Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

[TheTropix]

As far as the crest goes, shouldn't it be a reflection of the color(s) of the bird? Whether lighter or darker. I mean we all know, Blonde hair and blue eyes..only... does not a superior race make.

 

[fowlman01]

Some info and suggestions.

BTW: The Marans differences were not the feathered feet. The differences were more the people involved with the Standard. There are two clubs and anytime there are two clubs there is going to be major disagreements. That is always the reason there is two clubs. Both clubs endorsed feathered legs. The British have clean legs in the Marans.

Keep the blue eggs and the autosexing no matter what else you do.
Keep personal preferences out of the description.
Keep the bird as close to the original purpose as possible.
Concentrate on one variety first.
Remember that some people might be disappointed if the color is different than the color they raise. This seems to happen occasionally when a breed/variety is accepted by the APA.
You will not be able to produce birds that meet the Standard 100%. The APA only wants to see them reproduce 50% accurately. The larger the percentage of breeding true the better, but we only need 50%.

I think you folks are doing a great job and you have time to breed and observe these birds yourself here in the US with the genetics that are here now. there is no assurance that you have the exact genetic makeup of the birds from Britain. The wall people don't know exists, is the wall that is the genetic makeup of the birds you have. Genetics are fine, but if you haven't noticed, geneticists don't always agree. I suspect the reason is that they don't really know what the birds they are working with are really carrying. There is no way to look at a chicken and know exactly what genetic makeup it has. Many things are running in the background and may not show up for some time.

I think you folks are doing a great job of grinding this out. If you don't have dissenting views, you will never find most of the answers. I appreciate your attitude given some differences of opinion.

Great job! There is no rush!

Remember that even though you see a lot of pictures online, it does not mean that they are accurate to type or color. I just found that out myself in the Wellie thread when no one could find a clear chest in a female. Well the Dutch judge posted a picture of one....no one else had ever seen one. Most of the pictures of chickens online are not good representatives of a breed. Keep digging. Again...the most important thing you can do is to contact a couple British judges. At least two as they may not agree and you will have to base you description on your take on their position. Judges are just people with people perceptions and opinions in how they view the written Standard.

Walt

 

[TheTropix]

Would wording something similar to this work?
USA SOP
Crest: Should be complimentary to the color of the individual bird. Some chestnut permissable.
That allows for the darker birds vs. the lighter ones without a judge, that may not know these birds well yet, having to preferentially nitpik a small natural variation, when they are equally accepted. They are animals and will never, God willing, be carbon copies!

Thank you for that info, Walt. I don't know if anyone.. never mind.

 

[TheTropix]

Would wording something similar to this work?
USA SOP
Crest: Should be complimentary to the color of the individual bird. Some chestnut permissable.
That allows for the darker birds vs. the lighter ones without a judge, that may not know these birds well yet, having to preferentially nitpik a small natural variation, when they are equally accepted. They are animals and will never, God willing, be carbon copies!

Thank you for that info, Walt. I don't know if anyone.. never mind.

Walt, would the above be in the neighborhood of an acceptable description of the Crest in the SOP?

 

[fowlman01]

Walt, would the above be in the neighborhood of an acceptable description of the Crest in the SOP?

That would work if that is the correct description. After everything is settled I can help with any wording that is in doubt. The people who have worked on this for the last year or so have done a great job of following the APA wording conventions.

w.

 

[TheTropix]

content vs wording, what I meant to convey is.. would it be necessary to 'thumbs up' dark crests and 'thumbs down' or points off, according to APA judging standards, in the SOP for the Cream Legbar for less than dark crests? potato/potatoe I t's not the wording, I'm asking if it's realistic to have, in the Standard, in some form that " the crest should reflect the basic (correct) color of the individual (correctly colored) bird ... allowing for the small variations that nature just seem to insist on.... across the board? ie: 2 Champion Barred Plymouth Rocks - an east coast bird, a west coast bird - side by side... one will be slightly, yet perceptibly, darker/lighter than the other.
That is what I'm saying re: the Crest description in the SOP here in the USA. Should it be considered even a minor fault if the cuff matches the collar??
Walt, suppose the lighter birds started losing the auto sexing trait, and requireing double breeding to maintain the salmon breast, the way I have read, but don't KNOW for certain, of the UK's lighter birds.
Would you clarify what you said about according to the APA, a Breed must breed true at least 50% of the time. Is that so? If Punnet suggests that these birds need no double breeding to maintain the Breed, then any requirement of a double breeding, to maintain SOP descriptions, should prevent that Breed from entering the APA, if I understand you correctly.
Is that a correct understanding or is that an incorrect understanding of what you said?

