You may be able to find him a home with someone breeding Olive eggers or Easter eggers. Please don't rehome him with some one breeding Legbars. If I was closer I would offer him a home for my blue egg layer project.
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I completely understand. But this is exactly my point, BREED REPRESENTATION IS VERY IMPORTANT WITH AUTO SEXING BREEDS. It has nothing to do with breeder quality or hatchery quality because they dont need to be perfect by any means, but they do need to maintain certain features to keep the auto sexing traits from generation to generation. I completely understand hatchery grade chickens and of course they wont be as great of a representation for a breed as say from a breeder, but they will be similar. Your chick isnt even a slight resemblance. Because Cream Legbars are an auto sexing chicken breed they do still need to be selected properly as to maintain the auto sexing traits, if chicks are not sexable at hatch as male or female, they should be removed from being future breeders, even at the hatchery. You cant just breed any Cream Legbar to any Cream Legbar and think you will maintain an auto sexing breed, its not that simpleYeah, well, it's a hatchery grade cream legbar... what can you say? I typically don't expect show quality chickens out of hatcheries... and I was not so much concerned about breed representation as much as I was about getting that blue egg out of the pullet I ordered... so... I'm not stressing about the appearance to standard... I am stressing out about feeling like I might get jerked around on their sexing guarantee policy because they are playing funny with the math.
To me... the whole 90% policy should be kind of moot on auto-sexing breeds and they should just accept that they've made a mistake and/or screwed up their stock on a breed that auto-sexes... if the hatchery is doing it's job on breeds like this, mistakes like this should be so few and far between enough that they can afford to reimburse folks without making them feel like they are putting them out. It's not fair to punish the customers for what is obviously their mistake. I mean... I am looking past the exorbitant price, thinking when I'm buying this chick, because I trust that I'll at least get what I'm ordering. If I can't even trust them to manage auto-sexing breeds correctly, or to just own the mistake and refund me... I might as well stick to buying Easter Eggers from Estes at the local Orscheln. It's a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me thing.
I even told them... you know... if the australorp had been sexed incorrectly, I wouldn't have even worried about it... because... it's 3 frikken dollars... I'm not going to twist my underwear in a variety of sailor's knots over 2-3 dollars... 35 dollars of a 109 dollar order... that's different. I will feel cheated over that. And... I don't think that's unreasonable.
I completely understand. But this is exactly my point, BREED REPRESENTATION IS VERY IMPORTANT WITH AUTO SEXING BREEDS. It has nothing to do with breeder quality or hatchery quality because they dont need to be perfect by any means, but they do need to maintain certain features to keep the auto sexing traits from generation to generation. I completely understand hatchery grade chickens and of course they wont be as great of a representation for a breed as say from a breeder, but they will be similar. Your chick isnt even a slight resemblance. Because Cream Legbars are an auto sexing chicken breed they do still need to be selected properly as to maintain the auto sexing traits, if chicks are not sexable at hatch as male or female, they should be removed from being future breeders, even at the hatchery. You cant just breed any Cream Legbar to any Cream Legbar and think you will maintain an auto sexing breed, its not that simple
If he is in fact a pure Cream Legbar, I guarantee the hatchery at some point made poor selections and with a male that looks like your bird there is no way they will know male from female 100% of the time. Your male is lacking the proper barring a Cream Legbar male has. Male CL should have 2 barring genes and that is what gives the male chicks the nice large head spot as chicks. It is possible the hatchery isn't doing well with this breed and is loosing the auto sexing traits in their stock.
I understand you were looking for a pullet and blue eggs and you should have received a pullet plain and simple. The hatchery failed and did not deliver and they should make it right for you 100%, especially for a breed that should be auto sexing and is a little more costly.
My personal thought is this breed might not do well in hatcheries and eventually they likely wont be offered.
It is true, a lot of people advertise Cream Legbar as blue egg layers. The truth is like said above is they can lay eggs that range from blue - blueish green - green. Those are acceptable colors and the standards for the UK and the US have that listed. It is the fact that many people are mistaken and incorrectly advertise the breed. The standard accepts the color range and I just looked up Meyers and they advertised the egg color appropriately.I agree with you 100% that you should get a refund since this $35 chick turned out to be a cockerel. And I agree their method of dodging a refund sucks too.
My main concern with this entire fiasco is that there are some horrible breeding practices being used by the "breeder" supplying the eggs to the hatchery, and no one is going to do anything to change their practices.
Another concern I have lies with the breed itself. Cream Legbars are advertised as being blue egg layers. The truth is a large percentage of them lay eggs that are at best "bluish" in color. And I have one that lays a green egg.
I suspect that even if your cockerel had been a pullet, she may not have laid a " blue " egg.
I really feel for you in this predicament.
@Gifa if you are still interested in a Cream Legbar pullet you should check out the Cream Legbar Club website at www.creamlegbarclub.com there is a membership directory of Cream Legbar breeders, there is a member listed in your area.