Cream Legbars

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
Thanks! It's interesting that she's so VERY much like her mother, who was so super friendly and had such character. (and even her face - she really does look just like her, at least to me). I originally thought Paula was so friendly because she was a solo chick for almost a week before I got her some friends, and so she and I bonded a lot. But all her babies are super friendly as well (more than the other girls' babies) - especially Joan. I'm so thankful that I hatched some of her eggs before she died and have her offspring in my flock - here's hoping they thrive.

- Ant Farm

 

[Bantambird]

here is the melanistic one at a week old

 

[rottlady]

I believe my 3 pullets will be pretty dark. Here they are napping with a Barnevelder chick and my Cream Legbar Roolet

 

[ChicKat]

Thanks! It's interesting that she's so VERY much like her mother, who was so super friendly and had such character. (and even her face - she really does look just like her, at least to me). I originally thought Paula was so friendly because she was a solo chick for almost a week before I got her some friends, and so she and I bonded a lot. But all her babies are super friendly as well (more than the other girls' babies) - especially Joan. I'm so thankful that I hatched some of her eggs before she died and have her offspring in my flock - here's hoping they thrive.

- Ant Farm

Whoo Hoo --
I sure love your Joan Jett! -- There was a beautiful Jett CL owned by Anne Norman of the CL Club back in '12 -- and we knew so little about CLs back in those days, but that Jett is represented in the coloring pages of the 'Cream Lebars at Diamond K' website, hence she is immortal. It's interesting how coloring is the new past time now - I see coloring books in grocery stores. Just got backl from a trip to Toledo - and they were there, and they are here in TX (but then I consider WalMart superstor a grocery) . And on the subject of world views -- has anyone heard of the bubble quiz?

But to refocus on the issue at hand.

For years I have been saying that my flock has a lot of Eumelanin. Especially compared to flocks of some others I see photos of. Had two cockerels that demonstrated it I thought:

The cockerel in the foreground showing the darker pigment- the one in the background showing the lighter....and both sharing the same male parent but from different hens. Although I had planned to grow them both out to compare adult plumage they both developed crooked combs - so they had to give up their place in the world to other chicks.

Due to line/breeding in breeding I had something happen that I think is just remarkable... I have my original CL hen from 2012 -- and in my mind she set the standard for the breed (pertaining to my needs and expectations - very blue eggs, plenty of them -- and the correct CL appearance for me -- with the exception that she may have too strong 'black accents' in her plumage'.

I bred her to one of her sons from the very first CL hatch I did. Then from a son of that hatch (theoretically her 3/4 her gentics) I bred her to her then grandson. Of the eggs I set for that hatch, ...(theoretically 7/8 her genetics) -- I got only 1 chick!!!!

But I was so amazed at the result -- I thought I was going to be cloning Robin -- but instead I got a black CL chick -- and I have no doubt that it is from a blue CL egg -- and not one of my Isbars, and I know the exact pedigree if you will.

So I went to the chicken calculator and found out how that could be possible. Now you know chickens feathers are white -- and the pigments added are either red or black -- There are some recessive blacks - but one gene easily available on Henk's chicken calculator gave me --> 'Wild farbig' - no picture available. " Thought that wild farbig just sounded so exotic I did some more research and used google translate to go from the german to english. -- There is some interesting stuff on wild farbig in 'the classroom in the coop' I may put my chick pict there for some questions to the world-class experts that hang out there.... Henk, Sigrid, Warslaw, KazJaps and sometimes Grant Brereton is on that forum -- but here is my amazing chick:


obviously I'm talking about the foreground chick -- the background is an OEGB that I got at the local feed store -- so she wouldn't have to be an only child -- and she is about 2-3 weeks younger than the batch of chicks ahead of her.

Dark beak, dark legs and dark down.... I keep thinking it is a she -- but that presupposes that a cream legbar wild farbig male would still have a head spot -- (based on the barring of BPRs)-

farbig BTW translates to 'partridge' -- and the Europen 'partridge' is our 'duckwing' if memory serves. (sorry just flew back to TX today -- and the journey started at about 2AM this morning so I'm really tired.

From what I have been researching -- Eumelanin - the black pigment - that I call melanin for short is Incomplete dominant... That means that unless there are two copies, it isn't fully expressed, however, one copy will influence the coloration. Although Punnett never spoke of how the melanin gene should appear in the CL lineup -- the presence of the gene in one copy could explain (IMO) the dark versus light crest on the female, the females that have the black edging on the salmon breasts etc.

