Cold weather lightweight autosexing egg machine

[donrae]

Okay, I understand your frustration more now--you don't think about things like that being so different from country to country.

Here's a chart I found, a "recipe" for making your own legbar. These would lay brown eggs, and wouldn't take but a few years, if you have the space and are dedicated. I don't know if it's worth the investment now?

If you're running a flock of barred rocks, you could put something like a brown leghorn rooster over them, to make lightweight sex link offspring. That would give you a use for the F1 solid black pullets--they'd still lay like crazy, even if they're not in the breeding program. They'd still lay brown eggs, a lighter brown but as you stated locavores like the variety, so they'd look good in a carton with a few whites, and some regular brown. That way you wouldn't have to raise the offspring to even 4ish weeks to cull the males. It would require refreshment of the parent stock, as you've pointed out, but could be a short term solution while you're using those same parent breeds to make your legbar.

edit--my understanding is you can use any non-barred, non white breed with the barred rocks and this will work. Welbars, Rhodebars, etc all come from this same recipe. The cream crested legbars were more complex as they had the Aracauna blood, and were selectively bred enough to separate the blue egg gene from the pea comb.

 

[Call Duck Kid]

Thanks Donrae,

Yes in some ways things are very different in different places-USA seems to be the land of the free for poultry, not so much for hogs though...and the UK's DEFRA has some fantastically scary stuff going on including seed control (we'll apparently have that soon too!). Seems like anyone in the small diversified family farm business is either doing or wishing to do something that's become illegal, no matter where you live.

I think your solution with short term/long term is a pretty solid plan. I was actually thinking the same sort of thing, but my reading got me a little discouraged to find that it might be 20+ generations to get the autosexing working right. But know what....really, that's fine. So what if it takes me 10+ years of hard culling----its pretty flipping hard to import stock, that's for sure. Even more tricky if its rare.

The idea of using leghorns appeals to me for their smaller weight and reputed laying abilities. Cream eggs sounds fantastic.

I know I can use other brown breed for this, I actually thought about using partridge chanteclers, but they are BIG, meaty....and just "ok" layers. I want to keep it light. Competitive with an RSL.

I just wonder a few things, and if anyone keeping leghorns reads this they might know--

Will the cold weather put the leghorns and leghorn crosses off their lay?

And will the comb size be too much for our winters if I go this route?

Would a brown leghorn I seek from a poultry fancier tend to be a good layer?

H

 

[HeatherFeather]

Whoops! That was me Apparently my son popped onto my profile on the family pc, logged me out, logged himself in....and voila! I posted as him

As you can see, I'll have a little help with my breeding project. Lucky to have a boy who likes the critters as much as I do

 

[donrae]

I'd wondered who that was.....

I don't know if you can get rose combed leghorns in Canada--that might be the way to go, right there. Those big honkin' straight combs could be problematic for you in your climate, but I don't think the cold effects laying at all. They should lay right through the first winter, anyway, and I don't know if you cull after that for decreased production or not. Or, if no rose combed Leghorns, maybe Dominiques instead of barred Rocks? another way to get that rose comb.

Overall the brown leghorns probably don't lay as well as their highly bred production white sisters, but I'm thinking it's pretty close. My brown leghorn/ee mixes have been my best layers--huge pale green eggs, on is 4 years old this spring and just started laying 3-4 eggs a week after molting.

I'm gone for a few days, look forward to seeing what you come up with!

 

[cluckcluckluke]

Gahh!! You beat me to everything don!

Yeah, Rose combs would be the way to go if you wanted Leghorns in a cold environment, and having a light in the coop that goes of at 4am on a timer will give the hens a full day of light.




To either don or Heather - So you can breed any barred breed with a non barred breed and then the chicks will be sexable at hatch?

What do you do with the offspring from the barred over non barred parents? Can they breed with any other breed and the offspring still be sexable at hatch?

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

you could keep a small flock of cuckoo leghorn hens with a rir rooster and get black sexlink chicks that meet your criteria. the eggs of the offspring wouldnt be dark brown, but they wouldn't be white. A RIR rooster should be fairly easy to come by as needed so you would need to keep that flock separately, and just order new cuckoo leghorns every couple of years....OR keep a rooster with your layer flock as protection and throw him in with the leghorn hens when you need more brood stock.

You could also get a Buckeye rooster or a rose comb RIR to decrease combs on the layer flock. Some would still be single combs, but probably not as large as a regular leghorn.

 

[HeatherFeather]

Oh Haiku and Donrae, I am LOVING this thread.

Ok, so I don't think I can get cuckoo leghorns here...but I may be able to get the rosecomb leghorn, and I can def. get dominiques...but I do really like the idea of using my existing barred rock flock....although using dominques would keep the weight a little lower wouldn't it, which is something I want.

Haiku, I know I can make various sex links, for my own purposes, but what I **really** want is a true breeding chicken that autosexes easily at day old, which can be used by others than myself, who may not be as chicken geeky as myself....and just want to keep one breed. And it would need to compete with RSL for conversions. And frankly, I'd kind of rather keep something a little more exotic if I need to keep 3 breeds.

