A new kind of sex link?

[Sphinx]

Has anyone tried crossing legbars with anything and gotten an interesting result? I was hoping my legbar rooster was the dominant roo, but as I've watched more and more, I really don't think he gets any action, and that my french black copper marans roo gets all the ladies. A friend hatched some of my eggs, and they all popped out black like the marans.

So, to clarify: My experiment was all 7 legbar hen eggs, hopefully mounted by the cream legbar rooster, but more probably mated by the french black copper marans rooster.

I set 7 of my cream legbar hen's eggs to see what would happen. All seven hatched, and all came out black. But, two of them had a white spot on the head that reminded me quite a bit of the white spot on a cockerel legbar chick. They also both had feathered legs, and none of the others did.

At almost 6 weeks old, there's a HUGE difference between the two spotted babies and the 5 solid babies. Here's a picture of one of each to see the difference.




I'm wondering if I've hit on another type of sex link. Anyone else have a similar experience? I'd love to try the experiment again, but I'm afraid dh will have me committed. In a month or so, I'll be doing some school hatches and can try then, but I'm hoping other people have been playing mad scientist too.

 

[rollkeeg877]

love the look of the rooster he's nice

 

[nicalandia]

Has anyone tried crossing legbars with anything and gotten an interesting result? I was hoping my legbar rooster was the dominant roo, but as I've watched more and more, I really don't think he gets any action, and that my french black copper marans roo gets all the ladies. A friend hatched some of my eggs, and they all popped out black like the marans.

if you cross a Cream Legbar bird(rooster in this case) to a any type of Birchen or Black/Blue bird(BCM in this case) ALL of the chiks will come out BLACK... but they will all have cream/white headspot. so if you get any like this then they were sired by the Cream Legbar roo. BUT when you have other roos on the ground then all bets are off and you will be getting black chicks aswell

 

[nicalandia]

I'm wondering if I've hit on another type of sex link

No sex links here. why? if you use a Barred(as cream legbar rooster) rooster over a none barred hen ALL of the chicks will be barred, males and females so no. no sexlink. if you want sexlinks then get yourself a Cram Legbar hen and mated to Black copper Maran roo... I can tell you one thing though. that Barred chick is a Cockerel and it was sired by the Cream legbar rooster

 

[Sphinx]

To clarify: Hen is a cream legbar. There's three roosters, but I have only seen the french black copper marans rooster mate with any of the hens. My legbar rooster is an odd, all white one (he came from Greenfire, so I completely trust their reputation. If they say he's a legbar, he's a legbar). Here are my two legbar chickens:

(as a side note, I know his comb looks awful in this picture. We had the worst winter in decades, and his comb suffered. I treated it as best I could, but he ended up losing part of it)

Pure cream legbar chicks are SUPPOSED to look like this: https://www.backyardchickens.com/image/id/5900118 So, when the chicks all came out black, they couldn't possibly be a pure legbar because this is not how they looked. They were all completely black, except for two had white spots on the back of their head, and one of them also had kind of a brown spot on his cheek.

 

[tadkerson]

I would send the picture to Greenfire and tell them you want your money back. I know you will not want to read what I have to post but both of your birds have some of the characteristics of a legbar but not all the characteristics. Legbar males are not white and that rooster is white and the female should only have a light salmon colored breast; not the rusty color on her body and wings. Her body should be a barred silver gray color. She lacks any barring I can see. If this is an example of Greenfires breeding prowess- they should be ashamed, you were cheated out of your payment. The male could be cream legbar under the white.

I am not trying to be mean; post your pictures on a legbar thread and see what others have to say.

I will have to disagree with Marvin. The cockerel in the photo was sired by the Marans rooster- he has feathered shanks. The chicks with feathered shanks are from the marans. Is the third rooster black? If so the remainder of the chicks are from the third rooster. If the father of the chicks is the white rooster- he is not cream legbar under the white- he is black.


Tim

 

[Sphinx]

I have talked to the Cream Legbar thread people. There's actually someone who is collecting the recessive white legbar chickens. If they didn't live thousands of miles from me, I'd actually give the rooster to that poster for their project. As it is, I have a friend with an excess of (properly colored) legbar roosters, and she's going to give me one of them, and the white rooster pictured above is going to freezer camp.

I have heard people saying that many of greenfire's legbars aren't properly colored so your news isn't a shock. Since I'm not trying to show my chickens, and I got her for the auto sexing blue eggs, I'm not overly concerned.

Third rooster is a golden laced polish, so I don't think the babies came from him because that's a pretty distinct look.

In my somewhat limited experience, I've found that the feathered shanks from a marans usually doesn't come through on the babies. I've mixed my FBCM with a lav am, wyandotte and legbar, and these cockerels are the first ones to actually have feathered shanks.

Please don't worry about being "mean". Since my goal isn't to breed show quality purebred birds, hearing they AREN'T SQ doesn't bother me. Actually, I like hearing faults like that because I'm still trying to work out in my head what makes a particular chicken show quality or not. I prefer honest, upfront constructive criticism. I know none of my chickens are SQ (except *maybe* a coronation sussex I have), but I really like hearing why they're not because it's taking a while to understand. I love to see pictures of various chickens and have the experts talk about why this is good and this is a fault, and why that is a disqualification.

 

[Sphinx]

I thought I'd update on how the chicks ended up turning out. The hens all were mothered by the cream legbar hen. She was my only blue egg layer at the time, so that was the easy part. All seven ended up being sired by the FBCM rooster.

I ended up selling the two cockerels to someone who was going to grow them out to eat them, so I don't know how they turned out. At least three of the hens have started laying- I'm getting three olive eggs a day. Here's the eggs (with a couple others for color comparison):


And here's one of the hens. A couple have a little more copper around the neck, but of the 10 or so chicks I've now hatched with this mix, this is the norm.

 

[CibolaChooks]

I mated my cream legbar rooster to a Phoenix hen. I think its a male. had a small head spot and feathered shanks. the feathered shanks threw me off. I assumed my Barred Cochin got to her.