Discussion of Legbar Standard of Perfection for -Alternative- Legbars - SOP discussion

[kjbizy1]

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I agree with your characterization of "light colored white washed birds" but that's my personal liking. Others may feel like they are beautiful. Now they have to ask this honest question themselves whether they think the light birds are beautiful because they are according to the SOP or because they like them in their hearts.

BTW my comment wasn't really meant to be critical of lighter bred birds, so much as does their like for them prevent them from being objective, as does anything we prefer, prevent any of us from being objective breeders.
Question is, is a really light colored bird, "correct", and the attitudes of those that have, that color who think that is the "only" acceptable color.


cor

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I agree with your characterization of "light colored white washed birds" but that's my personal liking. Others may feel like they are beautiful. Now they have to ask this honest question themselves whether they think the light birds are beautiful because they are according to the SOP or because they like them in their hearts.

 

[ChicKat]

Hey Everybody, I would like to add a bit of information to the FB groups I am in. Chickat, would it be possible to use some of the photos or link to some of the photos of the colorful winning rooster you posted? There are some very strong voiced people informing everyone they have to work towards Cream (white) and should discard and cull all of their colorful birds. I would like to get the word out this topic is at the very least still under debate if not absolutely wrong. I do not feel I am the best spokesperson, but would like to help, before people become discouraged or breed all of the color out of their birds. Thoughts on a short message and some photos I could use... (Right before I get cruelly attacked for sharing this point of view) You guys are the experts. I am just a Legbar Advocate.

Many of you expressed to me that this discussion made you change your mind about needing a color variance. It seems as if there still is debate, but that is not how the issue is being talked about in other chicken forums I am on. I would like to spread the word to people thinking their birds are worthless or that they need to cull half their flock. So, sense none of you are facebook users.. (LOL) I would like some help in how to express there is hope for colored legbars.

Use any photos that you wish here -- and if there is accreditation that would be nice,... the UK winner is on the internet - so that is kind of public domain to win in a major Poultry Show....
Although I don't agree with the cream = white view -- the people who have that opinion are entitled to it. Now if they would just extend the same courtesy to people who thing cream isn't = white!

So put on the armor and sally forth -- then come back here - where people are trying to be inclusive and open minded.... Like a knight on a charger or a prize fighter in the ring. ;O)

ETA - who knows maybe some folks will get their Cream Legbars back (magically because they never went away) like we did when the UK judge said that cream is pale butter.

 

[ChicKat]

I just want to say, I don't have an opinion on the chart, and it was helpful for a good deal of the discussion, whether or not it moves forward. My question was the chart shows "matching saddle and hackle feathers" And I wondered what the current thinking on trying to get the hackles and the saddles to match is. Thanks again for a great conversation, I wish it could be required reading. Another thought I had posted, which got lost in the rest of the excellent comments... Should their be any effort to disseminate the current interpretation of the creme color ranges, as every day people are still being told they need to go Creme (white) or they shouldn't be breeding. Thank you.

I guess if the people who's flocks are getting dismissed as inadequate on Facebook - use those people as their experts - then they will buy into that opinion..... But I think that whomever they are I would follow as closely as possible the David Applegarth pair for Cream Legbars...

ETA - although I think that many Legbars and Legbar related breeds like CL - in actuality show a different saddle and hackle - some have bred matching. The chart is an artist representation of gold crele Leghorn and silver crele Leghorn - these birds like the Cream Legbar are autosexing. Infact - I wonder that there isn't a crossover between these birds (Crele Leghorns) and the ones that Punnett 'invented". I will see if I can dig up the originals because -- they include the chick pictures. When I made the chart I was trying to find a way we could discuss Cream and not really reproduce a target CL. The Cream Legbar Club does have some illustrations of idealized birds - you may want to check the archived newsletters if you are a club member -- or maybe they aren't posted there...I will try to get back with more info.

 

[chicken pickin]

I think us newbies get dismissed on our opinions on color issues, which is wrong. If a newcomer can see the color issues right off the bat, then my feeling is some of the people who have had their heads into the frame of thought that cream is about light colored white washed birds, may be running with blinders on, or a tad bit barn blind.
No offense intended, honestly, it is just my initial reaction, and only MY opinion.
It seems without the gold genetics that naturally accompany this breed, there would have never been Cream, am I wrong??
So I find it ironic that gold is a hiss and,by word.....IMHO

I think you are absolutely correct in the sense that we need gold genetics and the red inhibitors, mahogany etc(I don't know proper terms I am not good at genetics lol). Those genes are needed to work to get the cream color we have in our Cream Legbars. I dont think there should be absence of color by any means (though I am one that does prefer very little chestnut).

