Cream Legbars Weak Chicks

[Pyxis]

The first bird looks like a CCL, and greenish eggs are fine. It was the pink ones that made me, and probably Ralphie, think that you had a cross. Purebred CCLs do not lay pink eggs.

That second one though, she doesn't look like a pure CCL. Is that the one that lays a pink egg? Because she doesn't look to be barred, which CCLs always are, her comb is very dark and doesn't look like a proper single comb. Her body shape and dark face and legs aren't CCL-like at all. CCLs don't have legs that are that color, nor do they have dark faces. She is likely a CCL cross. Which would also explain her lack of barring, because if her mother was a CCL and her father wasn't barred, then none of the female offspring would be barred.

It also looks like she has wry tail in that first photo, but it may just be the way she was holding it when the picture was taken.

 

[RainForestBird]

I obviously don't care if my chicks are purebred or not because I mixed the Legbars with the Olandsk rooster. I wanted a hearty chicken with an interesting look. What is wry tail by the way, my hen has been healthy since the day she was hatched (in my incubator), and survived a 1500 roundtrip from Washington State to California with no problems. These are some of the chicks that hatched. I compared chick pictures of Cream Legbars, and mine have the same eye markings that make them look like Cleopatra with kohl eyeliner. I tried to photograph their stripes too. I have an even number of boys and girls I'm afraid and the girls are larger and more vigorous than the boys. I had 12 hatch the last few days, and one this morning with two more pipping. I helped the one this morning out of the egg because I was worried about the humidity issue and drowning, but he seemed fine. The others have been pipping since early this morning and I could hear peeping but not see evidence of pipping last night. If they aren't out of the egg in the next two hours, I will help them. The temp is holding steady at 99.5 and the humidity is hovering around 78-88 percent. Also another photo of the dad.

 

[Pyxis]

Wry tail just means she holds her tail off to the side instead of straight and centered. It's usually genetic and would be considered a fault and you would want to avoid breeding a bird with it to avoid passing it on to their offspring. For just a laying hen it doesn't matter, but in a breeding bird or a show bird it's not something you want.

 

[duluthralphie]

Hi,,

I am going to start with the second bird. That is not a legbar, it appears to be a cross between a legbar and a EE or something similar.

Now back to the first bird, while it looks like a CLB, it may not be if it comes from the same trusted source as the second one.

The pink egg does concern me, That is not CLB.

Further. your bird, if it is 100% CLB would have to be from one of the first 3 lines of CLB based on the creole/gold coloring. While they are acceptable they are not preferred and will have their own SOP in coming years. If it is from the first 3 lines, like I surmise the eggs should be more blue than green. That said we all see color a little differently....so who knows...

However, if the second is not 100% legbar, I have my doubts on the first. I do not mean to insult you or your bird, they are both good looking birds. Just not pure IMHO. As was said above if you are not showing them who cares... In actuality they should be healthier than legbars by the hybrid vigor they should have..


The Cream Legbar club is working on having the Cream accepted first. We have qualifying shows this year for them.

Next will come the whites, as I understand the timeline and then the creole/gold. The only reason you can get by showing a creole as a Cream at this time is the judges are not all that well aware of the standards. I did show a creole as a cream last year, but the judge questioned me on it after thwe show.

 

[RainForestBird]

I mentioned earlier on that I thought the pinkish ones came from my white silky cross (not the hens in question). Both my CL hens lay greenish eggs, but I have seen photos of blue, green and pinkish eggs from CL hens online, are you saying that I should question the breeder of the pinkish eggs who is selling them online? Here is a photo of a CL hen on the GFF site, the other is a photo of my hen (Big Conehead). Since they look similar, I'm not sure what, if any problem there is. I didn't pay $99 for this hen, and I seriously question the need to do so. My hen lays every day without fail, and as I mentioned is very healthy and has a nice friendly temperament, gets along with the flock and is cooperative with the rooster. I'm considering allowing her to raise her chicks, once I get this hatch sorted out. I still have about 45 eggs in my incubator (I mark them to keep track of when they were layed and where they came from).

