Cream Legbar- Are these legit?

May 21, 2022
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Tennessee
I want to work with cream legbars. I have the older girls I’ve attached photos of.

And my younger crew featuring 3 roosters too.

I posted them to a Cream Legbar fb group & am being told that most are not Legbars at all.
Yet all were sold as Legbars. Granted I get it, hatcheries screw up. But I couldn’t afford high end eggs or chicks.

Alissa, Patsy & Loretta all lay blue.
Billie & Jean have recently started & also lay blue.
Autumn & Amber lay green tint. Which I read means their line Carries the Rees 1 & 2 trait.

Also know Autumn is too red.

But are these true Cream Legbars or have I been had? 8139A8B8-0800-406D-8009-02B41921B6BF.jpeg 7C3A809A-A323-4C66-9B61-ECE7DC7F7DF1.jpeg E34B86CB-DB8A-4C55-AE60-8332B5F44291.jpeg 11644707-69A6-4BEE-9689-95271FA28C84.jpeg EB8BE3EF-D74C-4362-89EC-E7CE0F8F581C.jpeg C829C45F-1E03-4339-BE78-FDFB62DDD252.jpeg EC8DC066-8544-43F5-BDAA-FEE472BE3FFA.jpeg
 
I want to work with cream legbars. I have the older girls I’ve attached photos of.

And my younger crew featuring 3 roosters too.

I posted them to a Cream Legbar fb group & am being told that most are not Legbars at all.
Yet all were sold as Legbars. Granted I get it, hatcheries screw up. But I couldn’t afford high end eggs or chicks.

Alissa, Patsy & Loretta all lay blue.
Billie & Jean have recently started & also lay blue.
Autumn & Amber lay green tint. Which I read means their line Carries the Rees 1 & 2 trait.

Also know Autumn is too red.

But are these true Cream Legbars or have I been had?View attachment 4109784
[GaryDean26] Not Legit. She doesn't have a crest. She also have black lacing on all the breast feathers, Hackle feathers, etc. Not legit. Legbars are crested and have a salmon breast color (with no lacing).
[GaryDean26] Not Legit. She has white legs (should be yellow), she is fawn/blond color which is the complete wrong base color. Lebars are the "wild type" color base and this looks like some type of Wheaten color base. She has red ear lobes. Legbars have white ear lobes. She has a horn beak (Legbars have yellow beaks). That is a tiny crest. The crest is semi-dominant meaning that when pure bread is is large and when cross bread it is tiny.
View attachment 4109786
[GaryDean26] Not Legit. She doesn't have a crest. She has an overgrown comb that is folded over. She shouldn't have any salmon colors on the back feathers or the thighs. This "leakage" is a tell that they there is a recessive color pattern which would likely be the Wheaten Pattern that Autumn has under the Primary color pattern. This means that he inherited a Wild Type color pattern from on parent and something else from the other. She also has the white legs. That is another sure tell that she is a cross. The yellow legs are recessive. Only two birds that are pure bread for yellow legs will produce yellow legs. White is dominant. You can't get white legs from a legbar. White legs is a clear mix.
View attachment 4109787
[GaryDean26] More White legs legs. How long has Allissa been laying? 5 months? The yellow pigments do get drained from the bird to color egg yolks and prolific layers will see the leg color fade then come back after they take a break from laying for their molt. This is often hard to judge from photos but I am seeing seeing shades of pink in the webs and on the toes. Those tend to be white legs where yellow legs birds show yellow shades when the pink is. The color on this one is much better than the the last three but she still looks a little light. I am guessing a side view of her would should the same leakage that Lorreta has indicating that she had a recessive color pattern (that isn't from a legbar line) hidden under the Wild Type color pattern.
View attachment 4109788
Again, the color is better on this one. She still has some of the fawn coloring on the crest, back body feathers but that could be from red enhancer genes (that shouldn't be on a Cream Legbar, but that many line have from outcrossed to Brown Leghorns).
View attachment 4109789
Color is also better on Billie. She, like others, lacks the crest.
[GaryDean26] Color is off on this on and she has white legs and Red Earlobes.

I wouldn't breed any of these hens. They would all be culls for me. If they were all I had and I couldn't get anything else to work with then I would work with Billie and mate her with a crested male (legbar) and focus on getting crests fixed in her bloodline over 2-3 generations.

Patsy and Allisa would be my next choices if I needed more than one blood lines and I couldn't get anything else. I would work on culling out the recessive color patterns from their blood lines. Tentmates may be helpful for that (i.e. breeding to a wheaten based or partridge based bird will verify if a bird is carrying a recessive pattern of if they have it bred out). I would focus on breeding out the fold in the comb on Patsy's line.

The main utility of the Cream Legbar is Big Blue eggs. Since these are mixed birds you may be getting poor egg color and they may be odd shaped and small in size. Typically egg color/shape/size are not worked on until the 3rd generation of building a flock. That would be a higher priority for Cream Legbars. Plan on doing a lot of culling in the first 3-4 years and you can get back to birds that are correct for the Legbar breed.
 

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