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.
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.
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