Cream Legbar Working Group: Standard of Perfection

[nicalandia]

I'm just throwing issues out there that may or may not come up in the future.

Thats good.. thats always good,

 

[MnMPoultry]

Clubs come under fire from all directions at one point or another, some more than others, so you have to try to look at everything from all angles.

Has anyone contacted Ameraucana/Araucana clubs about using their color cards for eggs? Might as well see about borrowing an existing proven color card instead of having a go at making a new one, relabel, and give credit. And, IMO, no olive shades. Pure for blue, no brown in the mix please. That's one of the big factors for this breed.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I too appreciate the information that Nicalandia shared. Very interesting but I hope that it was meant to be informative and not an expectation for us all to follow. i
am a bit alarmed that we might go to a breed standard that disqualifies all of our current stock that is available. Out crossing for a color standard might also create problems with egg color for generations to come and also bring us under fire for not having purebred cream Legbars.
I like our many colored whimsical blue egg layers. I hate to see us go to pale anemic bland looking cream Legbars

Reading your comment I had one thing come to mind that should be way more important than the color- type! All this talk about color lately has left type behind. First we must build the barn, then paint it. As I was looking at my rooster today, I noticed that he does have a good tail angle, I'll try to snap some pics this week. His comb has a slight twist in the front but looks good otherwise. I think for combs, we should aim for the basic 5 points like a leghorn, it looks more 'even' than the 6 like minorcas. As far as outcrossing goes, I crossed to a leghorn which is white eggs. This out cross won't affect egg color any since blue eggs are dominant and if anything, it should clear up some of the slight green tint that my line C hen has in her eggs. An out cross to leghorns to me seems the best bet to improve them because the color is easy to fix, the crest and blue eggs should be dominant, and the type is closer than other breeds.

So what my point is, is that type should come way before color. Don't completely disregard color but don't pick a good colored bird over a good typed bird. My rant is over, I have had a very long day and just had to ramble for a bit

 

[nicalandia]

Reading your comment I had one thing come to mind that should be way more important than the color- type! All this talk about color lately has left type behind. First we must build the barn, then paint it.

Except chickens aren´t Barns...

and they already come painted...

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Except chickens aren´t Barns...

and they already come painted...

And to this, I can only shake my head and peel myself from my computer so I can try to enjoy the 3 hours of sleep I'll get before heading back to work for a full day.
I look forward to reading more discussion tomorrow evening. Keep up the good work my fellow auto-sexing addicts!

 

[ChicKat]

Except chickens aren´t Barns...

and they already come painted...

LOL--
cannot believe that we had a power outage...thus no wildblue satellite, thus no internet and I missed all of this good discussion..



I like the way things are getting hashed out, bubbling up and coming to the surface and being put here for people's consideration. At one point, we were thinking that by adopting a slightly (as needed) revised UK SOP-- (e.g.' color' instead of 'colour', among other things) from the UK....now we are not even talking about 'cream' or 'Legbars' -- but, that's O.K.

the chicken world takes strange twists...a 'silver' 'duck wing' has chicken wings and doesn't look like the silverware on the table...so go figure... Here are some more -- 'gold laced' - where is that lace? --- if we keep cream legbar we are closer to our historic roots for this breed, which won't be considered a breed actually until the APA recognizes it....which will be 6-years down the road providing we meet all the criteria...and it could be longer than that or even never...... However, we need a club to have a database IMO, and maybe we say that we will provisionally adopt the revised UK SOP since that has the most complete and thorough data about our birds. With of course the caveat that the birds that we have are included in the club. -- And people with a big interest in showing and coloration can work toward perfection. A breeding window could be built in and those birds with the bona fide GFF background that appear to be darker than perfection can be 'granfathered' IN and in 5-years those owmers can breed toward the more medium color.

Perfect example a few posts back were the darker and lighter rooster were pictured and the flock owner got reinforcement for which one to breed...(providing color is the top of the list for that person)....

The Araucana (did I spell that right---I gotta log off here in a sec.) is a different bird on either side of the pond. Rumped and rumpless in the UK with a crest -- I think that there is non-crested too-- but in the USA no crest and no rump---and basically No problems.

I think that there is a really strong consensus from what I am reading to keep and promote and admire the colors in our birds, even if the cream gene inhibits gold or vice versa....Not sure Punnett found full conclusion on that one....

And MnM - maybe we should rename the birds..the 'crested, autosexing, blue-egg-gene chickens that were originated by R.C. Punnett'...I like that name.... kidding folks, only kidding.... Besides, that name is just too long.

FMP brings up a really good point about no discussion of type....because although they are leghorn-like, and sometimes my cream legbar hen looks very similar to my 'Ideal 236' in body and bearing there is still the genetics of the BPR and the mystery hen from Chile.

Keep up the brainstorming.......

 

[MnMPoultry]

Always, always, always, take what I say with a grain of salt, but also always considering the root of what I've said. I tend to look at things from various directions, from both sides of a point, and typically the things I say are in an effort to get others to do the same.

If, as a general concensus, the majority or potential members want to adopt the entire UK SOP for this prospective breed, then do it tentatively, because at the present time, I seriously doubt there are enough people to adopt anything permanent, and it will change by the time acceptance rolls around anyways. Reword it to the American SOP, let people start breeding, and gradually change what needs changed, over time, at the vote of the majority of the breeders involved.