 

[TheTropix]

Hi everyone,
I've looked and can't find out, when, what year approx., did the UK Standard add Olive & Green eggs to the Standard for Cream Legbars?
I am including below, directly from the 1958 Standard, written by Punnet. He didn't seem to have any trouble differentiating between, grey, dark grey, silvery-gray, white, salmon, chestnut and cream. Each color was written distinctly and with purpose. He made no mention of the color of the Wing Secondaries, merely "very faintly barred", when he was very careful about mentioning color in every other detail in both the Cock and the Hen. He seems to describe in the Crest, the basic colors of the Breed, like I'd mentioned earlier. No red-heads, no white crests.... and I still hold firmly that if the UK birds have been changed, (egg color, ...), then we most certainly should bring the Breed back to what it was created to be, and that does not appear to be the current SOP in the UK. I think, (vote) we have to go back to Mr. Punnets' Cream Legbar, to have Mr. Punnet's Cream Legbar. Isn't that logical??


"What exactly IS a Cream Legbar?
Although you can find this verbage with an internet search, it is reproduced here for your convenience. Is it possible that the 'original' cream legbars have all disappeared? Are our current birds not 'up to standard'? There is much discussion in some quarters. Interesting too, how the UK standards have added the inclusion of olive and green eggs, whereas the original bird was described as laying blue eggs. (Their birds have been changed, or they wouldn't need to have changed the 'new' accepted egg colorS.) As this breed is developed in the USA it will be interesting to track the changes to see what exactly the Cream Legbar in the USA has become (I thought the Breed was a done deal in 1958.)by the year 2017; which would be the earliest that application could be made to the American Poultry Association for recognition in the USA.
Below is the original standard submitted to The Poultry Club of Great Britain via the Autosexing Breeds Association - which was founded in 1943, and who's president was Professor R. C. Punnett F.R.S. Punnett, along with Michael Pease devloped the Cream Legbar.
This Standard was adopted by The Poultry Club May 1958


C O L O U R
THE COCK:
Neck hackles -- Cream, sparsely barred.
Saddle Hackles -- Cream, barred with dark grey, tipped with cream.
Back & Shoulders -- Cream, with dark grey barring, some chestnut permissible.
Wing Primaries -- Dark grey, faintly barred, some white permissible.
Wing Secondaries -- Dark grey more clearly marked.
Wing Coverts -- Grey barred, tips cream, some chestnut smudges permissible.
Breast -- Evenly barred dark grey, well defined outline.
Tail -- Evenly barred grey, sickles being paler, some white feathers permissible.
Crest -- Cream and grey, some chestnut permissible.

THE HEN:
Neck Hackles -- Cream, softly barred grey.
Breast -- salmon, well defined in outline.
Body -- silver grey, with rather indistinct broad soft barring.
Wing Primaries -- Grey -peppered.
Wing Secondaries -- Very faintly barred.
Wing Coverts -- Silver grey.
Tail -- Silver grey, faintly barred.
Crest -- Cream and grey, some chestnut permissible.

 

[ChicKat]

