Welbars - Breed thread and discussion

dheltzel said:

Not sure why I assumed you were in the US, just used to participating mostly in groups with local people. Welbars are better represented in the UK. AFAIK, no one successfully imported them to the US, I recreated my line about 5 years ago. A well known importer, who brought Cream Legbars to the US, tried to import Welbars, but could not get them to be correctly autosexing because they were using single barred cockerels and could not see that (though it was obvious from the few pics they posted).

Fortunately, Welbars are the easiest of all common autosexing breeds to outcross but keep pure. Because they are (genetically) simply a Crele Welsummer (Partridge + sex-lined barring), all you need is a single Welbar cockerel to create your own line from Welsummers. I do this regularly to bring in traits I want. Get some Welsummer pullets from a good line (show type, dark eggs, etc). The better the line of Welsummers, the better your Welbars will get. Put your Welbar cockerel with those pullets and hatch a bunch of chicks. The F1's are not autosexing, so you will need to raise them a few weeks before you can cull the cockerels. All the F1 pullets are pure Welbars, with half their genes from those Welsummer pullets. Breed them back to their father and all chicks are autosexing! You can continue to do that outcross with any line of Welsummers that you wish, just remember, bad traits are as heritable as good ones.

Click to expand...

Dazed and Confused said:

Thats great info, thanks. Having slept on it for the night, I kept thinking about the silver welbar, and came up with a hundred questions about how you get there... (working from building the breed from scratch)

I know that the Barred Rock carries a silver gene, which would most likely (if not definitely) be passed on to the F1 Cockerel along with the baring gene.

At F2, i expect it gets a bit more complex, where you now need to identify (and have enough growers) a Cock and Pullet that are both barred and carrying a dominant silver gene... I assume then that the F3 Welbars will be silver topped like the one in your photo?

or am I overcomplicating? could you just use silver duckwing Welsummers during the first and second breeding to lock in the silver trait?

Click to expand...

Iluveggers said:

Ideal Poultry will have this breed next year! I may have to order one if we get more chicks…trying to convince hub we can hook up the small coop to the run & get a few more birds…lol!

Click to expand...