Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

[enola]

I can't wait until I get my eggs from Kpenley in mid December. I have been reading all of the posts about CCL. You guys are super serious, I am looking forward to learning as much as I can!

 

[WHmarans]

I can't wait until I get my eggs from Kpenley in mid December. I have been reading all of the posts about CCL. You guys are super serious, I am looking forward to learning as much as I can!

welcome! Congrats on starting legbars. I'm new here too and this group has been super wonderful patient and sharing information. Absolutely the best.

 

[dretd]

Quote: If they are wedge then 1 and 4 are out in my opinion. I will have to take a look at my own and see how they compare to these images. I prefer to be realistic about this than idealistic.
In looking at these graphics, It looks like the author is playing a little loose with the lines to illustrate his point. #1 does not follow sides of the hen but draws a box making it boxy where it really tapers. The cushion's really prominent and may make the bird look broader where it is really fat and feathers. Where #2's drawn line cuts into part of the cushion and made the bird pie-shaped where the body is not really although the tail is pretty pointed. #3 has a wider tail --doesn't really look pinched to me but is narrower overall and #4 has a lobster tail.

Yea GaryDean26 - So glad that you are putting the focus on type.....

These pictures of Leghorns look more like the type of our CLs IMO

http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/resources/standard_varieties/leghorns.html

Especially fig 20. The illustrations may be more from the 30's - 40's than now. Notice that the tail angles are more upright, the stance of the bird is more upright - like a CL, and not like the modern and painterly Leghorn of today which is more horizontal.

So maybe a top-down view of a leghorn would give us a more accurate starting point...anyone have one to post?

I agree, the Leghorn's represented in the top drawings so seem to resemble my idea if CLs especially #20--very nice find--they seem more like English Leghorns to my eye, and at the bottom of that page you can see drawings of modern American Leghorns with the lower, more filled-in tail. Could it be that we are thinking of American type Leghorns when we should be thinking more about English type when drawing comparisons to CLs?

@ K: This is not the best set of pics, but there is a hen near the bottom of the page that is being held to show the coloring of her hackles and back. It may be just the way the handler is holding her, but she looks a lot like the old PR pics (just smaller).

I like this photo very much. I agree she does seem broader, I also am seeing a tail from the top which is not fanned out, widely tented or lobster-like but rather very narrow though I would not describe it as pinched. I think it looks more like #2 and #3 above to be quite honest.

ChicKat,

I thought that this Leghorn morphology was interesting. It show the tails of winning Leghorns in the USA from 1869 to 2011. I would guess that Figure 20 in the reference that you posted would be from the late 1890's. And YES, illustration 20 is along the lines of what I envision the Legbar to be.


I would suggest that the Legbar
1) has the UK Leghorn type comb with 6 points that follows the line of the neck
2) Has the Plymouth Rock Legs which are "moderately long" as opposed to the "long" legs of the Leghorn,
3) Has a deeper body than the Leghorn (but not as deep as the Rocks) giving it a better balance to Plymouth Rock Legs and 25% more body weight for a fuller look that the Leghorns
4) Has a straight line back with slight downward slope to it like the classic 1905-1909 Leghorns shown above as opposed to the curved line horizontal back of the modern Leghorns (similar to the 1907 Leghorn winner shown above).
5) has an angle between the line of the back and the tail with the tail length being slightly shorter than the Leghorn (but much longer than the Rocks) this is opposed the Rocks and modern leghorns that show no angle at the attachment of the tail, but rather a sweep from the back line to the tail.
6) Has the white ear lobes of the Leghorn
7) Has a low well rounded breast similar to both the Rock and Leghorn front line
8) Have wing carried at the near horizontal angel (both the Leghorn and Rock require this), the wings should be moderately long (and opposed to long) since I believe long wings would tend toward birds that are too tall and have too shallow of breasts.
9) Likewise toes should not be supper long as that I believe would also tend towards the taller thinner birds

I obviously haven't been breeding Leghorns long enough to be sure on anything above but know others will have their thought on type too. Do you feel I am on the right track? Going the wrong direction? KPennley I know you have looked at type more than I have and possibly already discussed and got outside feed back on many of the points I laid out for discussion above. Any insight you or others have would be great. I am playing catch up to Kpennley and Redchicken9.

I love this reference page. I bolded your type. You had put in 1869-2011, but to my eye, I think it reads 1911. That means that there was a very drastic change over a shorter period of time to morph the tail to low angle and well filled in. I think that the 1893-1905 range best represents what I see and think of as CL. Wikipedia said the Leghorn was first exported to England in 1870. Do you know when the Leghorns used in Punnett's experiments were imported, or were they over from Europe? This may explain why the tail is different from the American Leghorn.