So, this is what I have come up with-

Procure brown leghorn eggs, keep a small flock of BL and continue to cross them with my BR for black sexlinks as Donrae suggested, and at the same time work on the gold legbars, cause its gonna take 15 years.

Can I begin, by using a white production leghorn and crossing it with the brown leghorn for a few generations to get brown leghorns with factory quality egg producing skills? Does anyone know if the brown is dominant or recessive to the white? I know that white leghorns are a dominant white, so it seems it would be pretty straight forward to select for brown chicks, and they wouldn't carry recessive white (hopefully!)

And THEN cross with the barred rocks (or dominiques) to begin producing the gold legbars.

And 6 generations later.....select the legbars for autosexing qualities at birth and laying quantities at breeding time. For another 10 or more generations......

How does that sound?

Donrae, I'm also not sure how the genetics for the combs work- you know or can point me in the right direction? Maybe I'd end up with all sorts of combs.....maybe that would be tricky....hmmm


Cluckcluckluke-
You are supposed to be able to put most solid roos (RIR, WR, Buff Orp, New Hamp) to a barred hen and get black sex links. SOME breeds carry dominant white and this doesn't work, like white leghorns.

If you do the reverse, Barred roo over any hen SHOULD give you barred or cuckoo chicks. But, that being said, you sometimes learn your roo is less pure bred than you thought, when you put a barred roo over a solid hen and get all sorts of chicks! Sometimes there is a recessive white hiding in a less than pure barred roo. Even if you think there isn't!

My 'system' is that the hens all run together with one roo. The other roos live bachelor. When I want to breed, the hens get to visit with the chosen roo for while.

H

 

[dheltzel]

Consider buying some CCL roos (very cheap as chicks, since everyone wants the hens), then cross them to rosecomb brown leghorns. This should produce mostly rosecombs and blue eggs. Subsequent generations you can breed for barring (to bring back the autosexing), and heterozygous rosecomb and blue eggs. What you want is a rosecomb CCL. From what I've heard, CCL's suffered from frostbite this past winter much more than any other breed, that's the main reason I've lost interest in them (well, the price is still too high also).

Everyone with CCL's seems to be working on making them look nice and get a standard for showing. I couldn't care less about their show qualities, but give me rosecombs and high productivity and I want some of those!

 

[HeatherFeather]

Dheltzel, that's not a bad idea in itself either, developing a rosecomb CCL. It does seem to me that the CCL folks are really into showing and I'm not either. (in my mind, showing seems like a great way to decimate my farm with disease!)

I am actually thinking pretty seriously about having a small breeding population of them as well....aside from my other project. The price is ridiculous though- $200 for a dozen eggs in ON. I'd be doing well if I got 3 hens out of that after travelling, potential incubation problems ect. I'm sad to hear you've heard reports of combs doing poorly with frost. That's too bad. I was hoping that the crests would help protect the combs from cold, but I guess not then. In my business plan, I need to be able to pay for all my winter feed costs by selling chicks in the spring. I live in cottage country and only sell eggs in the spring/summer/fall, my customers are tourists. I kind of wonder if having the CCL straight up regular is a good bird to market or not. Barred rocks are an easy sale, but they aren't worth much. And I'm limited to how many hens I can keep, so I kinda want to do CCL as well, just keep like 8-10 of them. Breed from the best 3 or 4.

I'm a little scared that if I started to try and modify the existing CCL before it is established here that the CCL people would freak out on me for ruining the breed before they established it. And I can respect that too. Even if they are going for weights, trying to make it dual purpose, when it has a leghorn/auracana background, grr. We need more light hens I say!!!

But I do think I'm going to go ahead with the rosecomb gold legbars. It will take a long time, but the brown eggs and lower weight hens will be worth it. And I'll get to enjoy a lot of black sex links in the process too.

So Dheltzel, what you're saying is that rosecomb is a dominant allelle? So a bird can be heterozygous and carrying allelles for both rose and single, but rose will be the phenotype?

If that's the case, it will take a lot of backcrossing for me to get birds that are homozygous for rosecomb (what I would want) if I try to put a little commercial white leghorn strain into it......I wonder if its worth it, if the exellent laying abilities would be lost after so many generations???

H

 

[dheltzel]

I've heard rosecomb is dominant, but may not be completely so, I'm not an expert on that. I don't think peacombs (like an ameracauna) are dominant over single combs, at least I have a young cockeral that would seem to indicate that.

I wouldn't worry about offending the CCL folks as long as you don;t claim to be producing real CCL's. Call them "super blue egg layers" and you get a buy. There is an active thread on CCL hybrids. The trouble will be finding them without spending way too much money. If you do find a local breeder, offer to buy some of their extra males, as newly hatched. They practically give them away around here (Pennsylvania).

You are right about them being bred to an SOP, though they are trying to keep them "leghorn like", and not be dual purpose. That makes me think they are a better starting place than barred rocks would be. But of course you can get barred rocks