I think we kind of got off topic here. I was originally concerned about the two chicks that I lost (inside the egg) that came from the green eggs. The green eggs came from Little Conehead, not Big Conehead. The weak chick problem seems to have rectified itself (thank god!). It may have been because of the record high temperatures we've been experiencing here which has caused some of my flock to stop laying, or laying outside of the box. They are laying again, and inside the right place, the problem was only on Thursday, the hottest day.

The first bird looks like a CCL, and greenish eggs are fine. It was the pink ones that made me, and probably Ralphie, think that you had a cross. Purebred CCLs do not lay pink eggs.

That second one though, she doesn't look like a pure CCL. Is that the one that lays a pink egg? Because she doesn't look to be barred, which CCLs always are, her comb is very dark and doesn't look like a proper single comb. Her body shape and dark face and legs aren't CCL-like at all. CCLs don't have legs that are that color, nor do they have dark faces. She is likely a CCL cross. Which would also explain her lack of barring, because if her mother was a CCL and her father wasn't barred, then none of the female offspring would be barred.

It also looks like she has wry tail in that first photo, but it may just be the way she was holding it when the picture was taken.

 

[Pyxis]

are you saying that I should question the breeder of the pinkish eggs who is selling them online?

Yep, definitely, because they don't lay pink eggs. Ralphie who just replied is a breeder of them and he really knows his stuff. He's helping the breed become accepted into the APA. What he tells you, I would trust.

You might notice that in the picture from GFF you posted that the hen is barred. Your hen isn't, which a Legbar hen always is. You'll notice her face is not dark like your hen. And if you could see her legs, they'd be yellow, not green. Legbars don't have green legs.

Sorry we got off topic here. If you like your birds and aren't planning to breed them as CCLs then it doesn't really matter. We just wanted you to know what you have. I know if someone pulled the wool over my eyes, I'd want to know. I would be disappointed, but I'd know never to trust them again. I'd be glad someone told me so I could avoid ever getting birds from that source again.

It's good that your chicks seem to be hatching well now. I would just watch the humidity and make sure the air cells are developing correctly. Here's a chart you can follow:

 

[duluthralphie]

Speaking of hatching problems, I am headed to some next week.

Controlling the humidity is hard this time of year, fronts move through and the humidity rises and drops in a minutes time. I have found my humidity anywhere from 22%-54%.

If you had those type of problems, that could explain weak and crippled chicks. I really needed a decent test breeding, but alas, it is not in the cards..

Sorry, we got off topic a tad, I guess, I would also want to know if I had not gotten a bird I thought I had. As Pyxis says, it really does not matter if you have no intention to show or breed them.


I think, you figured out the problem with the hatch on your own. A bad day (weather wise) can make for a bad hatch...


Now I am off to see if I can find what smells rotten in my overly high humidity incubator...(I really hate summer hatches)...

But I am forced to do another one in a couple weeks..poor me..

 

[RainForestBird]

I don't believe my friend would intentionally mislead me. I think that you never know for sure what will come out of an egg. I'm quite happy with my bird, and actually think she is more attractive than Little Conehead. I think the breed is kind of goofy looking to begin with because of the crest over the red comb. I had not heard of Wry Tail before but I have heard of Wry Neck and that it can be deadly. So naturally I was worried and called my friend who reassured me that she does not have Wry Tail and my chicks weren't drowning in their shells because of the humidity.

Her comb is not black/grey like a silky by the way, it is a deep rose color and I think I stressed her out trying to photograph it under the lights in my kitchen because I felt something warm on my leg and I thought she pooped, but it was clear liquid then later I found an egg without a shell on the floor. I hope she is okay in the morning, I put electrolytes in her water.