lmao ChicKat!!! Trouble-maker, indeed!! rofl I went looking, a little, at images of Gold Legbars, and I do see the very close similarities. However you also see the silvery/whitish ones called Gold Legbars and some with gold hackles called Creams! I don't think ANYONE knows for sure, anymore!!! We know they aren't Gold legbars, they don't lay blue eggs. HEY, wait a minute. Could the reason OLIVE eggs are now a part of the UK SOP for Cream Legbars be due to breeding with the Gold Legbars? Then possibly 'breeding them back to whatever' to get back to the BLUE eggs, but left the extra gold?
If so, wouldn't it almost demand that either 1. the UK breeder(s), of line 1 & 2 of GF's CLs, mislead Greenfire,(and now they have the more correct ones - thanks!(I think in finances, that's called double-dipping) or 2. Greenfire didn't do it's homework prior to importing/selling (not likely w/all the $$$), or 3. Greenfire mislead the USA? Those are 3 possibilities I think about a LOT. One of those possibilities answers at least several of the questions/issues we're all facing right now, about the color. Doesn't it?
Let's take the bird back to its original description and really save the Breed! It's veering off course. I know that I know less about these things than y'all do, but maybe that also gives me just a touch, and only a touch, of clarity that ignorance of too many facts can bring. Outside looking in, kind of thing.
Also, after reading of the changes in the Cream Legbar in the UK - via the Cream Legbar Club and Legbar Thread! - I don't really give a WOO HOO about what they say across the pond.
ChicKat, are you suggesting the same thing I'm suggesting as well? A Breed and a Variety of that Breed? $10 from each member would more than pay for the Variety fee, and defray some of the cost associated with the primary Breed Standard fees for the APA as well. $10 bucks and we might be able to have both versions, with the Punnet version as Primary! HA!!!!!

Hey TheTropix,

In the clubhouse, I have posted a link to Australia where they were trying to recreate the Silver Legbar -- maybe they have already succeeded. They were trying to get to cream but didn't know if any cream genetics to use existed in Australia at that time. If the link is hard to find in clubhouse -- PM me and I will send it to you directly. You can see Silver Legbar there.

Silver and Gold Legbars, oddly enough, are white egg layers, according to my understanding. For the UK to get to olive eggs, they must have crossed in a brown egg layer. So perhaps they went back to Plymouth Rock? There is no way of knowing.

Someone over there created what we would probably call an Easter Egger with a crest (UK doesn't have our Easter Eggers and they have both rumped and rumpless Araucanas BTW) So it really adds to the confusion, because the resulting EE there is called a Cotswold Legbar. It is designed for high egg productivity and lays a variety of colors of eggs just like EEs here. Some folks in UK probably have been sold Cotswold Legbars and told that they were Cream Legbars... And that is part of what they are facing over there.

My understanding is that the Cream Legbar should have coloration between the Silver & Gold Legbar but not BE either one....LOL.

NO Greenfire Farms didn't get or import 'bad' legbars.... that is heading far down the wrong path. Chicken genetics are pretty spread out -- and what Greenfire did is pretty amazing. Remember too, that as you say chickens are living beings and they are going to have a variety of coloration among other traits. There were some folks saying -- something to the effect 'Your Cream Legbar doesn't look like MY Cream Legbar, therefore you should throw out your CL, and start all over' or something like that...... and then some folks were telling others that their Cream Legbars weren't Cream or didn't have Cream genetics...which again, how could they know from a photo. All this went on before you have jumped into the thread.

There are examples here in the USA, of actually superb Cream Legbars---there was once a saying "The lighter the better" -- but I think that UK may have taken that a bit far, and thus gotten themselves to the point where at least some of them needed to use double mating to get good CLs. (Otherwise, where would the post I put in this thread that was from UK last year have originated? )

I think that there will pretty much be a consensus across the board that double mating is NOT a desirable trait for owners of this bird....

So bottom line -- I think Pozees suggestions for some possible refinements of the wording in existing SOP would solve lots of the controversy. In the future, in a contest between two roosters, if they were identical in every way...except coloration, the lighter bird may win over a more chestnut bird.... providing IMO that the lighter bird will still retain some of the chestnut and some of the straw or gold or whatever name you want to call cream to differentiate it from purely white (silver) - But since there are so many other considerations that people raising these birds need to work on -- straight combs, weight, that silly 45-degree angle (most of the birds I see photos of don't have 45-degrees) the crests being neat...etc. etc. that the color although the first to smack a person in the face is the least of importance JMO.

The females is a different story.... Punnets "gray and cream" of since it is UK language, I guess it is "grey and cream" - is really problematic. black with one drop of white is gray, white with one drop of black is gray....... the really light colored crests that I have seen look more like Polish crests than Cream Legbar crests-- I wonder if there is some correlation between the lightness and the over bouffant appearance? -- At anyrate... it is better to beat on this dead horse until the answers are found than to sweep it under a rug. I think that there may be individual interpretation going on as to what the standard is.