The chick got it from Robin -- who must be (these gene symbols are from memory from reading before I left town for the funeral so correct me if my letters are scrambled oh you gene experts...) -- Ml/ml+ She passed Ml to her son and the father passed ml+ - so that was F1 generation -- In F2 either she or the son passed the Ml and the other parent passed the ml+

So since there were no two copies -- it behaved in an incomplete dominant way -- easiest said perhaps as influencing the plumage -- for example the darker of the two cockerels above probably is Ml/ml+ according to my theory -- and the lighter one is ml+/ml+

Now She is an F3 and got Ml/Ml from both parents....and so being dominant is makes here appear black.

anyway that is my working hypothesis -- If I wanted blacks I could raise her and breeder her back to dad -- and get the results according to punnets square.

so everyone that got eggs from me/ chickens and chicks over the years -- if Robin is mom (and her eggs never were good hatching eggs for shipment -- mostly it was the other hens that had successes in mailed eggs....) -- you may have the Ml gene in your flock -- and people with dark CLs have it -- I beleve that all these genes have different expression strengths. I realize too that some folks think that the Cream gene behaves the same way that an incomplete dominant gene behaves -- in that they can see the influence of that recessive.

Can't way to see this one grow up --


Fire Ant Farm -- it wouldn't surprise me if Dumbledore gave Joan Jett a strongly expressing copy of Ml --

ETA corrected some of the typos in the above--and some of them will be there forever.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
That is SO cool! And Paula was always dark, and had those dark edges on her breast feathers. I managed to lose track of parentage in this hatch (I was a newbie). I saw who hatched from what egg so I know gender distribution, but then the chicks all tumbled together in the incubator despite my separators before I could mark anyone. So these pullets are either from Paula (5) or Jenny (2). I believe I'll be able to tell, but not sure. I was watching them today (they are 10 weeks old), and they all seem dark, with some more buttery colored hackles, and others essentially cream (no yellowish on hackles), but dark. The crests are almost all nearly black. One girl already has the black markings on the chest feathers (it took a while for them to show up on Paula). Of interest, a few of the boys are darker than the others (again, not sure of parentage - there was only one boy from Paula, so I'll have to see if I can work out if he's hers). I'm not keeping any boys in this earlier group, may or may not keep one or both of the boys in Lissa's group. (Not a lot of room for extra boys around here, and even if there were, the combs of the boys in the older group are almost all nightmarishly crooked - even for me, and I'm not a comb stickler!)

I was just going to use Paula and Jenny's girls for crosses with Naked Necks and/or BCMs, but now you have me wanting to cross some of them back with Dumbledore to see what I'll get. Of course, there is the overlay of breeding for resistance to Marek's... I guess we'll see, but wouldn't that be cool to have dark CLs as a project bird type!

(We'll see what Lissa's girls look like as they grow - no pullets from her in this older group, but 4 in the 2.5 week olds.)

- Ant Farm

Edit to add: I should point out that Paula's girls had poor auto sexing markings. I could tell they were female, but incomplete or broken head vees. So this really would be a side project (of course, you'd likely lose auto sexing anyway in a black CL - for that matter, I wonder if there's any link). Lissa's girls look great so far, Lissa herself is well so far, and so those will be the birds I use for the main CLs going forward...

 

[PDPercherons]

Now that is very very interesting. Wonder if these Tim girls are like that. Being dark and all, yet beautifully cream hackles. Hmmm. I like the dark crested hens, but prefer the pale hens with a very salmon pink chest.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

I wonder if a dark/black CL would ever end up as a variant in the SOP similar to the discussion of the white/sport ones...

(...she said delusionally...

)

Well, since I'm only really breeding for myself, and not representing myself as a breeder or selling eggs/chicks, I suppose I could do this with my CLs...

(Of course, it's actually looking like I have dark birds all over the place, so it may be inevitable!)

- Ant Farm

 

[sol2go]

here is the melanistic one at a week old

From the bottom right of the 4 girl pic? She looks much lighter here.
Very cute chick pic.

 

[sol2go]

Whoo Hoo --
I sure love your Joan Jett! -- There was a beautiful Jett CL owned by Anne Norman of the CL Club back in '12 -- and we knew so little about CLs back in those days, but that Jett is represented in the coloring pages of the 'Cream Lebars at Diamond K' website, hence she is immortal. It's interesting how coloring is the new past time now - I see coloring books in grocery stores. Just got backl from a trip to Toledo - and they were there, and they are here in TX (but then I consider WalMart superstor a grocery) . And on the subject of world views -- has anyone heard of the bubble quiz?

But to refocus on the issue at hand.

For years I have been saying that my flock has a lot of Eumelanin. Especially compared to flocks of some others I see photos of. Had two cockerels that demonstrated it I thought:

The cockerel in the foreground showing the darker pigment- the one in the background showing the lighter....and both sharing the same male parent but from different hens. Although I had planned to grow them both out to compare adult plumage they both developed crooked combs - so they had to give up their place in the world to other chicks.

