cream legbar crosses.. what to expect when crossing a cream legbar ro

[cluckykate114]

Hey there! first time “breeding” chickens.
i have:
buff orpington hen
buff brahma
black bantam
mottled bantam
and a
cream legbar roo

what should i expect with these crosses ?

and what would i get crossing a cream legbar roo to a green laying easter egger? or an EE roo to my buff brahma (she lays eggs on the darker side but not like marans)

 

[becstalls]

Hi there. I have zero experience breeding, but a healthy enough curiosity that I have read some of the breeding threads, and I used to be a wildlife biologist, so I have a decent understanding of genetics.

If I understand correctly, Crossing a legbar to a brown layer should result in some kind of olive or green egg because legbars always lay blue. Whereas adding an EE to the mix will always be a surprise. EE's are hybrids, so one who lays green has genes for both blue and brown being expressed. However there is no guarantee which ones she will pass on. An there is no way of knowing at all which sort of egg color genes the EE roo carries.

So mix it up and see what you get!

 

[Frizzle and Friends]

Cream Legbar X Buff Orpington: All offspring barred, the pattern would likely be buff columbian pattern.
Cream Legbar X Buff Brahma: Another barred, gold columbian.
Cream Legbar X Black Bantam: Black barred, likely with gold or silver leakage.
Cream Legbar X Mottled Bantam: I'm assuming that this is a black mottled hen, so all offspring black with barring and likely some leakage. All of the chicks would be carrying mottling, but it wouldn't show.

Crossing the Cream Legbar to a green layer would likely result in chicks that lay either green or blue eggs. Like @becstalls mentioned, the egg color of the Easter Egger's offspring would depend on the color genes he carries. It could be anything from all green to all brown, or a mix of the two.

 

[GaryDean26]

Hi there. I have zero experience breeding, but a healthy enough curiosity that I have read some of the breeding threads, and I used to be a wildlife biologist, so I have a decent understanding of genetics.

If I understand correctly, Crossing a legbar to a brown layer should result in some kind of olive or green egg because legbars always lay blue. Whereas adding an EE to the mix will always be a surprise. EE's are hybrids, so one who lays green has genes for both blue and brown being expressed. However there is no guarantee which ones she will pass on. An there is no way of knowing at all which sort of egg color genes the EE roo carries.

So mix it up and see what you get!

Yes, pure Legbars always lay blue the blue egg gene is dominant so the hen does not have to be homozygous for the gene to produce blue eggs. My observation however is that hens who are homozygous lay bluer eggs. Our crosses had an almost white egg color that only had a hint of blue. We has some of out Legbars lay the same color eggs and to breed it out of the flock we had to cull all the cockerels that hatch from near white eggs. We never got any white eggs, but know that some people have got hens from their Cream Legbar flocks that are white proving that the blue egg gene is not fixed in all the US legbar lines.

EE have an interesting history. There was an article on "Easter Egg Chickens" in the September 1948 National Geographic Magazine. It was on one of the only blue egg flocks in the USA. It was started from imported stock from Chile. The owner of the flock said that when he inquired that most of the land race of Auracan blue egg layers had been crossed out from modern breeds and so he wasn't able to get birds that he had read about in an earlier National Geographic article on Auracana chickens (1942? year?). But basically everything following the 1948 article that layed blue eggs but not a recognizable breed was called an EE. Your EE's are most likely cross breeds breed from a pure egg breed line an Americauna and Leghorn. If that is the case then it would only be carrying one blue egg gene and its offspring if bred to a cockerel without any blue egg genes would be 50% blue eggers and 50% white eggers (or brown if there are brown egg genes in the mixes)

The blue egg gene is straight forward. There is one gene and they either have it or they don't have it. Brown eggs genes are not straight forward. There somewhere around 30 named grown egg genes and surly more than that which are not names. If they get missed with a brown egg layer they could be carrying a dozen or more unique grown eggs genes. Breeding a brown egg layer back to a non-brown egg layer will not get rid of all the brown egg genes. You could breed back to white egg layers for many years in a row and still get some of the brown genes showing up. Brown genes and the blue gene are not in the same gene pair. It is not a situation when a hen can either pass a brown gene of a blue gene. from the blue egg gene pair they can either pass the blue gene or not pass the blue gene. They you go through the dozen of more brown egg genes and each of them they can either pass that gene or not pass it. The more brown genes that are passed the darker brown the eggs are. If the blue gene is present the browns turns green and if it is not present it is brown.

 

[EliseH]

My Cream Legbar / Silkie chick is in the process of hatching. Can’t wait to see it. The egg is in an incubator at my neighbors house.