Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

[fowlman01]

This is just a fact. ..only for educational purposes.

There are many colors in the APA that require double mating. I am personally not a fan of double mating but I do it when I want to to arrive at the destination sooner.

Walt

 

[TheTropix]

This is just a fact. ..only for educational purposes.

There are many colors in the APA that require double mating. I am personally not a fan of double mating but I do it when I want to to arrive at the destination sooner.

Walt

Ok, but the Cream Legbar isn't one of those breeds, is it? I don't mean in the APA Standard. I mean double breeding hasn't, historically, been a 'must do' to maintain what the Breed is known to be.. at least for the most part, by far. If double breeding would clear up the chest color, or a crest or something, it makes sense that you may have to do it until the bad gene was out. But when it makes the Breed unable to 'breed true', or correctly, or it starts unravelling the auto-sexing genes, it sounds like 1 step forward, 2 steps back , or worse. (I read that the autosexing is fading from some of this stuff. Is that true or false, I don't know.

 

[TheTropix]

Walt said "This is just a fact. ..only for educational purposes" I am really trying to understand, not confront.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

I don't know if that came out how I meant., what I meant is.. If you have to do 'special' breeding to maintain a color Standard because it has been bred out of the Breed for the sake of the elusive slivery/whiish rooster with no chestnut on him, who is unable, genetically, to maintain the color of a 'properly' colored hen. Then, you have to also maintain a flock of good quality roosters, with the very chestnut color we have right now to get that 'proper' color on the next gen. of girls back .. to what we have already, right now. WTHeck? . I I don't get it!

Ok, but the Cream Legbar isn't one of those breeds, is it? I don't mean in the APA Standard. I mean double breeding hasn't, historically, been a 'must do' to maintain what the Breed is known to be.. at least for the most part, by far. If double breeding would clear up the chest color, or a crest or something, it makes sense that you may have to do it until the bad gene was out. But when it makes the Breed unable to 'breed true', or correctly, or it starts unravelling the auto-sexing genes, it sounds like 1 step forward, 2 steps back , or worse. (I read that the autosexing is fading from some of this stuff. Is that true or false, I don't know.

X2 I hope that isn't where the Cream Legbars go. Walt isn't saying it is a requirement in any breed- but that in some breeds to get the very best specimens of each gender you have to double breed. It's just a fact that you get from point A to point B faster with some breeds if you focus just on roos or just on hens. You can still get very close single breeding it just takes longer. But again I hope we don't do that to Cream Legbars.

 

[TheTropix]

lonnyandrinda said "It's just a fact that you get from point A to point B faster with some breeds if you focus just on roos or just on hens."

But if that very double breeding destroys an important percentage of what the breed is known for, salmon breast, auto sexing, ... It sounds like a direction we would most certainly not want to send this Breed. Maybe if every member in the Club would be willing to pay $10 toward the expense of having the traditional colored birds as a Variety (I would!!!), it may more than cover the cost of the Variety fee and even help defray the cost of the current SOP direction. Is that a possible answer? Basically it'd be a copy/paste of what is there now, just some changes to what the 'proper color' is. Could that help with some of the differences of opinion that are going on?
Sherry

 

[TheTropix]

oops I said that wrong
If double breeding is the only way to keep from destroying important characteristics of the Breed, ....THAT woud be bad

 

[fowlman01]

You do not want to lose the auto sexing.

w

 

[ChicKat]

I am agreeing -- and we have had this in a poll of people interested in Cream Legbars that autosexing is the number 1 important trait of Cream Legbars. (it was under the crest contest in the BYC contests - last -- spring I think.)

Along with everyone who doesn't want to have to do double breeding to match what is in SOP -- We have the opportunity to prevent having to go that route.

For some breeders, in some circumstances, double breeding may make sense...but if that is the chosen path - some of the performance and utility of this bird is reduced, and as TheTropix stated, their emphasis on the very light birds may be what led them to begin to "loose their autosexing" -- and who ever wrote that over in the UK was blaming the chickens.

One of the objectives of the Cream Legbar Club is to promote and protect the Cream Legbar. If we get an SOP that no one can even get near, or have birds that can be even considered to be entered in a show - unless people breed a pen for roosters and a pen for hens...we aren't helping promote the breed IMO, we are helping to drive people away from this breed and toward other breeds that wouldn't require doubling up on the number of chickens you would be required to have to keep in order to get correct ones.

The whole idea of double breeding for the CL is antithetical to the idea that there would be an autosexing breed that would help the small person who needed to be frugal with feed--and thus know quickly which of his/her hatchlings will grow to be egg-layers and which will not. It is my understanding that this is one of the reasons that Punnett developed this and the other autosexing breeds. Hopefully before long an article with this and many other historical facts is going to be published in the CL Club's newsletter and also possibly in a national publication.

Fortunately now -- we have a chance to focus on reality of these marvelous birds--and not an imagined set of characteristics that wouldn't be obtained from a normal pair - or trio in someone's flock. The idea is that it is a bird for everyone IMO and not a bird that is so specialized that it will have appeal to only a few breeders.

That being said, once again, as I have said many times before --- the USA has a number of good birds, with good Cream Legbar coloration -- not silver legbar. It just seems that in the UK the pendulum has swung too far to the Silver side of Cream and they are trying to bring it back to include more golden. We can continue along the path that we are going -- and a number of people on this post have shown promising cockerels with very light coloring -- and again as I have said before -- the color is not the most important attribute of this breed, but to look at the discussion, you would think it is the only attribute LOL.

We need to work on a number of other things -- and keeping the females correct, and not loosing autosexing greatly outweigh the color lightness...AND we don't have light ones that are old enough yet to know if they produce correct females. I get the impression that in the UK they don't produce correct females.

 

[BGMatt]

Just to clarify since I was the one that brought it up, I'm not a fan of the double mating but the articles mentioning needing the red in males for good female color and proper males creating poor colored females if proven accurate means the standard should be written to reflect one or the other. Since you're creating a new standard, why repeat a mistake which apparently, if those articles are true, requires double mating to achieve? Just an opinion and thinking publicly again.

 

[ChicKat]

Just to clarify since I was the one that brought it up, I'm not a fan of the double mating but the articles mentioning needing the red in males for good female color and proper males creating poor colored females if proven accurate means the standard should be written to reflect one or the other. Since you're creating a new standard, why repeat a mistake which apparently, if those articles are true, requires double mating to achieve? Just an opinion and thinking publicly again.

BINGO!

Partly, that is why the club working to get APA acceptance has a DRAFT SOP -- as we learn more about the birds, the SOP will need to be corrected and refined, regardless of how fabulous it is now.

That is one of the reasons, I'm sure that the APA in their wisdom puts a 5-year period of breeding true as a requirement for acceptance. We know more this year, at this time then we knew last year at this time...and next year we will know even more. For everyone who contributed to this this thread way back in the beginning and for redchicken9 and kPenley who worked really hard on the language and grammar of the SOP -- fabulous -- but the understanding has always been that it is a draft, and like anything scientific it needs to be tested. I think that in this testing phase where we will be for a few years....these exact kinds of questions need to be brought up -- and the SOP refined to get the best possible birds -- but it needs to be reality based IMO.