Cream Legbars

[GaryDean26]

If you have to use close relations, then Son over Mothers and Father over Daughter is the best way to do things.

Children, Grandchildren, Great Granchildren, can be breed back to foundation stock and the level of inbreeding only is about half the level that results from breed brother to sister over the same period of time.

At any rate you will want to bring in new blood after several generations to maintain the a strong flock.

Two simple plans are 3-in 1-out breeding which was developed by cock fighting breeders and rolling-mating that was developed by farmers and used to breed family flocks.

The 3-in 1-out would breed your best cockerel back to your best hen. Hatch 20 from the pairing and breed the best cockerel back to the foundation hen, then repeat for 3 generations. The same thing would be done in the second pen only your foundation cockerel would have the best 1-2 pullets breed back to the original cockerel for three generations. Then hatch and selection a new "Foundation" pair. You take the best cockerel from the line that has had cockerels breed back and the best pullet from the line that has had pullets breed back and you cross the two lines. Then you breed back for another three generations, cross and start over.

The Rolling mating simply puts all the hens in one pen and all the pullets in another pen. Your best cockbird is breed to the pullets and the best cockerel is breed to the hens. The following year you do the same thing. Put all the hens in one pen with your best cock bird and all the hens in a pen with the best cockerel.

New blood can be brought in periodically with either plan.

 

[KPenley]

So I have a question for those of you that are breeding with only one line of genetics if that makes sense. I currently have 2 hens, the mothers of my 2 cockerels that are now of breeding age, I also have the sisters to these cockerels(the daughters to the mothers). I had planned on keeping the sisters in the breeding pen but recently thought it might be better if I put the sisters in a separate pen  to hold on to as extras or backup hens just incase something happens. I was thinking it might be better to mate my boys to their mothers and hatch out the daughters to these boys and use those to to pen with the boys in the main pen. That way the boys are mating mothers and daughters. Does that sound like something I should do or does it not matter if they mate brother and sister?

*whoops, Mr C beat me to it *

Parent/ offspring pairings are pretty much always recommended over sibling matches. But sometimes you have to work with what you've got. And there are times that sibling matches can be used to determine recessive traits in a breed.

Do you still have the rooster that fathered the cockerels? If so, I'd match the hens to your best cockerel and the rooster with the pullets.

If not, I'd still pair the hens with the best cockerel. Their daughters would stay in the pen and be bred back to their father, creating a strain eventually. At some point down the road a cockerel from your other pen could be brought in for "new" blood.

If you can not find a new cockerel for the pullets ( sisters of the cockerels), you can use one of the cockerels you choose not to put in with the hens. Then next generation, choose one of the offspring cockerels to match with the pullets/hens ( going back to parent offspring instead of sibling pairings). You could at this time create a third pen using the father cockerel with his daughter pullets. Just be prepared for recessive genes (sometimes hidden traits) to pop up, and would you please share them with us? Best wishes!

 

[sol2go]

Interesting. I find my Black Copper Marans are super late to maturity- like 8 months to lay. This is more than likely a line tendency than a breed tendency. Most people I talk to say BCM are late to maturity.

thanks for the note Rinda. The FBCM came from the same breeder, who had 3 different lines. It will be interesting to see the time frame and product from the other two.

I also have Blue Copper Marans from a Wade Jean line in California, and POL was about 28 weeks as I recall. The Blue's eggs are almost as dark as the FBCM.

On topic, what is the POL range for your CL's? And what have you been able to do to improve the blue egg color?

 

[blackbirds13]

Quote:
Off topic question -
Would you mind if I asked who in Cali you got the blues from? YOu can PM me if need be. Thanks.

Both my Marans and Legbars lay at about 24 weeks give or take. I had one LEgbar that laid a single egg at about 21 weeks but then waited a week or so to lay another.
My eggs are a paler blue than I'd like but they seem typical and on target for the breed from what I see. This year I hope to keep from my breeding pen girls that lay a good size egg and are larger in size themselves. I am looking at egg color but not sure what to do to improve other than choose the hens whose eggs I prefer color wise each year. I have some Rees line birds but have to wait on the color for several months yet. I have not seen a whole lot of very dark saturated blue eggs anywhere online for this breed.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

thanks for the note Rinda. The FBCM came from the same breeder, who had 3 different lines. It will be interesting to see the time frame and product from the other two.

I also have Blue Copper Marans from a Wade Jean line in California, and POL was about 28 weeks as I recall. The Blue's eggs are almost as dark as the FBCM.

On topic, what is the POL range for your CL's? And what have you been able to do to improve the blue egg color?

