Cream Legbars

[dretd]

More pictures of the confusing chick (it has clear eye liner which confuses me most).

Wow, the body and eyeliner say girl, the top of the head and neck say boy. I would be very confused, too. It seems to me that we are seeing quite a few JR line chicks that are very pale and washed-out and ambiguous to sex.

I recently sold a little cockerel to a lady who had purchase CL Pullet chicks from a feed store (from Meyers Hatchery). She sent me photos of one of the three who is much lighter and the down is blurry--not dissimilar to your chick, certainly not obviously girl like the other two and it was sexed as girl at the hatchery.... If the chick were in my flock I would call it a male but I am wondering in the JR line if she did not emphasize down color since that is not something that is judged at show and the girls are frequently atypical. The older females seem to have stronger barring than what we have typically over here so maybe the barring gene in her line is strong enough to override the wild type down and ends up blurring out the stripe over the back of the head and neck. Bad for chick ID but good in the show ring?

If it were in my flock, I would mark that chick for future reference and grow it out to see what it ended up looking like. If you could do a photo essay on it as it feathers in and keep us posted, it would be most helpful and educational!

 

[ChicKat]

Hi Kimberly. I hope you feel better soon!

The girls are typical brownish/tannish wild type chicks with a very distinctive dark brown stripe that starts with a 'V' at the beak and runs all the way to the rump. There are cream/tan colored chipmunk stripes that run on either side of the dark brown back strip and are generally outlined by seal-brown to black fine lines. I see a head spot on my girls more times than not and it can be quite bright, but always contained within the borders of the darker brown head stripe. My boys are variable with about 1/3 being the lighter downed variant looking creamy-tannish, about 1/2 are a medium to light silvery-slatey (grey tomes instead of cream tones) and the remainder are a darker charcoal-slate grey with or without cinnamon color. Those last ones are the ones that can have chipmunk stripes that are blurry but can be confusing. I only will use the lighter and silvery-slatey variants for breeding. Down color/pattern is my second cull (the first being egg color/shape/size). I am very conscientious about maintaining good autosexing in my flock--probably the most important feature of the breed IMO.

Recent basket of girls, the one on the left has an obvious headspot. You can see there is variation in the color of the brown, but it is always brown--not grey. The brown stripe along the back should be broad and very crisp.:

Group of boys from last year--note some have a bright headspot and some of them its so diffuse that it doesn't look like a spot but more of a frosting. You can see a few with a light blurry chipmunk stripes. The Brits have down in their SOP and the boys say it is much paler in tint than the girls, the pattern being blurred and washed out from head to rump and describe it as a pale silvery-slaty.

A different set of boys from this year--fewer boys with chipmunk stripes in this hatch.

Typical lighter downed boy. As a side note, if you look at his comb closely, you can see it is off center to his right at the back. He has a very large crest that was not obvious as a chick and his comb is indeed very wonky as an adult:

Picture of a female chick with a bright headspot. Notice how it is contained fully within the borders of the dark 'V'? Her tone is also tannish-brownish and her upper eyelids have the very dark Cleopatra eyeliner. The boys can have some eyeliner, too, but it is generally washed-out and pale in comparison to the girls and especially the upper lid is very pale in the boys.

Hope this helps

Superb explanation Dr. etd -- but I am wondering now-a-days -- since the brown leghorn has wild type without white headspot on females - if a headspot on females isn't an indication of good barring. The barring will differentiate the color from the brown leghorn females pattern-wise. -- White on females heads is mentioned as necessary in the UK I think, maybe in their SOP is where I read it. ---

Seems with boys -- we really do have differing types of down. ETA (boys with chipmunk stripes and boys without)

 

[dretd]

Quote: Thanks Kathy--yes I am thinking exactly that the head spot may indicate stronger barring. Are you thinking that it doesn't matter--I wasn't entirely sure based on your comment? I am thinking the British standard included the white headspot on the girls so it must be an important guide to get the adult plumage. Maybe the more clear the barring, the more the spot shows up on the wild type down? Or maybe its just that the majority of females back in the day had the headspot so they described it. But if that is the case and we are trying to breed to the ideal they invented, wouldn't that headspot be an important ingredient in the recipe to get the overall bird to be tasty eye-candy in the end?