Yep, definitely, because they don't lay pink eggs. Ralphie who just replied is a breeder of them and he really knows his stuff. He's helping the breed become accepted into the APA. What he tells you, I would trust.

You might notice that in the picture from GFF you posted that the hen is barred. Your hen isn't, which a Legbar hen always is. You'll notice her face is not dark like your hen. And if you could see her legs, they'd be yellow, not green. Legbars don't have green legs.

Sorry we got off topic here. If you like your birds and aren't planning to breed them as CCLs then it doesn't really matter. We just wanted you to know what you have. I know if someone pulled the wool over my eyes, I'd want to know. I would be disappointed, but I'd know never to trust them again. I'd be glad someone told me so I could avoid ever getting birds from that source again.

It's good that your chicks seem to be hatching well now. I would just watch the humidity and make sure the air cells are developing correctly. Here's a chart you can follow:

 

[Pyxis]

Like I said, as long as you're happy with your birds, that's all that matters. I didn't know you got her from a friend, and I didn't mean to imply a friend of yours would purposefully deceive you. It's very easy to have a hen get out of her breeding pen or have a rooster get into a pen he shouldn't be in and have an accidental mating take place, which is probably what happened here. Your friend could have been none the wiser, and given you the egg from her Legbar hens not knowing it was fertilized by a rooster that wasn't her Legbar rooster. I would ask her what she has that's not barred and has green legs, because that would be the father of your bird. It definitely has to be something other than a legbar because legbars, as was said, are always barred and don't have green legs.

I didn't mean to imply she had unhealthy stock, either. Wry tail is just a visual thing and doesn't cause health issues. And it can pop out of birds that don't have it. It's still being worked out what causes it, but the best guess at this time is a recessive gene, so it's very possible none of your friend's birds have it and could still produce a chick with it. Again though, like I said, it might just have been the way she was holding her tail in that one picture. If she doesn't hold it like that off to the side all the time, then she doesn't have wry tail.

If you think you have what was going on with eggs figured out too, that's good. In my years of experience hatching thousands of eggs, the humidity that high plus liquid leaking out of a pip hole would be too high humidity causing the embryos to drown, so that's why I suggested it. If you think it's something else, as long as you get it corrected and your hatches are good, great!

Anyway, I get the idea that you don't like us giving you info about your bird being a crossbreed, and you might feel we are attacking your bird (we aren't; there's nothing wrong with a bird being a cross unless you are trying to pass it off as pure and sell chicks and eggs from it as pure, which you are clearly not) so I will leave this discussion now.

 

[GaryDean26]

Has anyone had problems with Cream Legbars being too weak to get out of the egg? This is the second egg I've found where the chick tried to get out and then seemed to die before breaking out. There was yellowish goo leaking from the pip. By the time I found it, the chick was dead. It seems to be from the same hen because she always lays a green egg and my other hen (her sister) lays a pink one. The other hen's chicks got out of the egg but are smaller than the chicks from my Barred Rock and Rhode Island Red and were gooey when they got out. All hatched about the same time, the Cream Legbars a bit behind the other chicks, and weaker, sleepier. I have them in separate brooders but all about the same temperature. I wanted to keep the larger livelier chicks together in case they started picking on the smaller, weaker Legbars. The hens are all about the same size and healthy. The same rooster services them all. He's an Olandsk Dwarf. Could it be that the Legbars take after their dad in size? He seems very healthy and vigorous. He's got a very loud crow!

The yellow ooz sounds like the egg didn't lose enough water weight during incubation. Some hen produce thicker shells than others so they may require lower humidity that other in the same hatch. If I remember correctly the egg should loose 13.5% of its weight during incubation. Try putting the eggs on the scale and writing the weight on the shell before it goes into the incubator. Then weigh it again on day 18 and see if you hit the 13.5% weight loss. If not the humidity is too high. The parent stock can effect the health of the embryo too. Stronger parent produce stronger embryos so that may contribute too.