I think that is what happened to the UK birds, that they tried so hard to eliminate the color from their birds that essentially they lost so much of the color that the males got white and washed out looking. My Rees line male is pretty much white and gray with a tiny bit of chestnut in his crest and mahogany in the shoulders, his saddle is what I would call very very very pale cream and his hackles are white. He is not my ideal since I personally do not think Cream = White.

 

[1muttsfan]

Then a UK judge gave us the word that the correct color of cream is the color of pale butter....or maybe it was very pale or very very very very pale - or something. And suddenly those of us that had some pale butter on our non-white Cream Legbar -- had Cream Legbars once again -- all with the words of a judge...

Maybe butter with annatto added for coloring, like they do with margarine!

Maybe the names that you are thinking of would be appropriate should another standard be created - since Crele - is simply an explanation for the combinaton of wild type and barring genes and is a feather pattern more than a color (to the genetic community) I know to the fly-tying community (some reference articles are earlier in this thread - and some photos of fly-tying Creles ) The crele is tri-color - and they call it creel BTW - and the plain B&W barring is called grizzly or grizzled I think -- all you fly-tying experts correct me if I am wrong.

Keep the good ideas coming -- and thanks to everyone who weighed in with your views.

Maybe what is needed is a standard for type and egg color, then with separate color variety descriptions, similar to what is done with Orpingtons, Leghorns, Plymouth Rocks, and many other breeds. Because a crested, blue egg-laying Legbar is still a Legbar (of unrecognized color variety) if it does not carry cream, it is just not a Cream Legbar.

I consider crele a pattern, not so much a color.

Very pretty! I could easily see myself with this color.

1muttsfan, I so agree with most of what you are saying that it could have been written by me. I'm kind of exaggerating that my bird may be silver..however the male has two genes at that locus and so it could be S/s+ and carry both silver and gold genes.

I had a similar issue arise when breeding bantam cochins in the Lemon Blue variety - a blue color dilution of Brown Red. A colleague suspected some of the birds were actually silver based instead of gold - he was going to do some test matings to try to figure it out. He ended up taking my breeding stock as I was moving on to another project, not sure how that turned out for him.


Not sure if when you say gold-colored you are talking about something as gold as 100% gold, or the type like the stock that I have -- with the wing tell showing other than B&W. but I also like the more gold colored birds - Since gold is brown, any brown on the wing triangle may show that there is a lacking or a lazy cream gene in the pair -- but no one actually knows that for sure -- and there is a lot of speculation.

I mean like the bird in the above picture - mmm, mmmmm. Pretty.


I agree with you so 100% on the egg color...and IT would be neat to see a photo of your Arkansas Blue egg beside one of your CL eggs. Do you by any chance have an OAC?

I just hatched out some CL's and some AB's - did not think to check color, but I think there are a few unhatched ones still in the back room, I will take a look at them as time allows.


The eggs on the lower left are AB eggs. Those on the upper left are CL, with some AB eggs - hens all run together, so not sure who layed what. R side are CL eggs from another breeder.

I so agree with you the bluer the egg the better...and other than increasing the carotinoids in the chicken's diet, I know of nothing we can do except years of selecting away from greens and toward blues and not IMO 'contaminating' our blues with lines that would make them greener...does that make sense?

Since the genetics of brown are much more complicated than blue - there may be 13 or more genes involved - once you have some of those it becomes VERY hard to select away from the contaminating brown genes, the only way would be to consistently select only the bluest eggs for hatching. That would, of course, limit the number of birds available for selecting other characteristics - maybe too limiting. However, this from Kippenjungle - "There is a recessive sex-linked gene, pr, that inhibits the expression of brown eggshell genes and can be used to help remove the brown tint from white eggs, for example." Maybe of some use here?

