Cream Legbar Pictures

[Sylvester017]

Congratulations! Cute little bunch of chicks.

What are you using for your divider in your hatcher? I've yet to find one that works well for me and yours looks pretty good.

I also saw dark eggs in there and was wondering Marans? Welsummers? Barnies? Planning on some Olive Eggers in a few years? I am partial to Welsummers myself, but it seems like quite a few Cream Legbar breeders like Marans.

I guess breeders seem to like Marans thinking the eggs are darker but we had a Marans whose eggs were neither darker nor her attitude toward her flockmates very civil! Stick with your Welsummers.

 

[sol2go]

My first legbars Hatched 12

I never get tired of chick pics

 

[sol2go]

Congratulations! Cute little bunch of chicks.

What are you using for your divider in your hatcher? I've yet to find one that works well for me and yours looks pretty good.

I also saw dark eggs in there and was wondering Marans? Welsummers? Barnies? Planning on some Olive Eggers in a few years? I am partial to Welsummers myself, but it seems like quite a few Cream Legbar breeders like Marans.

popping into your note - I also have the CL / Marans combo, but have ventured into Crele Penedesencas and Welsummers to expand the olive mix. They all have lovely personalities.

 

[DoubleMM]

I'll probably get a few Welsummers down the road and I'm looking into Barnevelders. Do not know much about Penedesencas, will have to research.

 

[DoubleMM]

Nine days old... first outing

 

[GaryDean26]

I guess breeders seem to like Marans thinking the eggs are darker but we had a Marans whose eggs were neither darker nor her attitude toward her flockmates very civil! Stick with your Welsummers.

I apologize if this is too off topic.

The Marans Eggs are difficult. I have heard rumors that the dark egg colors can be sex-linked, recessive, that some combined to make darker eggs, some combined and cancel out the dark egg genes etc. Also, in talking to Marans breeders it is very apparent that very few know what color eggs individual hens lay over a laying season (or even in over a week). Some hens will lay a dark egg on Sunday, a light egg on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, take Thursday off, then lay a dark egg again at the beggining for the clutch on Friday and a light egg on Saturday. I have had Marans breeders tell my that as long as they only hatch the dark eggs they will maintain good egg color in their flock. It seems to me that with that method they are hatching two eggs from one hen that are dark and discarding the other three eggs that are light even though all 5 eggs have the exacts same parentage and same potential for egg color. The cockerel is even harder to work with than the hens, because you never know what he is adding to the mix. I likewise have had Marans breeders tell me that as long as the cockerel hatches from a dark egg they will maintain good egg color in their flock, but if they don't know who the cockerels mother was or what the other eggs that his mother laid look like...well there is a reason that many Marans don't lay dark eggs.

Those with the darkest Marans eggs say that they breed hens back to the same cockerel year after year. To me that support that the dark egg genes are recessive. If we have a cockerel that is a carrier for the recessive cream color and we breed his to a group of hens (with out the cream gene) we aren't going to get any cream colored offspring in the first year. If we breed pullets back, then it is likely that half of them are carriers and that about one out of eight offspring get the recessive cream color. That is about the same ratio that some see dark egg laying hens in their flock. If they breed that dark egg laying hen to a new cockerel it would be like breeding a cream colored CLB pullet to a new cockerel that may or may not be carrying any cream genes. Again, not likely to see any of the recessive cream colors to come out. If you however breed the cream pullet back to her father that was a carrier for cream you will see 50% cream. The dark egg marans flocks that are inbreed tend to be about 50% dark eggs, so the color is defiantly these but takes work to get it to show in the egg color.

Here are some of the egg colors I saw from my Marans flock this year.

This was our biggest egg at 88 grams. It was also about a 7 on the Marans scale



Entry #12 were our egg entries at the an egg show in January. The dark entry on the bottom row were from the Tammy Kostas line. They were a #8 on the Marans scale. Our entry right above them were Cottage Hill line eggs and they were about a #5 on the Marans scale. The other Marans entries (the middle two columns and the top entry on the right column) were 3-4 on the Marans scale.


So...color does vary quite a bit, but as a breed on the whole I think that the Marans breeds claim that the Darkest eggs (i.e. #7-#8) are darker that the darkest eggs coming from other breeds.

This is our darkest egg of the year. It was tiny. Around 50 grams if I remember correctly, but one of the rare #9 eggs that come from the Marans breed. It was laid by one of our Cottage Hill line hen.

Note: we did NOT put this egg in the incubator. We know which hen laid it and know that none of her other eggs have been darker than a #6. We know that anything that might have hatched from that egg would not have had any more dark egg potential that any other egg from that hen/cockerel pairing.

 

[chicken pickin]

Your Marans egg chart looks very different from mine your colors seem to match up with what I have seen other places online. The colors that show up on my chart seem so much darker than other charts I have seen so I dont even use it. Does my chart look proper? May I ask where you purchased your chart from?

 

[chicken pickin]

Back on track with Cream Legbars, I took some pictures today of my young pullets to show cream vs gold

 

[GaryDean26]

I got my chart from the Marans Chicken Club USA. I have seen other charts on-line, but this is the only chart I have a hard copy of and generally what I use to evaluate eggs.


There was a High School Class in Avery, North Carolina studying the genetics of rare breeds of chickens. The Cream Legbar Club donated hatching eggs to the class to hatch and they send back information on the class project. One of the sample assignments that they sent was the classification of egg colors. They received Cream Legbar, Auracana, and Ameraucana hatching eggs and used the Auracana color chart to classify them. Even with every student in the class using the same color chart I am guessing that there was a variation of numbers listed. I would have loved to grade that class assignment to see the deviation in answers.

The class received Marans, Penedencesa and other dark brown eggs. I noticed that the class used two different Marans charts for that portion of the assignment and likewise would have liked to grade that assignment to see how one card compared to the other and how the subjectivity from one student to the next effected the range of colors listed.

It think the article on the class project is in the 3rd Quarter 2013 Newsletter of the Cream Legbar Club.


Note: The same color card will show up different depending on the lighting it is photographed in. I would assume that my color and yours would be about the same if put next to each other in real life. My photo above was taken with flash. The flash I have noticed make things look lighter than when I turn the flash off.

 

[chicken pickin]

Pics of my new main boy (he is the offspring from my original trio and will take the place of his father).