It is interesting about what you write that the SOP could be written in a way to cover all the variations of the female crest. I guess with the 4-year window, there is a lot of time to review and refine that aspect of the draft SOP that presently exists.

 

[ChicKat]

Hi everyone,
I've looked and can't find out, when, what year approx., did the UK Standard add Olive & Green eggs to the Standard for Cream Legbars?
I am including below, directly from the 1958 Standard, written by Punnet. He didn't seem to have any trouble differentiating between, grey, dark grey, silvery-gray, white, salmon, chestnut and cream. Each color was written distinctly and with purpose. He made no mention of the color of the Wing Secondaries, merely "very faintly barred", when he was very careful about mentioning color in every other detail in both the Cock and the Hen. He seems to describe in the Crest, the basic colors of the Breed, like I'd mentioned earlier. No red-heads, no white crests.... and I still hold firmly that if the UK birds have been changed, (egg color, ...), then we most certainly should bring the Breed back to what it was created to be, and that does not appear to be the current SOP in the UK. I think, (vote) we have to go back to Mr. Punnets' Cream Legbar, to have Mr. Punnet's Cream Legbar. Isn't that logical??


"What exactly IS a Cream Legbar?
Although you can find this verbage with an internet search, it is reproduced here for your convenience. Is it possible that the 'original' cream legbars have all disappeared? Are our current birds not 'up to standard'? There is much discussion in some quarters. Interesting too, how the UK standards have added the inclusion of olive and green eggs, whereas the original bird was described as laying blue eggs. (Their birds have been changed, or they wouldn't need to have changed the 'new' accepted egg colorS.) As this breed is developed in the USA it will be interesting to track the changes to see what exactly the Cream Legbar in the USA has become (I thought the Breed was a done deal in 1958.)by the year 2017; which would be the earliest that application could be made to the American Poultry Association for recognition in the USA.
Below is the original standard submitted to The Poultry Club of Great Britain via the Autosexing Breeds Association - which was founded in 1943, and who's president was Professor R. C. Punnett F.R.S. Punnett, along with Michael Pease devloped the Cream Legbar.
This Standard was adopted by The Poultry Club May 1958


C O L O U R
THE COCK:
Neck hackles -- Cream, sparsely barred.
Saddle Hackles -- Cream, barred with dark grey, tipped with cream.
Back & Shoulders -- Cream, with dark grey barring, some chestnut permissible.
Wing Primaries -- Dark grey, faintly barred, some white permissible.
Wing Secondaries -- Dark grey more clearly marked.
Wing Coverts -- Grey barred, tips cream, some chestnut smudges permissible.
Breast -- Evenly barred dark grey, well defined outline.
Tail -- Evenly barred grey, sickles being paler, some white feathers permissible.
Crest -- Cream and grey, some chestnut permissible.

THE HEN:
Neck Hackles -- Cream, softly barred grey.
Breast -- salmon, well defined in outline.
Body -- silver grey, with rather indistinct broad soft barring.
Wing Primaries -- Grey -peppered.
Wing Secondaries -- Very faintly barred.
Wing Coverts -- Silver grey.
Tail -- Silver grey, faintly barred.
Crest -- Cream and grey, some chestnut permissible.

Oh TheTropix,

The 1958 standard in the above only begins after this phrase:Below is the original standard...the rest are my own bemusings...LOL definitely (of course you knew NOT Punnett)

ETA - Even the original Punnett language needs changing for the USA American Poultry Association - as the two organizations use differing terminology. In ADDITION to that, more knowledge has been gained over the intervening years...and things that AREN'T in either the original Punnett standard, or in the UK standardd most likely BELONG in the USA standard, such as mentioning that on these birds the feather shaft is visible on both the back and breast feathers.

Part of the reason that the draft form exists, is to test against it, and have involved people's awareness increased. If we add that shafts are acceptable if visible and not a detriment to the bird, would Punnett roll over in his grave or would he just say 'oops, yep, that got omitted back in '58"

 

[TheTropix]

Yes, ma'am, I knew, LOL. All this wasn't going on in '58! hahhahhahahhaa