Maryland: Opal Legbar Male Chick - 1day old

[fightingbunny]

Well, sadly this hatch doesn't look to be going much better. The eggs are slowly dying off one by one I am now down to 2 that have movement in them with lockdown starting.

 

[lebrowne]

Sad indeed, Where are you getting your eggs from? How many birds do you want? I have an Orpington that went broody 3 days ago perhaps I should try some eggs under her.

 

[fightingbunny]

I originally thought my incubator was the culprit, but I did a mixed hatch with 6 different breeds from a different supplier (all are shipped eggs) and that batch turned out great! So it might be that the shipment route between the opal legbar breeder and my house is just too bumpy for shipped eggs to make it okay

 

[GeneGoddess]

Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that! I hope your final two make it!

 

[lebrowne]

I still wonder if Lavender/Isabellas fowl are genetically weaker as I mentioned before. You breed 2 blue parakeets, lovebirds etc. together and half the birds are too weak to make it out of the egg. You breed blue with another color and not as many offspring turn out blue but they are much stronger. Breeding 2 blue merle collies, dapled dashunds, blue or isabella (fawn) dobermans produces a likelihood of blindness, deafness, skin issues.......Don't know if the color expresses the same with fowl???? Also the birds may (?) need more unrelated stock. It seems most cream legbars here are from a rather limited number of birds imported. Thus my thought to set some eggs under my broody. If they are weaker then the more exacting conditions found under an actual hen may produce improved results.

 

[GeneGoddess]

I’m amazed (and happy) how much genetics is now playing into chicken breeding. That’s my background (see my username). There wasn’t much discussion about the actual genes, at least among most BYC type people, when I first had chickens about a decade ago. It was all about Marans and other chocolate egg producers (and the infamous post about whether people kissed their chickens). I never saw much about lavender or BBS. It looks like Lav is now the in thing (because it breeds true as opposed to the similar coloured Blue?) and the BLRW and the melanistic breeds and autosexing anything, of course.

I know I’ve seen people breeding many different Lav breeds, though the TBP seems to be one of the first in the US who has successfully bred and sold Lav Legbars. So I can imagine an autosexing blue egg producing lavender chicken would be quite the hit. And, as with anything popular, the quality can suffer. I know there is one commercial hatchery who has stopped selling one Lav breed altogether due to poor health issues with the chicks.

I’m more into cute backyard pets that lay eggs (just restarted after a few years away with some Ameraucana chicks) and a Lav legbar is likely wasted on me as a future breeder. But the genetics aspect is so fascinating.

 

[lebrowne]

I originally thought my incubator was the culprit, but I did a mixed hatch with 6 different breeds from a different supplier (all are shipped eggs) and that batch turned out great! So it might be that the shipment route between the opal legbar breeder and my house is just too bumpy for shipped eggs to make it okay [/QUOT

 

[lebrowne]

Had the chance to use a computer. It's the big day! Checking to see if there's any good news yet. I may not have access to a computer tomorrow but I'll definitely be checking on Tuesday. Thanks

 

[lebrowne]

I originally thought my incubator was the culprit, but I did a mixed hatch with 6 different breeds from a different supplier (all are shipped eggs) and that batch turned out great! So it might be that the shipment route between the opal legbar breeder and my house is just too bumpy for shipped eggs to make it okay

Hello, Any luck?

 

[GaryDean26]

.......It seems most cream legbars here are from a rather limited number of birds imported.......

From what I can gather two cockerels and 8 pullets were imported in 2010 from two unrelated sources. A few of the pullets were lost to Mareks so the remaining 4-5 pullets were put with on cockerel and their offspring breed to the other cockerel. That seems like a pretty sound plan to me. There were two unrelated lines breed together to form a new American line. The way that was recommended to start a flock back before you could order a large shipment of chicks in the male was to go to a farm look at all their pens of birds, choose the pen with the hens you liked best, get hens from that hen (full sister were preferred if available) and then source a cockerel from that was one or two pens removed from the pullets if you didn't want to change the line from what the other farm was doing of if you wanted to have more ownership of your line and put a lot more work into you would get an unrelated cockerel. So the Legbars got as much of a start as an of the heritage breed in the USA would have got 60 years ago.

There was another quad of legbars unrelated to the first two quads that was imported in 2011. It was not crossed 2011-2012 but in 2013 I know that they breed back cream colored pullets to the 2011 imported cockerel to isolate the Cream Gene in the USA lines. This formed a new breeding line but I don't know if Cream birds from the first two flocks were breed to the 3rd imported cockerel or if just his daughters were breed to him. If cream birds from the first to flocks were breed to the 2011 cockerel that would have put blood from three sources into the four flock. That is way more blood than what is typically put into a breeding line.

In 2013 another unrelated quad and I believe that last year another import was done from the 2013 source.

So... when you look at show lines that are formed from a single hen and a single cockerel that are pair mated then breed for decades with no new blood brought in you have to wonder what the difference is. I guess the show lines are controlled by a single breed and they cull deep for vigor and the rare breed go to hundreds of hobby farms where the inbreeding is not managed and culling is not deep enough to maintain vigor.