Cream Legbar Hybrid Thread

[chicken curious]

My Sapphires were easily sexed at 4 weeks old based on the size of the comb. Cockerels had a visibly larger comb than the pullets. Mine are now 6 weeks old and are super easy to tell the one cockerel that I have left from all the pullets.

Good to know!! My sapphires are 4.5 weeks now and none have any color or growth in their little combs. I hope your experience holds true

 

[cliffsdad]

Sounds promising! That's the exact age of the two I have. 1 Black Star x Speckled Sussex & 1 CL x ISA Brown.

They grow up so fast! I love looking at your pictures!

 

[chicken curious]

Cliffsdad, your chicks are beautiful...and much cleaner than mine LOL

I just snapped these pics and they just covered their chests in a bit of a mess of fermented feed so excuse the dirty feathers!

4.5 weeks

Sapphire # 1 (Moon)


Sapphire #2 (Lefty)


Sapphire #3 (Ladybug)


Anyone want to take a gender guess on them?

 

[chicken curious]

For reference, this pic is of my 2 pure WL chicks at the same age and one is obviously a cockerel

 

[cliffsdad]

Wow! I love their little crests! I think they'd have much more developed combs at 4.5 weeks, so I'm voting sapphire pullets and the one WL cock. I don't know what it is about fermented feed but it looks like an explosion of YUCK happened every time they eat! It's been raining for days so mine aren't this clean either!

 

[GaryDean26]

Here is a Cream Legbar x Black Copper Marans hen in the front with mom and dad in the back. They say type come from the hen, but this one looks a lot more like the Legbar type than Marans type.

 

[rottlady]

Cream Legbar roo over Barnevelder hens created these cockerels
See closer pic of one below behind the red sex link pullet

Cream Legbar roo over Delaware hen created this red sex link pullet

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Here is a Cream Legbar x Black Copper Marans hen in the front with mom and dad in the back. They say type come from the hen, but this one looks a lot more like the Legbar type than Marans type.
View attachment 1063687

That's because your roo is barred which is dominant and follows the Z gene.

If you use a CL hen with a non barred rooster, as the female does determine sex type as she has the ZW while the rooster is ZZ, you get sex links as long as the rooster's base color does not obscure the barring (ie dominant white).

I have done CL hen with Barnevelder rooster which produced gorgeous sex linked black pullets with gold pencilling. Roos were barred and similar to CL rooster coloring.

Nice flock. You should have an olive egger in your CL Marans cross.

 

[rottlady]

Barnevelder roo over Cream Legbar hen produced this cockerel

 

[GaryDean26]

That's because your roo is barred which is dominant and follows the Z gene.

If you use a CL hen with a non barred rooster, as the female does determine sex type as she has the ZW while the rooster is ZZ, you get sex links as long as the rooster's base color does not obscure the barring (ie dominant white).

I have done CL hen with Barnevelder rooster which produced gorgeous sex linked black pullets with gold pencilling. Roos were barred and similar to CL rooster coloring.

Nice flock. You should have an olive egger in your CL Marans cross.

You lost me on this one. Barring is a color pattern. Type has nothing to do with color. I was referring to the shape of the olive egger hen. If you look at her mother in the back you will see a gently rise of the line of the back that blends to the tail. You will also see that her mother has a well rounded breast that fill all the way to the legs. Her olive egger daughter does not follow this shape (Even though all the old timer's advice says that the shape of the offspring comes predominately from the mother). The Legbar has a straight line back that sloped downward. The tails of the legbar forms a 45 degree angle junction with the back. The keel of the the legbar falls from the front to the back forming a wedge shaped bird.

I don't use Legbar hens to make sex-links. I grow out about 40-50 Legbar pullets every years and keep 4 for breeding. They are all paired to Cream Legbar cocks. I am limited on space and don't keep any extra legbar pullets. I had Maraduna Basque Hens for a few years though. They are wheaten based breed with sex-linked barring. I used Basque hens to test mate my Black Copper Marans cocks for the recessive wheaten. That cross made an awesome sex-linked hen. The cuckoo olive egger in this photo was the best one that we got from last years hatch. We hatched about 15-20 of these crosses. We used all the cockerels for table meat and sold all the pullets except this one. She stayed with us as a layer. She lays more a kacki egg color. The olive eggs are difficult to produce. To get anything but a drap color you usually have to breed stock back to the parent breed and work on the balance. I like this cuckoo olive egger because her egg size is bigger than either the marans of the Legbars lay and she lays more frequently than either the Marans of Legbars too due to the heterosis (hybird vigor).

Here is a Legbar Cockerel (half sister to the Olive egg hen and son of the cock above). It shows the shape of the legbar better with the straight line back, 45 deg trail angle, etc.