Cream Legbars

[OKVet]

These birds would do well in your climate, way better than in mine. Heat does not bother them at all.

They do very well in the Oklahoma heat, it doesn't seem to bother them a bit.

 

[Bantambird]

Here's Esther again, and her future 4H pullet, Penelope!

 

[shorechickies]

This chick is a cross between our CCL roo and Birchen Marans hen. Hoping for a pullet so we can have some olive colored eggs, however the stance it has sometimes makes me nervous I read on another thread though that a CCL and birchen Marans should've resulted in a red sex link chick?? Any input appreciated!

 

[OneMountainAcres]

This chick is a cross between our CCL roo and Birchen Marans hen. Hoping for a pullet so we can have some olive colored eggs, however the stance it has sometimes makes me nervous I read on another thread though that a CCL and birchen Marans should've resulted in a red sex link chick?? Any input appreciated!

I'm guessing it's a little boy. It would only have been a sex link cross if the hen was the CCL and the roo was the Marans. In that case, all boys would be barred but since your roo was the CCL, he would've passed the barring gene to all offspring.

 

[shorechickies]

I'm guessing it's a little boy. It would only have been a sex link cross if the hen was the CCL and the roo was the Marans. In that case, all boys would be barred but since your roo was the CCL, he would've passed the barring gene to all offspring.

Thank you, that makes sense! I usually don't cross breed, they are just all together for winter and I threw some eggs in the bator. I think he is a he also! We shall see.

 

[Bantambird]

I actually cross birchen Marans with cream legbars to make olive eggers for sale. So far, I haven't noticed much red... But I sell the crosses. In legbars sexing is related to the head spot, but I am unsure if that is still the case in crossing them. Still, I get some with and without crests, and some with and without feathered legs, it's a fun cross!

 

[windyridgefarm]

I cross a Cream Legbar roo x a Black Copper Marans hen then backcross the barred hens to a Black Copper Marans Roo to make black sexlinked dark Olive Eggers. or with a Black Ameraucana Roo to make black sexlinked light olive Eggers. This year I will do the cross with a Black Ameraucana hen to get barred hens for black sexlinked blue Eggers next year or could use production Greys (Barred white egg layer) but will get light blue eggs often called Sapphires.

 

[GaryDean26]

So...our first Cream Legbar Chicks from the 2011 GFF breeding pens were two pullets and two cockerels. One pullet had down markings that were much darker than the other. One cockerel was nearly yellow and the other was a charcoal color (See below).



I was surprised to see such variation in the group. I expected a "breed" to have uniform down color. So two months later when a breeder that we worked with early on hatch 7 cockerel and a pullet we asked for her to save us the lightest and darkest cockerel so that we could get a better grasp on what was going on with the chick down. The two that we got are below.



We photo document the down colors and how each bird feathered out. We also did a lot of research on in the process got our hands on a 1947 publication in the Journal of Genetics written by the developer of the Legbar Breed. He indicated that the first year of breeding he crossed English Brown Leghorns and imported hatching egg from a high production Dutch Brown Leghorn strain. In the 2nd year of breeding the Dutch Brown Leghorns with the F1 birds. He noted these two down types kept records on them too. He was hatching about 20 times as many chicks as all that he concluded was that the light down type was a wild type primary color pattern from the English Leghorns and the dark down type was a wild type primary color patter from the Dutch Leghorns. The dark type was dominant and the light was recessive. For auto-sexing he noted that the pullets has more distinct stripes. While the stripes were not as distinct on the pullets of the lighter type he noted that the lighter cockerels made a greater distinction between the boys and girls.

Here is an image from the article in the Journal of Generics that was used to show the different down types. (dark on the left, light on the right)



I felt that standardizing on a down color in my line would make it more consistent. Since everyone I was comparing photos with had the dark down type it looked like the light down type would probablly be all but lost in a generation to two since it was recessive. I wanted to standardize on the light type since recessive genes are easier to fix than dominant genes. I also wanted a visual marker on my line to distinguish it from other lines. However the only cockerel that I ever breed from the four cockerels in my original study was the charcoal black chicks (Liam Below). My foundation cockerels Liam, Ice, and Blaze all threw fairly uniform chick down color even when paired with a wide rage of hens (see below). They all were distinct from each other though with Liam and Ice being variations of the dark down type and Blaze the a lighter down type (but not the really yellow make chicks like my original light cockerel in the first photo).



My best hen in my flock is a grand daughter of Blaze out of one of Blaze's sons and one of Blaze's half sisters. She came off her molt about 10 days before anyone else in our flock so we know who's eggs we were getting everyday even though we don't have a trap nest and weren't isolating hens. They hatch a few days ago and I was very happy with the results. They were all really big cunchy chicks. That was not the case with the cockerel she was paired with last year. Last year we got a wide range of down colors and a lot of poor down marking. This hatch had great markings and surprising enough 100% light cockerels. See below. Note: the Black chicks are Blue Bonnets (Breda X Legbars), the pullets in the middle is out of the 2nd lady in the flock to come off of her molt (Half sister to the other legbars). The three cockerels and the pullet at the top are full siblings.



So...I am very happy to see that this years pairing of my best hen is off to a better start than last year's. We only kept a single pullet from the line that my best hen is from last year and that pullet wasn't as good as the birds I got from my non-paired flock of hens.

 

[Bantambird]

That's awesome news!

 

[SummerMeadow]

Are Cream Legbar eggs darker than Americauna eggs? We currently have Americauna and I'm wondering if I should add a few Cream Legbar to the mix.