Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

[CibolaChooks]

Same boy on the left his chest has nice barring

 

[CibolaChooks]

And my lighter of the original gold roos. You can also see where his wattles have healed. He lost the front of them to frostbite and it formed a taco wattle when it healed

 

[CibolaChooks]

My cream roos barring

 

[Laingcroft]

Here is a close up of his hackles - and I have always thought that the barring was very 'fine' and very regular, but too much black --


And the whole picture:

With apologies to the taste of "cream = silver-looking" people since I beg to differ, I love how he looks, and his comb has straightened, he has the right number of points - his crest has filled in and relaxed to a neat - rather than David Bowie look - his tail is at 45-degrees and someone today was just remarking to me how great those white sickle feathers look - but I know he is going to loose them before long - because they always eventually fall off, then regrow. He is cashing in on all the 'some chestnut allowed' that he possibly can....lol I think he is pretty much done with his molt...and love the look for such an old guy (2-years) Didn't get good pictures but at least there is no harsh sun to blast out the light colors...

I like the barring your boy's hackles.

As for the second picture, I may be wrong, but I believe he is exhibiting gold, not by the chestnut in his wing bay but the gold in his primaries/secondaries. There should only be cream i.e. white, in the long feathers (primaries/secondaries) of the wings. That is one thing I did take away from Punnett's cream gene paper. It was one clear location where cream was clearly expressed by a specific change in color rather than a "lighter" gradation like the hackles and saddle.

 

[ChicKat]

Yes Tru,
You are probably on target. His son is lighter than he is - in the same place on the wings, so I am happily going to use him for breeding.

I never want to have that plain black & white look - and the qualities I'm hoping he will pass forward are the ones above mentioned, his high fertility, disposition and the egg color and frequency of his daughters eggs, plumage color to me is probably even a bit less than the 10% it gets on the score card...that can be last thing to work on. JMO.

 

[nicalandia]

Same boy on the left his chest has nice barring

Thats true, good barring pattern on that boy... and as tim said, its not just luck, he has the genes to pass to his ofsprings

 

[blackbirds13]

Nice barring on that cream boy Steen.

Punnet states "he is be barred all over, though the general effect is definitely lighter and softer than in a barred breed such as Plymouth Rock". The Crele Leghorn posted seems overall way darker than my idea of what the CCL should look like and it seems tighter and darker barred than the Gold Legbar image in Punnetts article.

@ tadkerson - I enjoyed reading Genetics 101. I'm going to have to investigate and read up on your hypothesis some more.

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
I am with you Black Bird, I also read what punnett said about overall lighter and softer, and I was also going by what the UK people is breeding for.. here a UK bird

BUT.... the SOP is Clear... Dark Grey, well defined outline... so is the SOP word for "Dark Gray" going to be subject to interpretation again as was the whole cream color? I would assume that Dark Gray is just that Dark gray...

 

[blackbirds13]

BUT.... the SOP is Clear... Dark Grey, well defined outline...

so is the SOP word for "Dark Gray" going to be subject to interpretation again as was the whole cream color? I would assume that Dark Gray is just that Dark gray...

I own and breed the bird so my decisions on them will always be in part subjective.

Since I am not alone in this I can only imagine given the variety of opinions involved it will be a subjective issue and another denoted by the genetics and personal preference until we have all hatched and reared a number of birds and can come to a consensus... as I said I'm not making and thankfully have not made culling decision based on what you or anyone else proposes here. Our experience with this breed is just too new in my opinion. Just as I'd hope no one would do so on anything I said, as a lot of this is hypothetical and based on incomplete knowledge as you yourself has stated you also have. I'm an artist, not a geneticist and do not claim to be guru or expert but the idea of Dark Gray is on a graded scale for me so your assumptions on 'dark gray' may indeed not be in line with another's... funny thing about color. That graded scale is what we term a Value Scale in the Visual Arts. I look at some of the birds you post and at my Macduff and see a bird that is very dark gray and an overall tone that is just too dark for what I envision the breed should look like. Just as some see cream as some form of very light brown or yellow I know that cream can be so close to an antique or tinged white that can be almost indiscernible from white unless viewed by the actual naked eye and not good in a photo. Yes, I am breeding with the draft SOP as a guide.

Evenly barred to me means that the white and the black should give a mediated gray overtone on the bird not a dark bird. This does not mean the gray barring is light it means that together they should give a softer look to the gray to the eye. Both the dark gray bars and the white bars will blend in the eye to give the bird an overall tone that should be darker than the white and lighter than the gray. The idea of defined means to me, as Tim stated, that the black and white should have no lag time and be crisp but ...

. I find that tight barring of the Leghorns you posted and the loose barring of the British birds you also posted, neither look crisp to my eye. I feel the dark birds you are posting have too little white barring and are not clearly defined in the way I envision the bird to look. This is not something that, for me, can resolve itself in the here and now and I'm not prepared to state what is and is not correct or to concur with anyone else's idea of what the SOP barring should look like at this time. I think I need to investigate and see for myself what occurs in my own and other breeders birds as we go forward. I feel it would be foolish of me to do anything other than be asking questions, rhetorical ones at that, at this time. This is just the starting point of this issue for me.

 

[dretd]

Quote: I agree that the relative nature of the description of 'dark' will vary from person to person and I would add that it will also very based on the inherent light or darkness of the starting bird. So a very light bird's chest that looks dark on him may be a much lighter actual color than a darker toned bird--and that is fine. That is why I personally am not a fan of tagging the dark (or any 'color') to one specific Pantone color. The dark on the breast should be darker than and contrast with the other parts that are described as just grey. My take is that on that English bird Nicalandia posted, I would personally think that dark grey would mean about the same color as the tail coverts. But that's just me.

I have always interpreted the evenly barred as the same-ness and uniformity of the band length from feather to feather and even on the same feather shaft--maybe I have it wrong.



So looking at a feather, all the white bands should be about the same length and same for the black. I have one pullet (left in the above photo) that has what I think of as uneven barring--on her neck hackles some of the white and black bands are twice the length as others. Look at the one at 12 o'clock with thicker bands, and the one just to the left has some really thin bands, almost like one of the black was cut in half by white once again, but not all of them. There are some white bands which are narrow and some that are really thick--there is variance so thus not even. In a male breast, since each feather would have a random barring pattern and the barring varies from feather of feather, this uneven barring would make the breast look a splotchy, messy pattern (or really lack of pattern) and no even lines anywhere. What do you think of my take on this?