Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

[nicalandia]

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why dont you take a few and put them on your spare room? I used to keep valuable(to my genetic research) chicks with their broody mother on my room for 3 weeks before I let them out on their own, I just didnt like to let chance ruin my hard work

 

[enola]

Ha! Ha! My oldest daughter turned 35 last week. And I didn't have any kids until my mid 20s. Good Lord, I might be older than all of you. ........

 

[Laingcroft]

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Double Barring will Dilute a gold only male's hackle to a straw color, that is if the bird is not enhanced...

example Henk's Crele Dutch Bantam(lacking cream and red enhancers)

Thank you for posting this picture! This is exactly what I'm looking for. This is the effect of double barring on the base color which lightens to straw. Now looking down at those primaries/secondaries in the dropped wing, some "straw" is still visible. In the cream colored birds, according to Punnett''s paper on cream (not legbar, etc., just CREAM) those primaries/secondaries would NOT have any straw, gold etc. Any hint of color, other than gray, should be so pale as to appear white. Would that be correct?

That is what I am using to determine that my roosters have ig/ig.

The hens are a bit more problematic. The only way I can see to determine if she carries cream (one or two doses since it isn't sex linked) is by getting four hens together, side by side, for a comparison. Punnett's comment on cream hens (using leghorns) is that they are something like a silver but "warmer" yet not so brown as the brown leghorn. Silver (in my mind I'm comparing to silver leghorn w/out barring), gold + ig/ig, gold + Ig/ig and last, gold + Ig/Ig (I think we're probably all familiar with this one

) Is there anyone that can put something like that together?

 

[nicalandia]

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to become a good Geneticist you have to be able to visualize and build a birds phenotype with available info on genome, I think I am good at visualizing
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Yes... thats correct,

 

[dretd]

Quoteouble Barring will Dilute a gold only male's hackle to a straw color, that is if the bird is not enhanced...

example Henk's Crele Dutch Bantam(lacking cream and red enhancers)

I personally think some of the problem with the perception of Cream vs non-Cream Cream Legbars comes from folks new to the breed looking at the GFF website and seeing the two Buy It buttons with a Cream Legbar roo (reposted from Feathersite)

So the question is how light would this GFF roo be if he were ig/ig vs how light would Henk's roo be if her were ig/ig?

 

[GaryDean26]

Just a guess, but Henk's batam might be really light likes the photos of Sue's cockerel in the UK (below).


Link

And the GFF cockerel might look more like my cockerel

 

[dretd]

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The hens are a bit more problematic. The only way I can see to determine if she carries cream (one or two doses since it isn't sex linked) is by getting four hens together, side by side, for a comparison. Punnett's comment on cream hens (using leghorns) is that they are something like a silver but "warmer" yet not so brown as the brown leghorn. Silver (in my mind I'm comparing to silver leghorn w/out barring), gold + ig/ig, gold + Ig/ig and last, gold + Ig/Ig (I think we're probably all familiar with this one

) Is there anyone that can put something like that together?

Indeed, the hens are the real conundrum. I have three, each from a different line. They vary quite a lot. Two are for sure gold but of those one has a much broader gold feather edge so she looks more gold and would look very pale if she were cream. Both have a medium taupy-grey body and both had various degrees of black tipping to the breast feathers that appears to be fairly common. I am suspicious the black tipping may be Pg not just a melanizer as we have been supposing. The third is much darker overall with the barring appearing in a very subtle way, yet she has zero of the black tipping on her very salmon breast. Her hackles are very pale but not white-ish so I have been on the fence on her. My thought is that if you start out with a base as light as henk's roo that the hackles will be silver, but if you start out with a really saturated gold, wouldn't it be possible to have a more yellow-y (not white) color to the hackles? Would they all dilute to the same light color if they are not starting out the same intensity of gold? It would make sense given that pullet's very dark (not red, but grey) base color that she is not gong to lighten up as much as one starting from a pale gold.

 

[Laingcroft]

I think I'm going to follow blackbirds' example and stop trying to figure out the group consensus on what color (phenotype) the CL should be and just go forward with what my research and reading of the SOP is telling me is correct.

Personally, I like the "some chestnut allowed" and am happy it is staying in the standard. Aside from the crest, it makes the boys at least stand out from all the other black barred birds in the show room.

If anyone comes up with that 4 hen comparison photo, please post it.

Could any of our genetics gurus explain the steps to get rid of the melanizing that gives us the dark headed hens? Two of my hens are too dark headed. The cockerel is very light in his crest and hackles so I'm hopeful that the melanizers can eventually be removed from my flock.

 

[dretd]

Just a guess, but Henk's batam might be really light likes the photos of Sue's cockerel in the UK (below).


Link

And the GFF cockerel might look more like my cockerel

Except that Henk's very light boy has barred secondaries whereas the light CL roo has white secondaries.

These boys are very interesting becasue the top clearly is from a gold duckwing (LB Leghorn base) with the non-barred secondaries, and your darker roo has the correct barring which may be from?? (yet henk's lighter roo has grey barring) ...do you know when the LB and DB Leghorns were separated as a class in the Netherlands since wasn't that the source of Punnett's birds? Could it be that some of the original Leghorns used by Punnett were the darker wings (Dark Brown Leghorn) or is it possible that when the breed was enriched and semi-re-created by Applegarth (sp?) that they used both types of Leghorns which is why we have the light and dark varieties? It would seem to me in thinking about it that if the breed standard calls for gray barring of the secondaries that the correct base for the bird must be a darker starting point--which also explains the grey barring of the saddle.

The question for the genetics experts is how are the Light Brown and Dark Brown Leghorn varieties differ genetically, and if you barred them then added Cream, how would each look? Could this explain the Cream Legbar's barred secondaries and barred saddle?

 

[nicalandia]

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the GFF would be like Henks bird and Henks bird with ig/ig would be even more diluted, and you are right, GFF birds are more red enhanced than Henks birds, but thats GFF lines, some CL lines in the UK are not as rich colored and ofcourse some lines in the US are not as red enhanced