 

[ChicKat]

I think us newbies get dismissed on our opinions on color issues, which is wrong. If a newcomer can see the color issues right off the bat, then my feeling is some of the people who have had their heads into the frame of thought that cream is about light colored white washed birds, may be running with blinders on, or a tad bit barn blind.
No offense intended, honestly, it is just my initial reaction, and only MY opinion.
It seems without the gold genetics that naturally accompany this breed, there would have never been Cream, am I wrong??
So I find it ironic that gold is a hiss and,by word.....IMHO

It is very cool that people are attracted to the fully saturated birds - and I do consider those gold. kjbizy1 - this topic is valuable and 1Muttsfan things that coloration is great. It is almost more of a Red Crele -- which I suppose would be based on a 'black breasted red' rather than a 'golden duckwing' - which Cream Legbar is. I think some folks want the appearance of a bird that would look like one based on a 'silver duckwing' Here is one thing though about your single barred cockerel - his offspring won't be autosexing - because autosexing requires two barring genes in the male.

What is the source of your juvenile guy? Are you certain he doesn't have double barring? I'm curious, especially since only color gets everyone excited - but most think autosexing is the single most important trait of the Legbar breed.

ETA too bad some folks don't realize the value of a fresh point of view - and set of questions that a newbie brings to the table!!!

 

[caychris]

Maybe what is needed is a standard for type and egg color, then with separate color variety descriptions, similar to what is done with Orpingtons, Leghorns, Plymouth Rocks, and many other breeds. Because a crested, blue egg-laying Legbar is still a Legbar (of unrecognized color variety) if it does not carry cream, it is just not a Cream Legbar.

This was my point.

In talking about egg color especially Blue or white egg layers where there is the possiblity of the male carrying the brown genes there is always a risk that even when hatching from the bluest eggs the resulting offspring can be "contaminated" I wish there was a way to tell what Egg color genes the makes may be carrying.

(At least its my understanding they will contribute to the genes for egg color)

 

[ChicKat]

Maybe butter with annatto added for coloring, like they do with margarine!

Maybe what is needed is a standard for type and egg color, then with separate color variety descriptions, similar to what is done with Orpingtons, Leghorns, Plymouth Rocks, and many other breeds. Because a crested, blue egg-laying Legbar is still a Legbar (of unrecognized color variety) if it does not carry cream, it is just not a Cream Legbar.

Very pretty! I could easily see myself with this color.

Good insight - that is the intention of the Cream Legbar Club -- but the procedure of the APA does require a color description to get that initial acceptance...so since we thought we had Cream Legbars - that is the one we started working on.

The eggs on the lower left are AB eggs. Those on the upper left are CL, with some AB eggs - hens all run together, so not sure who layed what. R side are CL eggs from another breeder.

Pretty eggs, pretty colors and the AB is lucky because it never got any browns in there....Cream Legbars?? was it that pesky BPR - or was Ms. Chiliean hen the culprit -- or (more likely maybe) was it some outcrosses in the intervening 60-years.

 

[ChicKat]

This was my point.

In talking about egg color especially Blue or white egg layers where there is the possiblity of the male carrying the brown genes there is always a risk that even when hatching from the bluest eggs the resulting offspring can be "contaminated" I wish there was a way to tell what Egg color genes the makes may be carrying.

(At least its my understanding they will contribute to the genes for egg color)

I wish we had a way to know the whole spectrum of genes in a bird -- LOL -- But following and associating with those who want the blue eggs and breed for them is one way for everyone to have the bluest possible.

 

[dretd]

I think the legbar is going through what the leghorns went through. There was at one time just a basic brown leghorn but people started breeding lighter females and darker males based on wording and how theu interpreted it. Pretty soon they had a split because there was such a variance in color of the two which caused light brown and dark brown. Legbars seem the same way in a sense- good colored females can have poor colored males and vice-versa.

Hi FMP. I am glad you showed up and think you can contribute a lot to the discussion since you have Cream Legbars, are experienced at showing and have birds that are most probably split for Cream.

I think that back in the day, the folks that had Brown Leghorns really didn't appreciate that there was an e+ and an eb genetics going on and they were both combined into one breed**. After a time they came to realize that e+ produces a salmon colored breast in females and eb produces a breast the same color as the back in the females--the boys pretty much look the same. Brown Leghorns were accepted into the APA SOP in 1874 and split into Light Brown and Dark Brown in1923. The APA was formed in 1873 so the Leghorns were in the first Standard they published. I don't have that reference so I don't know how the original Brown variety description varied before and after the split. FMP--Do you have that reference by any chance?

