Cream Legbar Pictures

[sunnydalefarms]

I wanted to start a thread for pictures of Cream Legbars only. They are such a gorgeous breed. Feel free to post pics of those beautiful blue eggs and fluffy chicks also. I will start with a couple pictures of mine.

 

[sunnydalefarms]

Here is a picture of a CL chick that hatched last night.

 

[GaryDean26]

1) I have hatch from 3-4 hens that look like the hen in the back right and all of them produce cockerels with the bright chestnut saddle feathers and sholders. I have to watch the body color on the hens since some of the gold hens have very light hackles. Hens with a brown hue to the body color produce gold cockerel when paired to a cream cockerel and hens with a grey color to their body produce cream colored cockerels when paired to cream cockerels.

Here is other photo of the Cream and Gold hen. Note the difference the body color. If you are seeing light hackels, but the brown body, then your hens may be a carrier for cream, but from what I have been seeing they don't breed true for cream.





Note: I find it useful to track the pullets through their development because there seems to be a window when you can see the difference in body color fairly clearly and then they do a mini molt and the cream birds are back to looking nearly identical to the light gold birds.

2) I am was not sure about the color of the cockerel on the left at first. He was the only light colored cockerel that I wasn't sure was Cream. I held onto him, on sorting day to watch his development but was guessing he was gold.

I have been using the wing bay on the cockerels until the saddle feathers come in to determine who is gold and who is cream. Once the saddle feathers come in it is usually pretty clear. With the boy on the left it wasn't clear so I had to go back and look at the wing bay. His wing bay is gold, despite being really light, he is GOLD.

P.S. I will try to get a side by side photo of the body color of the cream hen and the really light gold hen. It may be hard to see the difference in a photo though.

 

[dretd]

these are the muts I was selling. Thank you again for all this info it has been a great help. Here are some of the other comments I received on my adverts nice people I think not xx

Hi Kezza666 and

It is so hard to assess the quality of a bird from a photograph--especially one where they are not by themselves and posed from the front and side in proper lighting! I actually have mostly stopped commenting on flaws in color for that very reason. I would hate for a bad photo to cause someone else to cull a bird when it wasn't that serious of a problem but rather a lighting issue.

The folks you are getting scolded from are breeders that have worked hard to breed the best stock they can. In any given year they will probably breed over 100 birds and cull 90% of them becasue they are too flawed to move forward. It gives them a perspective of being overly critical of any birds since they are to their own and also of being very protective of the breed they have worked to hard to breed. Many breeders in the States are the same way and very harsh and critical--yet if you ask them advice they are very friendly and very willing to share their knowledge. I guess I am saying to try to keep things in perspective and try not to take offense.

Greenfire Farms is a hatchery in the US specializing in importing rare breeds and selling their offspring. As a hatchery they are not engaged in breeding to specific standards but imported the best birds they could and are breeding those birds and selling offspring. They have 4 different lines of Cream Legbars they are breeding and selling. Many of the birds are off-type (they lack crests and are undersized etc) and there are many color issues becasue the original stock was imperfect plus the different strains/lines are now being crossed in tho home flocks which is jumbling up genetics and revealing hidden genes that were stable in the individual strains. I remember one honest Brit came on here and basically said all of the US stock was so deeply flawed that we should scrap all of them and start over with better stack (this was before the Rees line was imported and they are not without flaws, either).

For the most part, folks are more friendly over here because we realize that everyone's birds are somehow flawed. Most people are trying hard to breed to the Standard, but will sell birds to other people, too. The really bad ones are called Easter Eggers, Easter Leggers or other words to make sure they are not used for breeding. The ones that have serious flaws but not DQ flaws may be termed 'not show quality', 'pet quality', 'off-type', 'gold tinted' 'hatchery quality' etc Cream Legbars. It respects the birds origins but does let the buyer know that the bird may not meet the Standard of Perfection in one or more ways. For me, it seems like the best way to handle it. Honest but not rude.

It looks like some of your hens are gold (only carry one or no copies of the Cream gene). Cream is a color variety of Legbar, so if you have birds that are gold instead of cream, they do not meet that color variety's standard--which is why you are getting pushback from breeders. I have seen photos of many British CL stock and many males appear to lack the darkly barred breast that is also called for in the standard, but for some reason they are not called out for that flaw.

If they are good looking other than the gold, they would be welcome in my breeding program since it is a simple flaw to fix. I would rather work with gold and remove it than a mostly red ear, or a very small size for example. If I were selling the birds I would tell the buyers they are from CL stock and that some are gold tinted so that you are up front about everything. The problem is that you appear to be new to Cream Legbars so you don't have the experience to know all of the other flaws in your flock--if they have any. I am willing to bet that your stock is better than the average breeder's here in the US!

