Still Searching for Mr. Right

Last post, I went over the weirdness that happens as Aloha roosters age.  They tend to suddenly "drop" most of their white spots, right at four months old.  My biggest issue is finding a BIG rooster with lots of spotting.  The little "gamey" type Alohas are beautifully colored, but the bigger they get - whether rooster or hen - the more challenging it gets to put spots on them!

I wish his eyes were blue, like his Mom's!

I have yet to find one perfect Aloha rooster - a "Mr. Right" who has everything that I'm looking for.  Big size, lots of spots, and yellow legs.  So far, the nearest to that goal that I have reached is this guy, who is the son of my blue-eyed hen, and is probably about half Swedish Flower:

Best example of Aloha breed rooster, to date.  

He is unique in that he was bred to be a rooster.  I penned my blue eyed girl for a couple of weeks, saved her eggs, and hatched the offspring, specifically looking for a son that had the qualities that I liked so much in her!  The rooster that I used with her was only OK, but was the best I had at the time, so I knew that if any roosters turned out nice, it would be directly because of their Mom!

Better body size is all this boy needs.

This boy only reached breeding age about a month ago, and he has not yet had a flock of his own! I'm very excited to have him penned now with some of my favorite girls!  Some eggs from this pen are already "baking" in the incubator right now.

My biggest, chunkiest Buff Sussex hen, penned with this Aloha.

The breeding pen, May 2015.  Eggs are already in the incubator.

So he's a great rooster, and I'm incredibly pleased with him, though I wish he had even more bulk and "meaty" size to him.  Like his Mom, he has lots of height.  He is as tall as any standard sized chicken, but he could use a little more roundness in the body area.  That is why I have him penned with my solid colored Buff Sussex hens.  The babies from that cross will NOT show spotting, but they will be light colored carriers Mottling and yellow legs.  I'm hoping as the breeding line mixes down the road, I'll get chicks with yellow legs, size, and spots . . .

He is also penned with some super colorful and pretty decent sized Aloha hens, to make more pretty spotted hens like ones seen in this pen.  (Hopefully with yellow legs too?)  Spots to spots only makes MORE spots, so every one of their babies should have lovely markings.  Though these hens - while not small - are about the same size as the rooster.  So there will only be "more of the same".  I have to go through the boring step of losing the color (by crossing to BIG buff hens) to make actual progress in the future.

Hen in front: One of my favorite Alohas.  Pretty with decent size!

I continue to look for any really promising roosters, as lately it seems that my boys are the "weak link" in the breeding program.  For years, I lacked BIG yellow hens.  I've FINALLY got those big yellow hens now, but I need big spotty roosters to breed them too.  A super-spotty, good sized, purebred Speckled Sussex would be a huge help right now, but since I don't have that, I have to try and look at what I have growing in my pens of babies, and hope what I need pops up?

As mottled roosters age, they tend to get darker and darker, which is why I try and keep baby chicks that appear to have way too much white.  Here is a progress update on a few.  Remember this guy?

He was a chick that I got back from a person who bought some eggs from me via Craigslist.  Here he is not even one month later:

He's already lost a ton of white and we aren't even at the four month mark, where they tend to lose the most color of all.

There was a second rooster that I went back for, because I thought his structure was promising.  This guy will probably be kept around for a while even if he loses most of his color, because he has very nice body type and good size, so far.

Odds are, however, this boy will be pretty much a buff color with barely a trace of white anywhere, when he is full grown.  However, he carries the gene for spots, and does show it now, which means he could improve the body type on the more colorful hens.  If bred to my super spotty girls we might see some chicks with better body type that keep their spotting to adulthood.

But to date, I just can't seem to find a rooster with both size and type PLUS color.  Here's a good example.  I was SO EXCITED when I started to raise this chick!  He was big, and round, with bright yellow legs.  And look at all that white!

Photo taken:  MARCH

Photo taken:  APRIL 7th

Photo taken:  MAY 10th

Aaaand it's gone.  All the white spotting is gone.  Bummer.

So there's his brother who of course is smaller:

It's also possible his brother is simply a few weeks younger.  If that's the case he might lose all his white in a few weeks as well.  Here's baby brother, photo taken early April:

And about a month later, in May:

And here is a third rooster, who is not as white as the one above, and not as tall as the one that lost all his color.  Not sure what to think of this guy yet?  Will have to grow him out a bit and see:

There are many other baby roosters that are growing out.  I will be keeping many of them to see how they develop!  Here are pics of a few of them:

Promising Mille Naked Neck Aloha.

Yellow legs, and mostly white, with some buff and black spots.

A row of Aloha chicks growing out.

Young Aloha roster with interesting dark head and yellow legs.