The way I see it is the Cream Legbar as it was admitted in Britain, was a variety based on the Genetic Variant ig that was discovered. The genotype is ig/ig, the phenotype is Cream. The Silver Legbar was based on the genotype S/S (S/-) and the Gold was based on Ig/Ig. For me I think it is pretty straightforward that Cream is referring to the genetic state of the bird. Punnett in one of his papers (http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jgenet/48/327.pdf and the paragraph about the secondaries is found just above the entry "Rhode Island Red Cross" on page 329) describes how red doesn't show up in the wing triangle, only gold. So looking to see if there is gold in that location is the best way for a breeder to get an idea if their bird is ig/ig or Ig/?. It is a tool in the tool box to decide what you have. The breed standard (original British) allows for chestnut in 4 places--the back. shoulders, coverts (qualified as some chestnut smudges permissible) and crest. I think they left it off the secondaries because there is no red there and because the gold gets diluted by cream in that location. Otherwise the standard would read as it did for the gold variety: "primaries and secondaries dark grey barred, intermixed with white, upper web of secondaries also intermixed with chestnut"*

So for me, I am using that gold or lack of gold in the secondaries as my litmus test help me understand the underlying genetics I am dealing with in my flock. Having gold in the wing triangle alerts me that there may be an issue with dilution genetics piece to the puzzle, but for me it doesn't mean I need to cull that bird or that they are not a Cream Legbar. The problem as I see it though, is that if I ignore the gold there and turn down the chestnut, turn down the barring, turn down the melanizers in my bird to achieve a phenotype that matches the standard (except for the gold in the wing triangle) then I am setting myself up for problems down the road with getting too light of a bird when I hatch the ig/ig version of the Ig/ig father. I think to a certain extent this is how we end up getting lighter and lighter birds.

SO the big question I have for you FMP, and also for anyone else who cares to answer--and this is the crux of the conflict between folks about color in the Cream Legbar--

Does the Cream Legbar mean to you:
a) The Cream is a genetic designation for this variety of Legbar and the ideal bird should be ig/ig
b) The Cream is color of bird and can be diluted with 2 copies of ig/ig or can be Ig/? and the ideal bird just needs to match the standard

How does the APA view the variety Cream? Is it a color or a genetic state? Can I show a bird that is white under a traditionally silver if they look the same or would that be viewed as wrong? A BYCer once suggested that he could recreate the Cream Legbar by introducing silver as a substitute for Cream. I was not happy by this suggestion, but if look at Cream as a phenotype and the following reference seems to indicate that Cream and Silver look the same in the males (also referenced in the Punnett Cream Paper) then why would that be wrong as long as the bird looks cream in appearance?

In Sex-Linkage in Poultry Breeding Bulletin No.38 - Punnett & Pease say- 'An interesting new autosexing variety is the Cream Legbar.The cream colour is undistinguishable to the eye from the silver : but cream is none the less a form of gold. It may be thought of as an extremely diluted gold .The Cream Legbar has a crest, which distinguishes it readily from the Silver Legbar.Its most striking peculiarity is that it lays blue eggs. The sex-distinction in the downs is the same as that in the Gold Legbar'***

(from: http://www.the-coop.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=109450 )

I realize the judges don't have a genetic test kit (or wouldn't if there was one available) so what do they think about this issue? Should the birds be ig/ig or just look Cream? It all comes down to Phenotype vs Genotype.

Second Question:
Knowing that the Light and Dark Varieties were split because of underlying genetic differences (have a different e locus) and given that you think the Cream Legbar may need to go down that path because of underlying genetics (homo vs hetrozygous for ig) would it be better to wait until after the Cream Legbar is accepted into the APA and has a track record with them, or would it be better to split them into Dilute Crele and Crele before that event so that the coloration has more uniformity and therefor increases the odds for acceptance? Maybe @fowlman01 will be able to enlighten us on that point if you don't know?

* The gold Legbar standard was admitted into the PCGB in 1945 a more detailed history is http://blue-eggs.co.uk/#/history-of-cream-legbars/4554275782 Obviously, the chestnut referred to in the Gold Standard is genetic gold, not red.
**For those of you reading the post that are not up on genetics, e+ is wild type and often referred to as duckwing (the wing triangle matches the hackles and saddle) where eb is often referred to as partridge (although to confuse matters, partridge in Europe means duckwing--they are not the same!)
***the British downs description now reads Cream, as for Silver. When I look at the two down descriptions they are almost identical with very few minor changes--I am not sure of the date on the above reference--it may have come out about the time the Silver Legbar was accepted and thus not well known.