The trick of it is that they also call for a "very dark brown, extending over the head, neck and rump" So they felt it important to say that is was not only brown, but qualified it with very and dark. And this is in the Silver Legbar down section (remembering that they say the cream should be as for Silver). All the chicks that I see posted that are washed out and lines between areas blurred and especially where the stripe isn't over the back of the neck are not what the originators of the breed thought was best.

I am still thinking it would be smart for us to Americanize the wording for the down pattern and include it somehow in the intro section of the SOP so that breeders will easily have that reference and we don't end up focusing so much on the final show quality look that we lose the autosexing ease in the chicks.

 

[caychris]

This is the first that I had heard that the female headspot was required. I wonder if breeding it out is what is causing autosexing issues. The issue is that with headspot makes autosexing females and a bit more challenging as are seeing many males with strong wild type coloring too.

I am very interested in this as Ill be hatching more CLB eggs soon and I did have a male that showed strong female markings with small headspot. (However he did have a silverish hue muting the markings)

The females were definite and eye liner seems to be the key ingredient that really starts to separate them

Im hatching from the same breeder which I have my current 09 week olds from and the girl is very brown in her feathering Im hoping that the salmon breast will improve after her first molt. Im hoping to get a little variety in the females too as 1 does not a good sampling make. The 2 boys are turning out very nice so far. even the slightly crooked comb one is appearing to straighten a little as he grows.

 

[ChicKat]

Thanks Kathy--yes I am thinking exactly that the head spot may indicate stronger barring. Are you thinking that it doesn't matter--I wasn't entirely sure based on your comment? I am thinking the British standard included the white headspot on the girls so it must be an important guide to get the adult plumage. Maybe the more clear the barring, the more the spot shows up on the wild type down? Or maybe its just that the majority of females back in the day had the headspot so they described it. But if that is the case and we are trying to breed to the ideal they invented, wouldn't that headspot be an important ingredient in the recipe to get the overall bird to be tasty eye-candy in the end?

The trick of it is that they also call for a "very dark brown, extending over the head, neck and rump" So they felt it important to say that is was not only brown, but qualified it with very and dark. And this is in the Silver Legbar down section (remembering that they say the cream should be as for Silver). All the chicks that I see posted that are washed out and lines between areas blurred and especially where the stripe isn't over the back of the neck are not what the originators of the breed thought was best.

I am still thinking it would be smart for us to Americanize the wording for the down pattern and include it somehow in the intro section of the SOP so that breeders will easily have that reference and we don't end up focusing so much on the final show quality look that we lose the autosexing ease in the chicks.

This is the first that I had heard that the female headspot was required. I wonder if breeding it out is what is causing autosexing issues. The issue is that with headspot makes autosexing females and a bit more challenging as are seeing many males with strong wild type coloring too.

I am very interested in this as Ill be hatching more CLB eggs soon and I did have a male that showed strong female markings with small headspot. (However he did have a silverish hue muting the markings)

The females were definite and eye liner seems to be the key ingredient that really starts to separate them

Im hatching from the same breeder which I have my current 09 week olds from and the girl is very brown in her feathering Im hoping that the salmon breast will improve after her first molt. Im hoping to get a little variety in the females too as 1 does not a good sampling make. The 2 boys are turning out very nice so far. even the slightly crooked comb one is appearing to straighten a little as he grows.

Here is why I am thinking that the headspot in the female is so important. For autosexing Punnett combined the brown leghorn with barring. So brown leghorn because he wanted the egg layer etc. Barring only added for autosexing. -- If you saw a brown leghorn chick side by side with a CL chick (talking female here now)-- only that tiny patch of white in the middle of the dark V on the head would let you know at that point it is a CL. Some judges have said that barring is something that needs to be more prominent on our females.

Although the Brit SOP says that the CL chick down should be like the silver it contradicts when Michael Pease said that the Cream Legbar down should be like the gold. It makes it really confusing -- however if the Cream Legbar is truly a gold based bird (which it should be ) s+/s+ then I would expect the Pease statement to be correct. Sigrid van Dort among others are not afraid to remark that errors are in the standards books of multiple countries -- and some of the errors are actually genetic impossibilities. I guess that is one thing that makes me a bit reluctant to put the down in the SOP....two conflicting experts.