Striking orange and black dark head, white chest.

I don't know if any of these youngsters growing out now will be Mr. Right, but I have only kept about 50 chicks so far.  Typically, only about 1 in every 5-10 chicks makes the cut to the final breeding flock.

My hope is to hatch and keep at least 100 more babies, and raise them through the summer.  These ones that are hatched in February - April will be of breeding age August - October, which will give me a small flock pf probably 10-15 adults to start hatching Aloha chicks from, as soon as temps cool.

The bulk of my hatchlings are due end of May, to early June, and anything raised through the summer would be ready to breed by December, if all goes well.  (The tough part of course is keeping them alive through the Phoenix heat!)

I currently have about 125 eggs in the incubator, and the hope is to keep the entire group of chicks, if I can handle raising that many at once!  LOL.

White Spots on Roosters: Going, Going, GONE.

Another quick update on the Aloha project!

First of all, I wanted to share another recent photo of "Robin" who is the F1 Turken x Aloha cross rooster owned by my friend Deb in Tucson.  Isn't he a looker?

A quick note, F1 is usually used as shorthand for "First Generation" - as in, this was offspring of the first cross between a colorful Aloha rooster, and a solid pale yellow Turken hen.  What was surprising about Robin is that he showed any spots at all.  Usually, if you cross a spotted chicken with a not-spotted chicken. all the spots go into hiding.  This suggests to me that the genes for spots on Robin, might be very strong spotty genes indeed!

F2 would be the next generation after that - which is where I took the F1 hens (Robin's sisters) and crossed them with various roosters to get my next generation of Turken Alohas!  If you read last post, you would see I kept about 8 chicks.

Half of the F2 chicks did not really show any spotting, so I sold those.  The other half showed various degrees of spotting.  Now if you've been following the Aloha project, you will see where I've said sometimes Alohas get MORE spots as they age, but most of the time, they LOSE white spots as they mature - especially in roosters!

So I wanted to share a little reminder about this.  You would not believe how much white is lost in the boy chicks as they grow!  This is why I look for boys that seem to have "too much" white as babies, and why THIS one Aloha boy was special - despite his terrible skinny body type.

The original skinny, tiny Aloha rooster that I bred the Naked Neck hens to had a very unusual amount of white for an adult Aloha rooster.  He just had terrible body type, and was very thin, which is why I bred him to the big fat Turken hen:

So that is a full grown rooster.  With a TON of white.  Which, it turns out, is very rare.  That is the dad of Robin, who is Deb's Mille Turken x Aloha rooster, shown at the top of this post.

Now the last Blog post was talking about the grand-chicks from this cross.

Here is the grand-chick of that rooster, as a baby:

WOW!  Look at all that white on his chest!  He's going to be SUPER SPOTTY, right?  Right??!?

But wait, here he is a little older:

And a little older:

And finally, TODAY:

Almost ready to breed - and the white spots?  GONE!!!

Wait . . . WHAT?  That is the same baby chick?

And that is why the grand-daddy "mostly white" super spotty rooster was so precious, despite his thin, weedy type.  It is very very tough to keep a ton of spotting on a full grown rooster!  Speckled Sussex, Swedish Flower tend to "drop" their white at 4 months old, right as they are getting old enough to breed.

Strangely, Exchequer Leghorns, a different breed of chicken that also has spotting, those boys STAY flashy all the way to adulthood!  Nobody seems to know why this is?  Here is a photo of an Exchequer Leghorn so you can see for yourself:

Exchequer Leghorn - NOT MY PHOTO - borrowed from "Signature Feathers" farm.

I borrowed this photo from "Signature Feathers" farm, which appears to have GORGEOUS Exchequers, please go get some from this breeder if you want to raise some of these beauties!

Anyway, I used some Exchequers very early in the Aloha breeding program, and I crossed them with Speckled Sussex.  It took AGES to breed the black color out, but I feel certain that this dose of Exchequer helps some of my chicks end up super-spotty and flashy, as you never see this much whtie on Swedish or Speckled Sussex!

This Aloha rooster of mine - please compare him to the purebred Exchequer above:

Pumpkin mottled Aloha rooster.

You can see he's a bit of a "throwback" to the Leghorn bloodlines, with his lovely big comb and long flowy tail.  Unfortunately, like most Leghorns, he's a bit small compared to breeds like Sussex or New Hampshire.  But he sure as heck did not lose his white spotting!  Which is why he's still hanging around here, despite his small size.

Here's another small rooster with tons of white, at my friend Jessica's place:

The most elusive thing for me, is I have yet to get a super-spotty BIG rooster.  This is the current "spotty boy" here who has a lot of white, and yellow legs.  While he is not huge, I would not call him small:

His eyes are gold but his Mom was my blue-eyed hen.

