barred rock leg color

[sixty7x]

I was curious if barred rocks had similiar leg coloring to RIR's or should it be different. My BR's legs are yellow/orange but the front of the leg and tops of toes are brownish/grey. Is this normal?

 

[critterranch]

yes thats normal my hens did the samething bright yellow then with age 6-8 months they got the gray/brown on the front.
my cuckoo marans did the same thing but had white gray legs then dark gray on front

 

[kathyinmo]

The APA SOP says:
Shanks and toes: Yellow.

 

[speckledhen]

In most hatchery type BR stock, the pullets have a dark wash down the yellow leg fronts. In show types, you don't see that as often, but that is part of the way you sex BRs in addition to the head spots when they hatch, the leg color. I've seen that show types have less yellow color much of the time, sort of washed out looking and it seems the better the barring, the less yellow the leg color, but they're supposed to have yellow legs. Kathy, those are beautiful Rocks!


This old document mentions that as a sexing tool:

Historical Document
Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station

SEX IDENTIFICATION IN PUREBREDS
BARRED PLYMOUTH ROCKS

It had long been recognized that the size of the light head
spots in Barred Plymouth Rocks varied in the two sexes. The
males tend to have larger headspots and the females to have
darker colored legs. However, this method has not been sufficiently
accurate to be of much commercial value.
Quinn and Knox (1939) attempted to separate the sexes of
Barred Plymouth Rocks by means of the intensity of the black
pigment in the down and legs. In different lots of chicks they
report 83.5, 86.1 and 91.8 percent accuracy.
Jerome (1939) describes a method of sex identification in
Barred Plymouth Rocks based upon the regularity of the outline
of the head spot rather than the size of the spot. Those chicks
having headspots irregular in outline and scattered in appearance
are males while the females tend to have headspots with
more regular outlines. The author claimed an accuracy of 90
percent or better when considering only the headspot and 95
percent if the color of the legs was included in the consideration.
The Canadian Department of Agriculture (Anonymous 1941)
issues an excellently illustrated bulletin describing the method.
It is stated in the bulletin that the method “is widely practiced
in Barred Rock chicks by commercial chick sexers.” Sex identification
is based upon outline of head spot, color of legs and
shade of down color. There are several types of male and female
head spots some of which are shown in Figure 1.​

 

[sixty7x]

o.k. thanks everyone. I certainly don't think my BR is a show bird. A neighbor of mine knew someone that had a few chickens and after a dog attack only one hen survived. We took her in about a month ago and she's been great. I just wasn't sure about the leg color. I'm told she was hatched in july which puts her about 6months old. her size seems o.k., but her comb looks a bit small but I can only compare her to my 2 RIR's. These are my first chickens.