The male to me is indicated by a headspot that is a huge (relatively) white blob.... so It does as you pointed out NOT remain contained within the V. This is the surefire way.

I see two kinds (or maybe 3) of male chicks. The ones from the Rees line pictured on the GFF website have no dorsal stripes and they have no distinct white blob. At first glance it would be easy to mistake them for other chicks. The kind that are on the plate from the genetics journal accompanying the article by Punnett - and a third kind that is kind of between the two. Strangely the things that we use -- like eye-liner are NEVER mentioned in the Brit literature. also surprising the head spot is mentioned on females and not on males - and for me it is the first indicator of males. But then all my chickens are fairly homozygous.

so caychris brings up a super super good point here -- different folks are autosexing on different cues. As both of you pointed out too -- the females are brown and the males have more a slate or silvery look....

Way back in 2012 there was a wave of belief that the white head hairs on a female should be bred out -- because it could confuse with white male head spot. That was before we were aware how they were emphasized in the Brit SOP.


This view shows he female with her tiny light patch in the center of the V - she is in the foreground, and behind her the white head blobs are males-- very definite very blobby

again the head V on the female and the white blob on the male are my 'tells'.


You can see in Punnett's plate that the 3-males have distinct dorsal stripes -- and in the color plate you can see the males all have white head spots.

I would be concerned that selecting for the wrong things could lessen the autosexing.

 

[blackbirds13]

The female head stripe will appear randomly until you formalize your breeders from what I could garner and what I see in images now. I think once you start breeding your birds with no out sourcing you can have a good idea of how important it is to You. I had a lot of heads spots in my females but no corelation to final plumage that I could decifer. While I remember the dicuzsion I don't remember a wave, per say. I think those early days were filled with a lot of very good debates and opinions and observations.
British breeders seem less interested in the head spot as they are with very light plumage in the male chicks. They do not really reference the eye liner. The Rees males seem to have issues with indistinct barring and I wonder if there is a correlation.
I'm one of those that go with down that reflects "silver"as opposed to gold for a cooler grayed adult plumage. I found that my chick down reflected the adult plumage. Slate not gray or gold worked for me. It is interesting the diversity that existed and still does.
I tried to select chicks with cooler lighter down and wider heads. For both color and type/size.
My 2 Rees girls have good and bad points. As a whole I prefer my birds to them but I think they could prove a boost if used appropriatley.
I really enjoy watching this breeds growth.

 

[ChicKat]

Thanks for your generosity - all of you kind folk who gave me ovations​

- as a result I got a PM from Rob Ludlow (Nifty-chicken) BYC founder/owner to tell me that I'm an ovations master and in the top 0.05% of garnering ovations. You are are the BEST group! I betcha that there are others out there that also got that email -- CP?, more? why not share. and again Thanks to you in the BYC community!

 

[chicken pickin]

Thanks for your generosity - all of you kind folk who gave me ovations​

- as a result I got a PM from Rob Ludlow (Nifty-chicken) BYC founder/owner to tell me that I'm an ovations master and in the top 0.05% of garnering ovations. You are are the BEST group! I betcha that there are others out there that also got that email -- CP?, more? why not share. and again Thanks to you in the BYC community!

Congrats ChicKat!!! It is an exciting thing.

Yes I did receive the same PM this morning. It put a smile my face. SO I also send a Thank You to all who have found any of my posts helpful.

 

[ChicKat]

Congrats ChicKat!!! It is an exciting thing.

Yes I did receive the same PM this morning. It put a smile my face. SO I also send a Thank You to all who have found any of my posts helpful.

Way to go - and well deserved!!!

 

[chicken pickin]

Way to go - and well deserved!!!

Thanks and you also!!! In my opinion really are the voice that keeps these Cream Legbar threads moving in the right direction with well thought out discussions, ideas, walkthroughs and so much more.

These CL threads are occupied by some great people, you are all what is making these disscussions so enjoyable and educating. I love being part of it all, I thank everyone for being kind and thoughtful in the way they post and welcoming everyone who posts here.