The obvious lack of discussion regarding type, I think, shows that most of us accept the physical standard in the UK SOP as what we want to achieve, mostly. The color talk, means that color is what the people in this discussion are interested in, so that they know what direction they are heading with color, and this doesn't mean they are going to ignore type in the breeding pens.

BTW: I do think that changing the name is very far fetched considering everyone knows them already as Cream Legbar, but Crested Legbar sounds better, IMO.

Regarding what FMP said, type and color can go hand in hand, once you see big picture what you need to do for both, assuming you have the space and ability to hatch a bunch of chicks from several different groups. You can build the barn with everything already painted. These days, you just put the pre-colored metal siding up as you're building.

 

[MnMPoultry]

My thoughts on the UK Standard:

Honestly, it all looks well to me for type. I don't necessarily like such light weight birds, but I'm probably alone on this. How much is everyone's mature birds weighing?

 

[blackbirds13]

This is all very interesting and here are my two cents for what it's worth.

This is my understanding of how Cream works. I have been trying to wrap my head around this stuff for a while now since I decided to try to work my birds towards the UK SOP. This is what I get out of Punnett's article's.

We know our birds are darker and do not conform to the UK SOP. The hackles and saddle are gold in a variety of shades because the bird carries gold and is not demonstrating the Cream of the Cream Legbar. The birds have to be cream as opposed to having gold in the male to allow them to pass on the cream gene to dilute the gold in the female hackle of their daughters. Some of the UK birds are silver and that's due to the way silver and cream and silver and gold link. Sometimes silver can cover gold as well as cream and cream inhibit gold...I'm not sure cream can inhibit silver is what I'm getting. Males that carry this gold no matter how diluted pass it on to a portion of their daughters which is why there will always be female cream legbars with the golden hackle if your male carries that gold but depending on his mate you may also hatch a portion of paler or cream colored hackle females and then as you go down the line you could end up with a pickle if your not careful with your mating match-ups . I would say that would make the birds unable to reproduce their cream form consistently. The gold has to be bred out and that will take some time. I would assume without being aware you could breed any possible cream out of the birds eventually. There was a photo earlier that showed the spread wings of a male and there were some gold areas on the secondaries. Though mottled the gold in the secondaries is dependant on gold (nothing to do with chestnut in that area). They would be Cream if there was no gold present is what my understanding would be...

The reason I think the Brits breed those silver birds is they probably produce some very light females.

In his article on Black Plumage he says that when using Rhode Island Reds (chestnut) and cream colored that a mottle pied appearance in the male when gold is replaced by cream but spread evenly in females and that when Cream Legbars were bred to black they tended to create a paler F1 with 1 even paler and replaced the gold entirely on a portion of the F2.

The Cream Plumage Article does not have a real explanation of the way chestnut and cream work; it did not make it clear if cream was dominant or an inhibitor. It seemed to lead towards it being somewhat, maybe it does inhibit but I am not sure - need to read more.

The cream legbars we have here are carrying the gold which appears in the hackles of the females and males to greater or lesser degree The gold-brown in the secondary (which may be less intense in some birds) depends on the gold gene and is independent of Chestnut. If the intent is to create a breed that is not Cream I am not sure how we can call it a Cream Legbar as genetically it is not if it carries alleles for gold as opposed to cream. I am not up to creating a myriad of standards at this point.

Yes it will be work for our birds to get there if we all want to have a 'cream' legbar but if we are writing a standard for a gold colored bird then that's a different variation. I did not buy these birds with the intent to just plop them together and breed what ever I got. I figured I'd have to put some work in, but maybe having Marans as my intro to chickens I'm a bit " jaded"

. I'm not sure I want to create 2 standards, why not breed to the ideal if there's a choice? I think type is important but with the color issues that we obviously have I intend to focus on both weighing one against the other as I go. There may be times that things like comb or crest may take a backseat to color depending on what I'm breeding it to. Stiltedness - I grew up with Moko Jumbies which are men who were stilts and dance around so I have a particular image in my mind when I think of that aspect of type. I want a Cream Legbar. I want a breed that is reminiscent of the UK breed. Some are silver, yes but they are not a gold.


If we create a standard for a Cream Legbar that is not truly descriptive of a Cream Legbar I am not sure how that is ideal. We could create a standard that fit the birds we have but some may decide to create bird more reminiscent of the UK SOP. Alterations will more than likely be made but I cannot imagine that if given a preference for APA admission a cream colored Cream Legbar may have a leg up. Maybe we need a 'working' standard that allows for a variation that will be narrowed as we go....

... start with a point scale for cream to gold hackle or saddle??? They could be Auto-sexed Legbars with a cream variety, white and ? but that just seems to lose the romance for me. I have goals I'm shooting for regardless of what is done. I'm enjoying all of this and intend to participate as best I can even if my breeding goals do not comport with what is decided. I may not get there but I intend to give it a fair shot. It may turn out that we just simply have a darker bird period but it's too early for me to settle on that at this point.

 

[nicalandia]

Always, always, always, take what I say with a grain of salt, .

you guys can take what I say with a truck load of salt(about type and SOP), but I´m good on the genetic side of things.. so any advice on such matters just place your Qs here and/or P.M me and I´ll be glad to help out...