I think your summation of the birds by points is very astute and spot on (although I do see a big problem with low wing carriage in many CL roos that will need to be corrected)

The British SOP says " Male: Type: Body wedge shaped, wide at the shoulders and narrowing slightly to root of tail. Female: The general characteristics are similar to those of the male, allowing for the natural sexual differences"
If our SOP for CLs must match the British SOP, how can the body type be changed from the British SOP?

We are not changing the type, per se, but modifying the wording to reflect intended meaning British-English to American-English. However I am thinking my mental image of Legbars has been influenced by modern American birds when it really should be influenced by old-type English birds.

 

[KPenley]

I can't wait until I get my eggs from Kpenley in mid December. I have been reading all of the posts about CCL. You guys are super serious, I am looking forward to learning as much as I can!

Shhhhhhh..do you know how many people I've said no to since they didn't live down here?

I would suggest that the Legbar
1) has the UK Leghorn type comb with 6 points that follows the line of the neck
2) Has the Plymouth Rock Legs which are "moderately long" as opposed to the "long" legs of the Leghorn,
3) Has a deeper body than the Leghorn (but not as deep as the Rocks) giving it a better balance to Plymouth Rock Legs and 25% more body weight for a fuller look that the Leghorns
4) Has a straight line back with slight downward slope to it like the classic 1905-1909 Leghorns shown above as opposed to the curved line horizontal back of the modern Leghorns (similar to the 1907 Leghorn winner shown above).
5) has an angle between the line of the back and the tail with the tail length being slightly shorter than the Leghorn (but much longer than the Rocks) this is opposed the Rocks and modern leghorns that show no angle at the attachment of the tail, but rather a sweep from the back line to the tail.
6) Has the white ear lobes of the Leghorn
7) Has a low well rounded breast similar to both the Rock and Leghorn front line
8) Have wing carried at the near horizontal angel (both the Leghorn and Rock require this), the wings should be moderately long (and opposed to long) since I believe long wings would tend toward birds that are too tall and have too shallow of breasts.
9) Likewise toes should not be supper long as that I believe would also tend towards the taller thinner birds

Looks like you have a firm grasp on the vision I see when I read the PCGB Standard, and hopefully ours as well. After insight from Walt I am still struggling a bit about the back. Your number 5 is my original thought of how the birds should look, regarding the attachment of the tail. But there is actually good reasoning behind the modern curved sweep looks...they are considered more thrifty. A bird with an abrupt angle is not considered as healthy or as good of a layer. There is an interesting set of figures in the APA SOP (figures 39 and 40) that show the difference between a bird with vigor and productiveness, and one showing a lack of the same. Figure 40, showing the bird lacking vigor and productiveness, has a top line that I had originally been envisioning...but if you look at the body revealed inside the outline, it is obviously not as healthy a bird at that of the one with a Nike swoosh type top line (back is still long with a slight slope from neck to tail under that top line).
I would love to hear FMP's insight since his family has bred multiple types of Leghorns.

 

[TheTropix]

Hi Dretd, and fellow chicken people,
"We are not changing the type, per se, but modifying the wording to reflect intended meaning British-English to American-English. However I am thinking my mental image of Legbars has been influenced by modern American birds when it really should be influenced by old-type English birds."

I was talking about if a more rectangular shape was going to describe the CL in the SOP, that would be changing the body shape (type?) description from what it actually is.

 

[GaryDean26]

... Do you know when the Leghorns used in Punnett's experiments were imported, or were they over from Europe? This may explain why the tail is different from the American Leghorn.

Shhhhhhh..do you know how many people I've said no to since they didn't live down here?

....After insight from Walt I am still struggling a bit about the back. Your number 5 is my original thought of how the birds should look, regarding the attachment of the tail. But there is actually good reasoning behind the modern curved sweep looks...they are considered more thrifty. A bird with an abrupt angle is not considered as healthy or as good of a layer. There is an interesting set of figures in the APA SOP (figures 39 and 40) that show the difference between a bird with vigor and productiveness, and one showing a lack of the same. Figure 40, showing the bird lacking vigor and productiveness, has a top line that I had originally been envisioning...but if you look at the body revealed inside the outline, it is obviously not as healthy a bird at that of the one with a Nike swoosh type top line (back is still long with a slight slope from neck to tail under that top line).
I would love to hear FMP's insight since his family has bred multiple types of Leghorns.

Great information. I somehow knew you would be able to clarify on points that I was missing.

 

[ChicKat]

ChicKat,

I thought that this Leghorn morphology was interesting. It show the tails of winning Leghorns in the USA from 1869 to 2011 1911. I would guess that Figure 20 in the reference that you posted would be from the late 1890's. And YES, illustration 20 is along the lines of what I envision the Legbar to be.