Due to line/breeding in breeding I had something happen that I think is just remarkable... I have my original CL hen from 2012 -- and in my mind she set the standard for the breed (pertaining to my needs and expectations - very blue eggs, plenty of them -- and the correct CL appearance for me -- with the exception that she may have too strong 'black accents' in her plumage'.

I bred her to one of her sons from the very first CL hatch I did. Then from a son of that hatch (theoretically her 3/4 her gentics) I bred her to her then grandson. Of the eggs I set for that hatch, ...(theoretically 7/8 her genetics) -- I got only 1 chick!!!!

But I was so amazed at the result -- I thought I was going to be cloning Robin -- but instead I got a black CL chick -- and I have no doubt that it is from a blue CL egg -- and not one of my Isbars, and I know the exact pedigree if you will.

So I went to the chicken calculator and found out how that could be possible. Now you know chickens feathers are white -- and the pigments added are either red or black -- There are some recessive blacks - but one gene easily available on Henk's chicken calculator gave me --> 'Wild farbig' - no picture available. " Thought that wild farbig just sounded so exotic I did some more research and used google translate to go from the german to english. -- There is some interesting stuff on wild farbig in 'the classroom in the coop' I may put my chick pict there for some questions to the world-class experts that hang out there.... Henk, Sigrid, Warslaw, KazJaps and sometimes Grant Brereton is on that forum -- but here is my amazing chick:


obviously I'm talking about the foreground chick -- the background is an OEGB that I got at the local feed store -- so she wouldn't have to be an only child -- and she is about 2-3 weeks younger than the batch of chicks ahead of her.

Dark beak, dark legs and dark down.... I keep thinking it is a she -- but that presupposes that a cream legbar wild farbig male would still have a head spot -- (based on the barring of BPRs)-

farbig BTW translates to 'partridge' -- and the Europen 'partridge' is our 'duckwing' if memory serves. (sorry just flew back to TX today -- and the journey started at about 2AM this morning so I'm really tired.

From what I have been researching -- Eumelanin - the black pigment - that I call melanin for short is Incomplete dominant... That means that unless there are two copies, it isn't fully expressed, however, one copy will influence the coloration. Although Punnett never spoke of how the melanin gene should appear in the CL lineup -- the presence of the gene in one copy could explain (IMO) the dark versus light crest on the female, the females that have the black edging on the salmon breasts etc.

The chick got it from Robin -- who must be (these gene symbols are from memory from reading before I left town for the funeral so correct me if my letters are scrambled oh you gene experts...) -- Ml/ml+ She passed Ml to her son and the father passed ml+ - so that was F1 generation -- In F2 either she or the son passed the Ml and the other parent passed the ml+

Son since there were no two copies -- it behaved in an incomplete dominant way -- easiest said perhaps as influencing the plumage -- for example the darker of the two cockerels above probably is Ml/ml+ according to my theory -- and the lighter one is ml+/ml+

Now She is an F3 and got Ml/Ml from both parents....and so being dominant is makes here appear black.

anyway that is my working hypothesis -- If I wanted blacks I could raise her and breeder her back to dad -- and get the results according to punnets square.

so everyone that got eggs from me/ chickens and chicks over the years -- if Robin is mom (and her eggs never were good hatching eggs for shipment -- mostly it was the other hens that had successes in mailed eggs....) -- you may have the Ml gene in your flock -- and people with dark CLs have it -- I beleve that all these genes have different expression strengths. I realize too that some folks think that the Cream gene behaves the same way that an incomplete dominant gene behaves -- in that they can see the influence of that recessive.

Can't way to see this one grow up --


Fire Ant Farm -- it wouldn't suprise me if Dumbledore gave Joan Jett a strongly expressing copy of Ml --

Hi ChicKat,

That is wild. I hope it is a pullet so you can confirm a blue egg gene.
Hope to hear what anyone else has to say about this, especially in the Classroom. Regardless of the factors, it seems like another breeder should have had a more or less spontaneous solid black chick show up, as any breeding pair could have both contributed a double dose of eumelanin. I wonder if the line breeding stirred up something else?

 

[ChickChuck22]

I love my cream leggie girls! They are just the sweetest things! When it's feed time in the morning, one of them always flies up onto my shoulder! But the most amazing thing about them is their productivity! None of them have ever had a day off, I can always find three beautiful blue/green eggs in the nestbox, they lay better than my white leghorn!

If I could only have one breed of chicken, it would, hands down, be the cream legbar