of all the chicks.  Zero aggression and pure curiosity.  I'm completely smitten with this little guy so far!

The last batch of chicks I raised, they dropped almost all their color at four months old.  So I will be watching this little rooster.  If he keeps a large amount of white to adulthood he may find a use here, despite his sure to be smaller size, by improving the amount of white spotting on chicks that are lacking color.  Not to mention the vibrant yellow legs he could help add to Sussex-bred hens.  Still much too early to tell.  But he sure is cute right now.

A lot of the chicks have a watercolor wash or "faded" look to them instead of clear distinct spotting.  Not a huge fan of that effect, so while lovely, I will cull any with that look.  I'm sure the hens will find nice homes with neighbors.

So that leaves about half of these as possible future members of the Aloha flock.  I see five or six that seem very promising, but we still have two more months to go before the final results are in.  Chicks will change dramatically between now and then.  Crossing my fingers that changes will be for the better.  I will continue to grow them out in this pen for two more weeks before culling anyone.

  

Next Project Pen: Little Yellow Legs

Last breeding pen, I placed two sons of the beefy orange guy, "Cheeto" (who was Buff Rock, NHR, and Aloha) in with some colorful hens, to try and improve body type while adding spots.  This next project is all about yellow feet!  Sussex have white/pink legs, and as I've been introducing that bloodline, the legs have been steadily going that direction in my flock.  So, in this next pen, leg color is what I'll be focusing on.

This is the rooster I'll be using.  He's Aloha, very small for a rooster, but he does have a great stout, stocky, round body type.  And he has fabulous yellow legs!  I wish he was larger, for sure, but he's what I have to work with at the moment:

Sure, I'm small.  But aren't I a cute guy???

His ladies are a mix of "everything and the kitchen sink".  

In this pen, I have two half-Sussex hens, including my BIG girl, "Nui".  If this boy adds yellow legs to her big size, we'll be doing great.  The smaller half-Sussex hen has spots galore.  In a perfect world, we'd get babies from her that had tons of spots, and yellow legs to boot.

Nui, the largest Aloha  cross I've ever raised.

I also have three teeny very LIGHT "Confetti" color old-blood Alohas.  We will see ZERO improvement in size.  There will be tiny chicks from this cross!  The best we can hope for is super-colorful little hens with yellow legs, that maybe can be crossed with a larger roo, who could give them the size while they give their chicks some color.

This teeny white Confetti hen next to huge Nui shows size difference.

The rest of the hens are a little of everything in-between.  A "Ginger" hen.  My favorite "Mille" hen, who is small but already has yellow legs and great color.  This cross will be to (hopefully) simply make more just like her.  A larger hen, with patchy "pink and white" colors that is just odd and very cool.  Plus, one big brown mottled hen who is half Swedish Flower.  Maybe she'll add some size.  That's the only hen of Swedish breeding in this batch, which means the majority of this pen will result in All-American Alohas, that will be perfect to cross to pure or half Swedish.

I have no idea what is going to sync up well with this little rooster, so we're doing a bit everything.  Three dozen eggs collected so far, and still have a few days left.  Hoping for a nice big batch of chicks to raise, 30-35 chicks would be great, but honestly I kind of "overloaded" the roo with 9 hens so fertility might be a bit low.  (I just couldn't stop adding hens, so many to choose from!)

No roos will be kept from this cross, most likely - they will be too small.  But,  my original Aloha ladies are a couple of years old now, so it's time to think about breeding replacements for those hens, as their laying ability will surely drop next year.

If I did nothing more than replace a couple of my older gals with yellow-legged, nicely shaped daughters, it's still a step in the right direction improving body type and leg color.  (Size will continue to be an issue for a while, I fear!)  If this goes according to plan, we'll have newly hatched chicks in February.

Next, this roo will head up to Stephen's to run with some pure Speckled Sussex hens!  Hoping to hatch out some chicks from that pen later this Spring, and pick out only ones with yellow feet.  The Sussex will help improve size, as Stephen's pure Speckled Sussex ladies are nice and big.

Update: "Sons of Cheeto" Pen at 6-8 Weeks

Update on the "Sons of Cheeto" breeding pen!

A short update today!  About 40 chicks were hatched from eggs specially collected from the established October breeder pen.  This pen, highlighted in the October post, featured two sons of "Cheeto" (A Buff Rock cross x Aloha rooster) who was penned with some of my most colorful hens.

Of the 40(ish) chicks hatched from this pen, 12 chicks were culled and sold.  (The chicks showing the least amount of white feathering.)

Meanwhile, over at a partner's farm, he has been hatching all other chicks.  This includes some excess eggs from the same breeder pen, but also some chicks from a Swedish roo over Aloha hens.  He brought over the most spotted chicks that also showed yellow legs.

The result?  A really FABULOUS pen of babies that are growing out now!

Will keep you posted as they mature, to see if the color stays on them, or if it grows out at four months.  Body type looks good on all, combs look good, so anybody keeping *significant* color at 4+ months will be kept for the program.  Crossing my fingers!

October Breeding Pen - Sons of Cheeto

It's cooling off here in AZ, and finally the hens are starting to pick up on laying.  There is no longer any danger of chicks dying in the extreme heat.  It's perfect chick weather, actually - right around 100 degrees during the day, and about 80 at night.

I just hatched out some chicks, including shipped large fowl eggs that contain the "Dun" gene.  It's a modifier that could add a new color to the Aloha project.  It turns black into a chocolate brown, or in two doses, turns the chocolate into a shade of khaki-tan.  It has no effect on red.

I hatched out a few random Aloha eggs, but since everyone was wandering everywhere and the breeder pens weren't properly set up, who knows what these chicks will grow up to look like?  I don't have high hopes for them, but I hated to raise only a handful of chicks because it's pretty much the same amount of work to raise 5 or 25 chicks.

I ended up with six Dun chicks, and about 10 baby Alohas.

Next, I set up a new breeder pen.  In this pen, I placed two sons of Cheeto in there.  One was a "fading spot" chick you may remember from an earlier post.  He was "Chick #3" in this post:

http://alohachickens.blogspot.com/2012/03/cheetos-pack-of-chicks.html

Today he looks drastically different!

Cheeto's Son, #3

I also had another chick born about one month later, that was also clearly Cheeto's son.  He never had the amount of white shown on this chick.  However, he is a Mottled carrier, and does have a couple of stray white feather-tips here and there to prove it.  He had such amazing presence, I had to give him a shot.  I've named this guy "Dragon" and he's stunning:

Cheeto's Son, "Dragon"

While the ideal setup would have #3 in one pen and Dragon in another, each with their own set of girls, at the moment I'm stuck with just one breeder pen.  Since these boys get along great together, and are half-brothers, I tossed them both in there with the hens.  I have no idea who is dominant because I've never seen them fight.

I have a friend who may be able to toss a kennel my way, and if that works out, I'll put Dragon in with the hens with the most white, and put #3 in with the Sussex-type hens and hens with nice big spots.  (Since #3 DOES have spots all over.  They are just teeny tiny almost invisible spots, ha ha ha!)

There are 14 eggs collected so far from this group.  I can't wait to see what hatches out next month!

Here are more photos of the breeder pen, showing various hens and the two boys:

Dragon and three "Ginger" hens.

Part Sussex hen with gorgeous mottling.

Dragon, two small hens, and Nui - a huge half Aloha, half Sussex 

Beautiful Ginger hen with OK size.  (Not the smallest.)

#3 with a smaller hen for size comparison.

Clearly the boys get along fine!

A group of colorful girls.