I liked it. It was a good read. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Common Chicken Breeds That Lay Colored Eggs
- Author BYC Project Manager
- Publish date
- Updated
- Article read time 11 min read
BYC Project Manager
This list is by no means exhaustive - and Prairie Bluebell Eggers, Starlight Green Eggers, and Sapphire Olive Eggers are all technically Easter Eggers or Olive Eggers.
Enjoyed the read, good info from comments. Thanks
I am not an expert in all of these breeds, but I did help found the Cream Legbar Club and have been the chairman of the History Committee for 9 years so I can speak to that breed.
The foundation breeds for the Cream Legbars did NOT include the Cambar. The Cambar was the result of a scientific project that bred the autosomal barring of the Campine on top of the sex-linked barring of the Plymouth Rock to see what effect the two would have on each other in the same bird. The most important discovery from this project was not the stated goal of the project but rather the discovery that autosexing resulted from the sex-linked barring gene over a brown down type. The Legbar project followed that breeding method of the Cambar project to breed sex-linked barring over brown chick down color but did NOT use the Cambar to introduce the barring nor the barring. English Brown Leghorns and later imported Dutch Brown Leghorns were used for the down type and production ability, and an imported Barred Rock from Canada was used for the sex-linked barring. Not a drop of Cambar blood is in the Legbar.
The Cream Legbar was bred from the Gold Legbars created from leghorns and Barred Rocks, a crested blue egg laying mongrel hen from Chile, a Hamburg cockerel, and a White Legbar Cockerel. The Chilean hens is often referred to as an Auracana today since she was from the blue egg-laying flocks kept by the Auracana Indians in Chile, but she was imported into the UK in 1929. That pre-dated the establishment of the Auracana breed by about 40 years. There was not an Auracan breed at the time. No only were the Auracan breeds created from stock that was imported much later than the Legbar creation, but the blue egg-laying flocks in South America at the time the Legbar was created were not breeds. The Chilean birds were mongrel flocks. The Auracana breeds that were established decades later had pea combs, ear tuffs, beards, were rumpless, etc. The hen that was used in the creation of the Cream Legbar had none of these traits. She had a single comb, no ear tuff, had a clean face, was not rumpless, etc. So saying the Auracana was a foundation breed for the Legbar is misleading. The Cream Legbar became a recognized breed in the UK 20 years before the Auracana breed in the USA was standardized.
Okay...enough on correcting miss information on the Legbar breed. There is so much misinformation on the breed that we will never get it all cleaned up. As for the article, I love that you put Ice Cream Bars on the list. That name was coined by the founder of the Cream Legbar Club Kathy Kinsel. I love that you included some pink eggers. Many don't recognize them. I loved this list of breeds. It was fund to go through to see who got recognition.
The foundation breeds for the Cream Legbars did NOT include the Cambar. The Cambar was the result of a scientific project that bred the autosomal barring of the Campine on top of the sex-linked barring of the Plymouth Rock to see what effect the two would have on each other in the same bird. The most important discovery from this project was not the stated goal of the project but rather the discovery that autosexing resulted from the sex-linked barring gene over a brown down type. The Legbar project followed that breeding method of the Cambar project to breed sex-linked barring over brown chick down color but did NOT use the Cambar to introduce the barring nor the barring. English Brown Leghorns and later imported Dutch Brown Leghorns were used for the down type and production ability, and an imported Barred Rock from Canada was used for the sex-linked barring. Not a drop of Cambar blood is in the Legbar.
The Cream Legbar was bred from the Gold Legbars created from leghorns and Barred Rocks, a crested blue egg laying mongrel hen from Chile, a Hamburg cockerel, and a White Legbar Cockerel. The Chilean hens is often referred to as an Auracana today since she was from the blue egg-laying flocks kept by the Auracana Indians in Chile, but she was imported into the UK in 1929. That pre-dated the establishment of the Auracana breed by about 40 years. There was not an Auracan breed at the time. No only were the Auracan breeds created from stock that was imported much later than the Legbar creation, but the blue egg-laying flocks in South America at the time the Legbar was created were not breeds. The Chilean birds were mongrel flocks. The Auracana breeds that were established decades later had pea combs, ear tuffs, beards, were rumpless, etc. The hen that was used in the creation of the Cream Legbar had none of these traits. She had a single comb, no ear tuff, had a clean face, was not rumpless, etc. So saying the Auracana was a foundation breed for the Legbar is misleading. The Cream Legbar became a recognized breed in the UK 20 years before the Auracana breed in the USA was standardized.
Okay...enough on correcting miss information on the Legbar breed. There is so much misinformation on the breed that we will never get it all cleaned up. As for the article, I love that you put Ice Cream Bars on the list. That name was coined by the founder of the Cream Legbar Club Kathy Kinsel. I love that you included some pink eggers. Many don't recognize them. I loved this list of breeds. It was fund to go through to see who got recognition.
BYC Project Manager
Thank you @rjohns39. I mentioned that this isn't always foolproof, since some chickens do not follow this standard.
