Cream Legbar Breed - Small Crest vs Big Crest (which is better?)

[GaryDean26]

The finger measurements are only for comparisons between birds in a flock. If you evaluate 15 cockerels at 10 weeks old they obviously are going to be smaller (i.e. shorter backs) than if you evaluate 15 cockerels at 10 months old. Also, everyone's fingers are different widths and where you start and finish makes a difference, so you can't compare your cockerel with someone else's if you both are measuring in finger widths.

The breed standards will NEVER list measurements for short/medium/long. The exact measurement is trivial. What matters is the proportions and overall balance in the bird. That is why I developed my horizontal line test to establish the width of the neck as a unit of "1" and the back length in terms of less than the unit of "1" more than the unit of "1" or twice the unit of "1", etc. The fatter the neck of the cockerel the longer the back needs to be to maintain the proportions and the thinner the neck the shorter the back needs to be to maintain proportions. Shoot for a back at least as long as the width of the neck. Twice as long is better.

Yes, the serrations of the points of the comb on the gold cockerel look really good. The good cockerels I have seen tend to have the first few points about perfect with the last two points too thin. The thin last two points is a very strong trait of the USA Legbars lines.

Note: The English Standard list that combs of the Cockerel with the blade that bends forward is a severe defect. So bent combs should be woked away from where possible. It is usually best to pair a cockerel with a bent or overgrown comb with a hen with a very small comb.

 

[Eelantha]

@GaryDean26 - I thought so too. People fingers have different sizes, so that measuring method is severely flawed xD

Thank you so much for clarifying the back measuring test. I would have kept looking on the web for non-existing numbers for years to come had you not commented here!

Since all Crested Legbars come from Greenfire Farms, the last two thin points of a rooster's comb might not be fixable without new blood brought in to temper this spread-out defect could breeding a Legbar with one of its ancestors (ex: a leghorn or a plymouth rock with a perfect comb) fix this issue?

If by a bent comb you mean my rooster has a floppy comb, he gained it because of the tube feeder he ate from as he grew up. The 3 inch-wide tube was too small for him to insert his head inside without scraping/bending his comb through, and that's what happened over time. It is only recently that I managed to build a feeder more appropriate for him, but the damage was already done by then u_u

 

[GaryDean26]

Yes, crossing out the Legbar is a possibility. I have been trying to breed out the white tail feathers on the cockerels without any success. The general guild lines is that for breeds that are solid in color that any white that is on more than one feather or that is more than and inch in length results in a disqualification of the bird in Exhibitions. The Legbar standard calls for barring on the cockerel's tail but without the barring the tail would otherwise be solid so when I see tails that have more than one inch of white that is not part of the barring or multiple feathers with the excess white I feel that they do not been the intent of the breed standard. I worked with Black Copper Marand from the Cottage Hill line for several years and those cockerels aways got the white on their tails. I crossed some of the Cottage Hill line with the Bev Robertson line and half of the cockerel come out with the white on their tails and half came out with not white on the tail. So I am thinking that to get the white out of the tails of the Legbar Boys a brown leghorn cross might work. That also could be used to get the longer back in the Legbars and could help the combs. The outcross, however, could hurt egg color, it could hurt cresting, it could introduce curved backs, it could introduce bent combed cockerels, it could introduce red color modifiers that would ruin the cream color, etc. So only outcross if you can't get to where you need working inside the gene pool. A side project that is not bred to the main flock to test how an outcross goes never hurts though and may help if it is successful. Note: I got by brown leghorn to use for outcrosses and was really excited to get one that was a sports cream, but never got to use the brown leghorn because of MS that go into the flock that required us to do a lot of culling and start over again. I may need to start looking for brown leghorns again for future projects.

 

[GaryDean26]

@GaryDean26
If by a bent comb you mean my rooster has a floppy comb, he gained it because of the tube feeder he ate from as he grew up. The 3 inch-wide tube was too small for him to insert his head inside without scraping/bending his comb through, and that's what happened over time. It is only recently that I managed to build a feeder more appropriate for him, but the damage was already done by then u_u

This is a good example of Nature vs. Nurture. The comb was genetically fine until something in the environment interfered with it. I have seen cockerels with a perfect comb until the hot summer and then the comb bent over, cockerels that had perfect combs until the started rubbing on them (yes feeder was one the things I have seen), combs that were perfect until they got frostbit, etc. I tend to think that if the environment can put the comb over that it was not very stable to begin with and that offspring could see problems with their comb from the get-go. The strategy I have been using with combs is that if I don't have any proven line I use a small crested pullet to work toward sons with erect combs. It may be slow going in the beginning with only about 15-25% of the cockerels getting erect combs. I then use a cockerel with an erect comb with pullets with small crests. Pullet that come out of sires with erect combs tend to pass on erect combes to their son's so I can pick pullets with larger combs from the erect comb cockerel to the small combed hen. Then I can breed an erect combed cockerel to a large combed hen and I can start to get large combed hens and erect combed cockerels. The crest on the bird tends to cause a lot of the bending in the comb. So my males tended to all be small crested for the first couple of generations. I am starting to get larger crested males with erect combs now. It just took a half dozen generations to get there. Developing a breeding line takes some time. I am still surprised by the number of people that get into the breed and then complain that they were scammed because they don't get perfect birds in the first year. It is a process where you take two steps forward and one step backward and progress little by little. A lot goes into getting everything right and it won't come by chance.

 

[Eelantha]

@GaryDean26 - My Legbar roo has one long half-white tail feather, so I guess show-wise he is disqualified... xD

I'm going to have to make an image of all the crossings you've listed to get the visual idea of what you've done to get roosters with erect combs and big crests. This is a very interesting strategy, and one I will keep close at hand if I decide to throw myself into serious breeding with a single-combed chicken breed in the future. I can't rise to that step with the local law that restrains people from having more than one rooster by home, but I can now better determine what to look for in a rooster when I want to add new blood in my flock. Thank you for your wonderful help and insight!

 

[GaryDean26]

Well....I haven't seen any Legbars get disqualified for the long White tail feathers. We have been involved with about a dozen APA shows with Legbar Exhibits. The judges are being lenient since it would do any good to DQ all the males at every show. I think that if the breed were improved so that males could be consistently produced without the while sickle feathers that judges would start to require the males to be clear of the whitetails and would start to DQ though that weren't.