What an awesome resource GaryDean26 - click on the link and there is a world of info there...I'm going to store that in the Clubhouse for easy reference/retrieval for when we get to that point of SOP review - rather than trying to go through a lot of BYC posts - which can be so time consuming!!! Who would have thought that that much change could be absorbed/incorporated.

I also had read the quotes from the Cambridge Breeding program that the Auto-sexing breeds were just the base breeds with barring introduced from Plymouth Rocks, but I am not sure that I can take that at face vaule. There is an article in the January 2005 issue of Country Smallholding that points out that the Cambrige group was not creating show birds and didn't take a lot of care to breed back to the foundation breeds. They pointed out that the Campine which was the first auto-sexing breed created had an SOP that called for white legs even though Campines have slate blue feet (and rocks yellow), that the Cambar had red ear lobes where the Campine has white ear lobes, the Cambar cocks weighed 8 pounds making it a heavy weight dual purpose breed where the Campine standard was for 6 lbs cocks making it a medium weight laying breed, etc. So it would appear that some auto-sexing breeds, particularly the earlier ones, were more a fusion on the Rock with the foundation breed than the claim they make that it is a cookie cutter of the foundation breeding with added barring from the Plymouth Rock.

Right on target, the picture too of 'Cream Legbars from the Berkshire Downs' that is in the Club's handbook looks like a mix of several types. They were into the practicality and definitely not into the cookie cutter or the world of showing - and imagine how much everything had changed in just the past 50-years....

I would suggest that the Legbar
1) has the UK Leghorn type comb with 6 points that follows the line of the neck
2) Has the Plymouth Rock Legs which are "moderately long" as opposed to the "long" legs of the Leghorn,
3) Has a deeper body than the Leghorn (but not as deep as the Rocks) giving it a better balance to Plymouth Rock Legs and 25% more body weight for a fuller look that the Leghorns
4) Has a straight line back with slight downward slope to it like the classic 1905-1909 Leghorns shown above as opposed to the curved line horizontal back of the modern Leghorns (similar to the 1907 Leghorn winner shown above).
5) has an angle between the line of the back and the tail with the tail length being slightly shorter than the Leghorn (but much longer than the Rocks) this is opposed the Rocks and modern leghorns that show no angle at the attachment of the tail, but rather a sweep from the back line to the tail.
6) Has the white ear lobes of the Leghorn
7) Has a low well rounded breast similar to both the Rock and Leghorn front line
8) Have wing carried at the near horizontal angel (both the Leghorn and Rock require this), the wings should be moderately long (and opposed to long) since I believe long wings would tend toward birds that are too tall and have too shallow of breasts.
9) Likewise toes should not be supper long as that I believe would also tend towards the taller thinner birds

This is thoughtful and thought provoking - maybe it can be used as a framework when we go through the SOP step-by-step. Or if not that - it can be a big part of the examination. I would also like to see examples of each on real birds...

I obviously haven't been breeding Leghorns long enough to be sure on anything above but know others will have their thought on type too. Do you feel I am on the right track? Going the wrong direction? KPennley I know you have looked at type more than I have and possibly already discussed and got outside feed back on many of the points I laid out for discussion above. Any insight you or others have would be great. I am playing catch up to Kpennley and Redchicken9.

IMO - definitely the right track - these things need to be the focus of our efforts to get everything clarified.

 

[ChicKat]

...Dutch leghorn...

I know you were thinking Danish since you wrote the history along with your team mates on that project - but you wrote Dutch

http://www.creamlegbarclub.com/20-history-of-the-cream-legbar

 

[ChicKat]

In looking at these graphics, It looks like the author is playing a little loose with the lines to illustrate his point. #1 does not follow sides of the hen but draws a box making it boxy where it really tapers. The cushion's really prominent and may make the bird look broader where it is really fat and feathers. Where #2's drawn line cuts into part of the cushion and made the bird pie-shaped where the body is not really although the tail is pretty pointed. #3 has a wider tail --doesn't really look pinched to me but is narrower overall and #4 has a lobster tail.
I agree, the Leghorn's represented in the top drawings so seem to resemble my idea if CLs especially #20--very nice find--they seem more like English Leghorns to my eye, and at the bottom of that page you can see drawings of modern American Leghorns with the lower, more filled-in tail. Could it be that we are thinking of American type Leghorns when we should be thinking more about English type when drawing comparisons to CLs?

And not only that -- but last reading I did in CSU was saying that a big cushion was NOT a good thing........

 

[ChicKat]

I can't wait until I get my eggs from Kpenley in mid December. I have been reading all of the posts about CCL. You guys are super serious, I am looking forward to learning as much as I can!

Whoo hooo -- welcome and good luck with your future hatch.

Sometimes I think that the CL will be the most examined chicken to walk on the face of the earth---