What are your goals with the breed-have a nice backyard flock or are you planning on getting into showing or breeding Cream Legbars?

 

[sol2go]

Thank you, both! My toddler's pullet is the gentlest, friendliest bird I've ever seen! My daughter gets behind her and to pick her up and off they go, chicken feet dangling. They had a rocky start (my little girl is actually terrified of animals), but they've come to love each other. The pullet, named "That One," just begs to be picked up and have a shoulder or hat ride!

So sweet, I'm glad your daughter is having a good experience =)

There are a few stories of families that rely on chickens as an aide for children with handicaps. I recently met a special ed teacher who hatches chicks for use in her classroom, as a vehicle to communicate behaviors. For example, the children sit quietly and hold a chick until it falls asleep as a tool to help them understand what it means to be calm or to be still.

 

[sol2go]

New here...new to CCLs also. Didn't really plan on them, but came into a small group of hens and a roo. I would like to have your opinions on these animals. Did I do okay? Sorry, they are a little dusty from pest treatment just before pickup, and riding in the truck for a few hours. They still laid an egg when we got home! Thanks in advance for any comments and suggestions.
-Allie

Hi, welcome to BYC and all things Cream Legbar =) It looks like a few days since you posted, unless I missed something, I'll just pop in with some comments.

That's a good sign that they are laying, and a pretty blue egg is very important.
Your new flock looks like it has some other key factors such as nice body size and white earlobes.

The hens and rooster also have reasonable combs; flocks are often plagued by very floppy, folded combs.
Your girls seem to have distinct crests which is a good thing, although one may be a bit small, the others are fairly medium in size.
The rooster has a small crest (which is better than no crest), so the offspring should show crests in all cases.

Two general items to note:
the legs should be yellow and they look a little washed out?
the flock exhibits some of the common feather color/pattern variations which are not quite in keeping with the proposed SOP; that's a whole other discussion. The simple comment is, the rooster and a couple of hens may be heterozygous for cream, so you may see some offspring that are correct for cream.

Thanks for sharing your pictures!

 

[ChicKat]

Can someone tell me what these are? They never were really marked well as chicks either way...didn't look male, didn't look female. I thought they were maybe pullets though. Pics at day old, three weeks and five weeks. They sure have big combs and wattles for pullets but their color doesn't look like the cockerels I have seen this age before. I bought and hatched these eggs but wonder about the quality at this point... Any help from those with experience appreciated.

Although I disagree with Junibutt on preferable leg color--- my thinking is that yellow would be better than willow, since willow would indicate melanizers and that is one thing that I may want to reduce in my own flock, I agree with him and with Sol2go that they are male chicks. I can see how they could possibly be misidentified in the day-old picture --

You have identified something that seems to be popping up more here in the 'States, and I guess is pretty common in UK. The breed explanation for sexing tells us that the distinct (bright) chipmunk stripes and the dark and continuous dorsal dark thick stripe indicate female -- also the very visible V at the front of the head - small part of the V pointing toward the beak. For the males -- the diffuse chipmunk stripes.

The males seem to have a barring gene that is either not expressing or expressing more weakly and indefinitely than would be optimum for crisp barring I think-- although CLs go through so many changes as they move to complete adult plumage, I could be mistaken there. IMO the strong definite white head blotch on the male is an indication of strong barring genetics. Although it is visible in the photo from Punnett's day, I don't believe he mentions it -- and in my line -- it is so prominent that I can tell when the chick is still wet it will have a light head splotch.

The three week old picture - they look the most pullet-like of all --

These little cockerels do have a nice head-comb-crest combination -- and the yellow legs and beak are a plus IMO. It would indicate to me that they don't have excess melanizers - and they could help someone who needed to reduce the black in their flock's barring/markings.

Thanks for posting -- because this is really informative.

Here is a chick sexing plate from genetics journal in Punnett's day:


Two girls with V's and a boy with splotch

Just hatched boy above with white/light splotch

Just hatched girl with V and dorsal chipmumk stripes over back.....

ETA - if you aren't familiar with the Punnett chick photo/plate -- the middle and top chicks are male - and the bottom two are female.

 

[ChickenGrass]

nice cream legbars everyone
Here's some pictures of mine
The black chicks in with the cream legbars are silkies

 

[ChickenGrass]

Hi all
Here's a picture of my cream legbar hen at a show today
I got a third with her
I also got a few more rosets for other birds

 

[cubalaya]

how do these girls look?