He will be bred to my largest Buff Sussex hens, and while that will "hide" the spots in his babies the first generation, I hope to try and pull the color out again . . . someday.  The search for a seriously BIG rooster with a ton of white like this continues!  I will be searching through my babies for any prospects that are both large and showing a lot of white spottting.  But as you can see with the above Turken rooster photos, even when a chick shows a TON of white feathers as a little chick, that doesn't mean they are going to keep that much white as they mature.

I am growing out a few boys and I continue to remain hopeful that one will keep good size PLUS a good amount of white.  My most promising baby boy, who is BIG and also shows a lot of white:

"But just because I show white now, doesn't mean I'll stay that way!"

And a new one to watch:

I just picked up this boy yesterday, from a person who bought hatching eggs from me and needed to pare down on all the roosters.  I wonder if he will keep his white spotting?  Stay tuned for photos of him as he grows!  Will be keeping my fingers crossed. 

Turken Alohas!

It's been a long time since I've posted.  

Everything is going well here in Aloha World!  However, the breeder pens are still not done, though they are partially built.  We have demolished the old rickety original coop to make room for new pens that still need to be painted.

Without breeder pens, however, the Alohas and Sussex have been living (comfortably) in one huge mishmash of a flock, which has made it impossible for me to break up chickens into sub-groups to try for specific traits.

However, thanks to their unique single dominant gene, I have been able to track one breeder line - the Turken Alohas!  I have kept several Turken Alohas to raise - not because they are any "better" than any other group - but simply because their distinctive naked necks allow me to keep track of which bloodline they came from.  

Success!  Turkens with spots - added on one short year.
Why aren't other breeding projects this easy?!??

So, here's the story on these:

Last year, I noticed my neighbor had a few nice HUGE hens, that were that elusive pale butter-yellow Buff Columbian color I've been looking for.  Size - huge.  Legs - yellow.  Everything that I'd been looking for in outcross stock for the Alohas to improve size without ruining the colors.  I'd overlooked these hens previously, because of one distracting feature:  Their creepy vulture-like naked necks!

However, I read up on the Naked Neck gene, and it's a simple Dominant gene.  That means it can be easy to control, and easy to breed out, if I wanted to.  Nothing to be afraid of, in theory?  So, I set up a breeder pen to see if it would work.  I put a small, weedy, too-thin but beautifully colored Aloha rooster with these two big robust Turken hens.

Step #1 :  Take big buff hens, cross with skinny (but colorful) Aloha boy.

The result - about 8 Turken chicks.  All were buffy colored (good) and most were hens (even better.)

Step #2 :  Hatch out chicks, and keep the lightest Buff girls.
Spots go into hiding on first generation Solid x Mottled cross.

I sold the darkest colored hens and kept the lightest golden hens.  One hen even had small spots!

There was also a rooster who, also surprisingly, showed spotting!  Too nice to cull, I gave him to my friend Deb in Tucson, where he will be kept with Aloha hens.  The first generation Mottled to Solid cross chickens are not supposed to show spots - the Mottled gene is recessive.  Which says one of the Buff Turken hens I borrowed, may have been a carrier.

Too nice to cull - Mille Turken rooster "Robin" lives in Tucson now.

The Turken / Aloha cross hens were set loose in the pen with all the various roosters.  Two roosters were Buff Sussex / Aloha crosses, and two roosters were Buff Sussex / Speckled Sussex roosters that looked just like extremely LARGE Speckled Sussex, with small spots.  There were also Aloha roosters, spotty but small.  These smaller Aloha boys are lower ranking roosters, however, so the larger roosters would try their best to keep them away from hens.

F1 (first generation) Turken x Aloha cross.
Sister to above rooster "Robin".  The only F1 hen with spotting.

So the various Turkens were being crossed with various roosters, and being as they were all in the same pen, lots of possible crosses arise.  I kept seven Turkens from this F2 (second generation) cross.  Four showed spots, and three showed little to none.

Step #3:  Cross Buff hens that carry spotting back to spotted rooster.
Look for spots to return on some of the babies.  Keep those.

F2 (Second Generation) 3/4 Aloha (or Sussex) and 1/4 Turken chicks.
Spotty ones were kept, solid colors were re-homed.

I kept the spotty ones, and here are some photos.  I didn't write down an exact hatch date (arrrgh!) but I believe they were born around December 1st, which makes them almost 3 months old right now?  Size is excellent for "teenagers".  Which was kind of the whole point of adding the Turken - a size boost with light color and bonus yellow leg gene, that the Sussex, while large, can't give me.  Gotta get that yellow leg gene from somewhere.  Even though these kids have pink legs, I know they carry the yellow leg gene, which is currently in hiding in these babies, because it's recessive.