I'm kind of in transition with my BCMs. I lost almost my entire flock last winter, I'm down to 2 hens and have sourced some chicks/eggs from some other breeders to get a comeback. The rooster I have has tried to flog me several times, as soon as I have a replacement he goes. I'm not thrilled with his conformation, either. Got him at the Shawnee Show in December as a chick. Of the 3 I bought 2 were keepers and 1 of those died so I'm kind of stuck until these grow up.

On the CLs, I've not tracked it closely but I feel average is about 24 weeks. I'm not working on egg color right now except to keep it the same. I am weeding out heterozygous Oo blue egg layers as apparently my foundation rooster only had one blue egg gene, and now it is spread into my flock.

I have two very nice boys from another breeder that will go into the new Cream Legbar pen I am building. My neighbor gave me his large rabbit hutch, I am going to convert it into three quarantine pens and start penning and hatching from my CL hens which all have numbered bands now. Then comes the waiting game while I wait for the pullets to grow out and start to lay. Very slow and frustrating.

This is their new pen, I still have to fix the gates and make some modifications to the 8ft x 8 ft coop.

 

[blackbirds13]

So I have a question for those of you that are breeding with only one line of genetics if that makes sense. I currently have 2 hens, the mothers of my 2 cockerels that are now of breeding age, I also have the sisters to these cockerels(the daughters to the mothers). I had planned on keeping the sisters in the breeding pen but recently thought it might be better if I put the sisters in a separate pen to hold on to as extras or backup hens just incase something happens. I was thinking it might be better to mate my boys to their mothers and hatch out the daughters to these boys and use those to to pen with the boys in the main pen. That way the boys are mating mothers and daughters. Does that sound like something I should do or does it not matter if they mate brother and sister?

I'm thinking I'll do some form of line breeding and keeping a closed flock pretty much after this year. I see no reason to add any new birds with what I have on hand now... Nice to have you near so if I do have to outsource I can look to you!

since you have some of my stock. If you need a couple more girls I'll be downsizing starting next month and really don't think I'll be shipping too much. I only have a couple that I've already promised out and I want to get down to 4-6 of what I currently have.

I would take the son to the mothers and keep the daughters separate as a first choice but I think everyone here pretty much mated together what they got when the breed first arrived so there was a lot of 'inbreeding' at first. I will probably do the same with some of the Rees line chicks I currently have growing out. I don't think it will 'hurt' if you breed the sister to the brother for one generation but I would tag those birds and see what happens going forward. You may get the best of what's in there, including the recessives or you may get a hot mess. I think if you breed both boys separately that might help also to diversify a bit.
I have spoke with a breeder who has been line breeding his birds with no outsourcing for about 10-15 years. He says if you keep good records and switch the birds as needed there is very little need to outsource frequently but record keeping is tantamount. He could literally tell me who sired who for gens.

There are several methods you can use, depending on space so you should do some reading up on the various methods as some of them I still have to re-read to remember all the necessary steps and requirements. I'm still debating pen set ups going forward.

 

[blackbirds13]

Quote:
That's sweet! If my hubby was more interested I'd lasso him into doing one like this for me.

 

[KPenley]

On topic, what is the POL range for your CL's?  And what have you been able to do to improve the blue egg color?

If you were asking everyone...in general my CL pullets start to lay at 24 weeks, but I have had some in this generation start at 18-19 weeks. I agree with Rinda that it probably depends on the line and also with time of year they are hatched. In terms of blue egg color, Punnett matched his barely blue egg layers together generation after generation, choosing birds from the bluest eggs to match together each time. Over the course of years, the blue intensified.

 

[chicken pickin]

Thanks everyone for your opinions on the different methods on breeding.

Unfortunately I do not have my original Cockbird that fathered the younger birds I have. So I am currently working with the 2 mothers mated back to the 2 sons. Little hiccup I ran into was I had planed to start off mating my lighter cockerel to the mothers to test mate him first but my darker cockerel jumped the fence over the past few days so he decided on his own that he gets to go first.

I should probably get some leg bands so I can track who belongs to who each generation.

Blackbirds I may take you up on some new pullets if I decide to hang on to the second cockerel. I would also love to hear how your Rees boys look as they start to mature. I haven't decided what I'm doing with my light boy yet especially now that his brother the dark boy jumped the gun on my breeding plan. The lighter boy seems to be picking up the same dislike for feed containers and water buckets as his father that got him culled. I'm hoping it is a short lived phase.

 

[KPenley]

Cream Puff (18 weeks), please bear in mind that she is pretty young and needs to grow in more...plus the flash made her feathers look red (I guess the camera picked up on the red part of the taupe)...and her primary feather is sticking out because I upset it when I dropped her when my daughter scared her with the flash.