Breeding Buff Leghorns

[nicalandia]

If you back cross to pure Buff Leghorns enough generations you might get back to Buff Leghorns.This is usually done through the pure males until they are 15/16 Buff Leghorns.A long process and with this cross you have so many things to eliminate,slate legs,breards,blue egg shells,pea comb,red and dominant white.I would not bother,but scrap it and start over with pures.

A better way to create a Buff Leghorn that lays blue egg would be to mate a Buff leghorn rooster to a Cream Legbar pullet, breed the pullets back to Buff leghorn and from that point only breed the blue laying buff looking females, that is if somebody would want to create a buff leghorn that lays blue eggs, I see a market for them

 

[Nomibear]

I don't particularly want a blue laying Buff Leghorn. If I am going to breed Buff Leghorns, I would rather keep them true.

Now that I am hatching my own, I didn't want to order any from the hatchery this year. And to be honest, after seeing some of danhonour photos of his birds, I'm sure that whatever I were to get from Ideal would pale in comparison.

 

[Sylvester017]

I don't particularly want a blue laying Buff Leghorn. If I am going to breed Buff Leghorns, I would rather keep them true.

Now that I am hatching my own, I didn't want to order any from the hatchery this year. And to be honest, after seeing some of danhonour photos of his birds, I'm sure that whatever I were to get from Ideal would pale in comparison.

I agree! Danne Honour is my guru for Buff Leghorns. We even named our Buff Leg pullet after him - she's our "Danni"

It might benefit you to invest in a good Buff male either from Mr. Honour or any one of the conscientious breeders on this thread closer to you. So many decent roos are available to good homes since breeders can't keep ALL their roos. The shipping is not cheap for a juvenile bird but in the long run is so-o-o worth it! I ordered 2 birds (not chicks) so there wouldn't be just one lonely bird in the shipping box and gifted the extra juvie to a friend.

The Buffs are so gorgeous and our girl is calmer than the White Leg we had before and she never lays less than 5 eggs/week and mostly 6 eggs. The weights of her eggs have been varying between 1.75 to 2.0 ounces. I am perfectly happy with eggs of that size because she lays so many - the White Leg layed 2.25 to 2.5 oz eggs and the shells were thinner. The Buff Leg eggs being slightly smaller have very firm shells and our girl gives the most deep golden yolk of all the breeds we have - even deeper than the White Leg eggs. Now the Buff line I have is from an older strain that still layed pinkish eggs but Mr. Honour has stated recently that he has bred his birds to laying white now.

Personally I like the pretty pink eggs as they look so cool next to our APA Ameraucana blue eggs - but really - a breeding of SOP Leghorns of any color variety should strive for a white egg.

I am so happy to find you are impressed with the Danne Honour photos. I think he inspired us all on this thread to take an enhanced look at the "ordinary" plain Leghorn which for me has never been plain since my folks raised them 60 years ago. A very independent mind-their-own-business kind of temperament, glean much of their diet from being active foragers, ours is submissive to the oldest hen which happens to be a Silkie matriarch, is not a noisy egg song squawker, and tamed very easily with treats, wary and alert but not skittish compared to our sweet but jittery Ameraucana.

 

[SmokyChickens]

Just curious, but would anyone be interested in buying fertile eggs from me, or maybe chicks if I can get an incubator? I have a pair of buff leghorn bantams but I'm not a breeder.. I didn't even know what kind of chicken they were when I bought them (and neither did the guy I bought them from lol) I was just looking for a few chickens as pets.. I'm in the Pigeon Forge, Tennessee area.

 

[Sylvester017]

A better way to create a Buff Leghorn that lays blue egg would be to mate a Buff leghorn rooster to a Cream Legbar pullet, breed the pullets back to Buff leghorn and from that point only breed the blue laying buff looking females, that is if somebody would want to create a buff leghorn that lays blue eggs, I see a market for them

On a stranger/funnier note, someone in the U.K. is trying to get the blue-ear lobed Silkies to lay blue eggs to match their ears!

 

[danhonour]

Thanks for the kind words.What do the Buff Leghorn bantams look like and what weights are they? Some pictures would be nice and I ask about weight as many Leghorn bantams are too big.After breeding both large and bantam Buff Leghorns,I find the bantams harder to get right,but I think that is true for many bantams that have large counterparts.

 

[SmokyChickens]

These are my two (not sure of weight)

 

[danhonour]

Size looks okay.Worth working with. Earlobes could be whiter but that can be improved without too much difficulty.Could be refined in the usual places like sweep of back ,longer main tail and shorter wings.Wings are often not carried level.Color looks fairly good.Thanks for posting.pictures.

 

[nicalandia]

Personally I like the pretty pink eggs

so buff leghorn(bantam and LF) lay pinkish colored eggs? I wonder this because I would like for you to test the whole, pink egg shell gene theory, you see if you use a fine sand paper on brown egg shelled eggs they will turn white as the brown egg shell color is superficial, but this is not the case with Blue egg shells, and I was told that pink eggs also dont do this(sanding to show white shell) ? and that the inside of the egg is also pinkish instead of white..

 

[danhonour]

Interesting,might tell the difference between cream tinted,light brown and pink shells.I was told today that creambars lay a blue shell egg that is white in the inside,so I wonder if they sand off white.?