Photo taken a few weeks ago of the Sussex bred Aloha x Turken.
Hard to photograph because he's so friendly, always right in the camera lens.

That friendly Turken's daddy, a huge Speckled Sussex / Buff Sussex
Sadly, Dad hurt his leg and had to be put down.

The dark rooster is particularly impressive, because his Dad was the MASSIVE Buff Sussex / Speckled Sussex cross rooster.  I recently lost this rooster because of his huge size.  He perched in the barn rafters and broke his leg leaping down from that height.  The Alohas are light and good fliers, and can handle a drop of 15 feet, but that big guy was too heavy.

That makes this Turken roo especially valuable, as he is already huge like Dad.  And I know he carries the gene for yellow legs, and he has lighter color and big size from his pale Buff Turken grandmother.  He is much more valuable for the Aloha program than his dad was.  I hope I can keep him alive and well until June, when he will be old enough to breed.

Bloodline:  1/2 Sussex (Buff and Speckled)
1/4 Aloha, and 1/4 Turken

Basically, young rooster boy is 3/4 "big chicken" (Sussex and Turken) and only 1/4th "little Aloha chicken" (from that one skinny Aloha rooster) and while he does show a lot of black feathering from his Speckled Sussex daddy, there is enough light colored chickens in his background that I don't think the black will be too dominant.  He could be a great rooster not just for making Turkens, but for improving size and keeping spotty color on Alohas, too.

His siblings are also gorgeous.  I have two lovely hens and another rooster who has better color than the darker boy, but is not nearly as large.  They are a fabulous lot of chicks.

Now, don't get the wrong idea here - these chicks are NOT the only ones!  Yay!  It turns out there are a BUNCH more just like these babies.  I've been hatching out tons of Aloha chicks, and in every batch of 60-80 babies that I hatch, I'll scoop the the ones with distinctive naked necks out, and set them aside.  I sent maybe a dozen to Deb in Tucson, and gave my neighbor (who loaned me the "original" Naked Neck hen) about six Aloha x Turken chicks, as well.

The results from the babies that I kept were just too encouraging to not raise more!  Also, it's generally a good idea with any stock that is looking this nice, to spread them around, in case something happens to chickens at one location.  (Illness, dog attacks, etc, can wipe out a flock in record time.)

Above:  Various pics showing three of the four spotted Naked Neck x Aloha chicks that I kept.

In fact, this experiment worked so well, I am going to repeat the original F1 Turken to Aloha cross again this year.  Using the neighbor's big buff Turken hen, and a fresh new Aloha rooster.  Now that I have one that has good color, but ALSO decent size!  The big pale hen that started this line is still alive and well in the neighbor's yard.  I would like to pen her with this new Aloha rooster here:

He is colored much like the original small, thin, weedy rooster that I crossed with the Turken hen before, but he has much better overall body size than the first rooster.  So I've made improvements there, and while he's certainly not enormous like that giant Sussex who was so massive he hurt himself with his own weight, this Aloha rooster is a vast improvement over many previous boys.  He is a perfectly respectable size, and is still maturing and filling out, so he will probably get even bigger yet.

I believe he was hatched in September, and he has started to show interest in girls, though it will be another month before he is fully mature.  I think he may continue to grow and fill out for another three months, as he appears to have heavy Swedish bloodlines, and Swedish are slower to mature than many American heritage breeds.  Roosters in that breed do not seem to really fill out until 8 or even 9 months of age.

New Aloha rooster, of good size.  Swedish Flower bloodlines.

I think this second round of cross-breeding the larger Aloha rooster, with the Turken hen will get us an even better group of Aloha/Turken crosses to use next season!  If things go as planned, I would love to create some new girls and cross them with the darker colored Sussex/Turken big-bodied dark colored rooster that is turning out so nice.  It might take a little linebreeding to lock in the Turken yellow legs and buttery yellow base color.

Considering how fragile chickens are, however, it's hard to make any future plans.  As they say - don't count your chickens, and all that!

The Turken project has been fun, and to date, has worked beautifully and exactly as hoped.  Very encouraged by the process.  I wish other breeding experiments had worked so wonderfully.  The resulting babies are kind of creepy with their feather-less necks, but are super friendly happy, and healthy.  Now teenagers, they come running for treats and allow themselves to be held.  They are great chickens!  Friendly, happy, healthy and sweet.  Glad I took this little "detour" with the Naked Necks, as it is working out great so far.

I had trouble taking photos of this little roo, because he is so friendly!