Cream Legbars

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flowerfaeiry said:
This is my only chick to hatch from some shipped eggs. The eggs were a nice blue color. I could easily see that she was female at hatch. She is about 6 weeks old now. Being my first legbar, I'm not sure what to expect, any comments on her color? Her feathers are so much softer than any others and she is very friendly. It is disappointing to only have one, with no one to compare her to.
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1 beats none! She is quite a cutie and I LOVE her 'budding' crest. She's a bit young to make any real judgments on but she does look like she is more gold than cream at this point. The standard does call for cream but if she turns out gold she will make a great layer of blue or blue-green eggs. I have few gold colored Legbars in my layers and they lay enormous eggs! Congrats!
 
So I am going to take an unusual step this month. I am only going to breed from one Cream Legbar pair. I am thinking of using just this pair because they fit my goal of creating the perfect backyard Cream Legbar. Many of my customers live in wooded sites. So being alert and able to fly up into the trees and away from foxes is a bonus. Comments and critiques are appreciated. I have better males to use, but I like the personality of this male. He is gentle and lets the ladies eat and drink while standing guard.





Sorry the pictures are not the best. Maryland has been having lots of snow and cloudy days. I do have lots of other pairs to choose from but I like these two. The photos don't show it (as all chicken photos are flawed) but both have very nice cream color with only the slightest touch of color on the cockerel. But I think that instead of trying to breed in large numbers, I am going to focus on specific traits such as personality and being adapted to the local environment.

Update since a couple of people have asked me: This is not the only pair I have. I actually have a decent sized flock. But one of my goals when I started with Cream Legbars was to create a bird that was suited to the "micro farms" that are becoming popular in the D.C. Metro. These are the homes in subdivisions that have 1-5 acres and can have cows, horses, chickens, etc. but still have all the conveniences of a city including FIOS. I am also lobbying the D.C. city council to change it's anti-chicken laws. So the idea is to create a Cream Legbar that is fully aware of the predators but gentle enough not to be spooked by noise. Plus it needs to lay a nice egg color, since people that pay multi-million dollars for their micro-farms want blue eggs. Color is important here, but personality and being adapted to the environment is priority.

My main idea is to just breed with this pair this Spring and then continue on with the other pairs maybe next year. In fact, I am still have a jumbo sized Cream Legbar project going. But I want to concentrate on the "urban Cream Legbar" first.
 
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DCchicken said:
So I am going to take an unusual step this month. I am only going to breed from one Cream Legbar pair. I am thinking of using just this pair because they fit my goal of creating the perfect backyard Cream Legbar. Many of my customers live in wooded sites. So being alert and able to fly up into the trees and away from foxes is a bonus. Comments and critiques are appreciated. I have better males to use, but I like the personality of this male. He is gentle and lets the ladies eat and drink while standing guard.





Sorry the pictures are the best. Maryland has been having lots of snow and cloudy days. I do have lots of other pairs to choose from but I like these two. The photos don't show it (as all chicken photos are flawed) but both have very nice cream color with only the slightest touch of color on the cockerel. But I think that instead of trying to breed in large numbers, I am going to focus on specific traits such as personality and being adapted to the local environment.
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I tried a bit of true free ranging with a group last year with some success and some failure. We live in one of those single blinking light country towns and have 13+ acres where we created a bit larger backyard (about 2-3 cleared acres) after our house fire 2 years ago by clearing up all the way to our pond so the birds (and our 5 year old) have a nice large un-treed grazing area with a good tree line as the neighbors are way out of sight and we have some nice wooded areas between us as we each have relatively large plots with another 800 wooded acres behind us. The girls did well but the rooster got lost to a predator and that may be an issue you want to think about. We have raccoons, fisher cats, coyotes and hawks to contend with on a regular basis. I did have a coop that I left un-penned for them to house themselves at night and hopefully the girls would lay their eggs there as I really did not want to do an easter egg hunt every day. It did work for the egg laying but a few of them loved roosting in the trees at night so I placed the coop under a small plot of trees we left standing. They are a flighty breed and seem to enjoy spending the night in the branches. I would go out at night and try to get them down and into the coop at first but gave up after a bit. They would also roost on top the dog kennel panels that I use for pens. I have some other small plots of trees that border the area we made more lawn-like which they also enjoyed. They seemed to do really well as free-rangers and foragers. I had one that pretty much just kept to herself for days at a time. You'd see her going back and forth across the yard and she'd go to the pond to drink and rarely ever came up to where the coop was. With 2 you may not have to do to much supplemental feeding but I kept their food stocked as I was not sure they'd be able to keep themselves going without it.

I know a lot of folks who single mate their best birds exclusively for their own purposes and use the others to sell hatching eggs to others, but keep their breeding pair separate and to themselves. I have thought about doing this later on this year as I make some more culling decisions.

Your pair looks fine with only a few issues but most of us have same or similar issues in our own flocks as we are all in the 'work in progress' stage with this bird. His wing bay looks clear but he does have some color on his shoulders and back and she has obvious cream hackles despite the black areas on her chest and they both look relatively young so they have quite a bit of growing yet to do.

I think it may be a good idea to have some spares in line just in case either of these get lost to predators. Have you thought about doing a trio as opposed to a pair to give the girls some companionship. I noticed they'd seemed to like having another companion besides the rooster when they were out there.

I'm planning on really downsizing this year to only the best of the best come the end of summer. I hope to cut my flock down to 1/2 of 1/3 of what I have now. I'm thinking just 2 roosters and no more than 8 hens over winter next year as opposed to the numbers I carried forward this past winter. I currently only have 2 breeds and will up that to 3 this next month but I don't intend to keep more than 3 or 4 breeds so I can really concentrate on the quality of each and also for easier bio-security so I think this year would be a good year to just pare down to the best birds that I have at this time. I've given myself enough to work with so hopefully it works out. I'm wanting to just work with only the ones with the best traits also.

Maryland is one of my favorite states. I was in the Marines with my current husband, and my ex and 2 eldest sons were and 1 still is in the Navy so lots of moving around. When I first came to America, Maryland was where I first lived. I think it's such a great state - the best of all worlds. I spent most of my time in PG and Frederick county while there. I still have my first American friend that lives there. I prefer the winters there to the ones here. My mother found it too cold, ever since we lived in England she has hated the cold and snow, in fact even Florida is too cold for her so they winter at the house in the Caribbean for the most part. If I close my eyes I can almost feel the warmth.
 
What a cute legbar. Love her little crest, but question. You said she was the only one to hatch from shipped eggs. How many eggs did you set and what kind of incubator? I'm also assumming from her size the eggs were shipped in winter?
Your post scared me. I just set 18 shipped cream legbar eggs and am hoping for more than one. Would love to have at least a 50% hatch rate.
 
dekel18042 said:
  What a cute legbar.  Love her little crest, but question. You said she was the only one to hatch from shipped eggs.  How many eggs did you set and what kind of incubator?  I'm also assumming from her size the eggs were shipped in winter?
    Your post scared me.  I just set 18 shipped cream legbar eggs and am hoping for more than one.  Would love to have at least a 50% hatch rate.
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cl "can be" hard to hatch sometimes but not always. Ive set 3 dozen shipped eggs in the past of various breeds. I got 4 out of 12, 4 out of 12, and 3 out of 12
 

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