Cream Legbars

[sol2go]

A friend hatched some white cream legbars from me. Can anyone help me with determining sex? I'm thinking male

If the offspring has good auto-sexing characteristics, the males look about like this picture, and the females still have eye-liner and racing stripes (although the down is yellow and sort of caramel, not the typical wild-type colors).

If they have poor auto-sexing traits, then this could be an example of a male, or female...

 

[GaryDean26]

That was my strategy, which I failed to adhere to. I've resigned myself to a "full house" for awhile, working towards smaller numbers in the future.

You had such beautiful Marans. The offspring I hatched from your flock lay wonderfully dark eggs. I hope you found homes for some of your Marans roosters?

Thanks...Unfortunately the only new homes that any of our Rooster found was with the elderly farmer across the street who doesn't breed them and doesn't let anything leave his property once he takes it in.

 

[chrissyr]

If the offspring has good auto-sexing characteristics, the males look about like this picture, and the females still have eye-liner and racing stripes (although the down is yellow and sort of caramel, not the typical wild-type colors).  

If they have poor auto-sexing traits, then this could be an example of a male, or female...

thank you

 

[Sylvester017]

We have 8 Marans pullets in with the batch of 35 Cream Legbars chicks, but culled all the Marans cockerels so that we wouldn't be tempted to try to keep multiple breeds going. The more I learned about traditional poultry keeping the more I was convinced that I would get further with my breeding (and simplify the flock management) if I would just keep one breed. So the plan is to just rebuild the Cream Legbar flock. If we get any breeding quality hens we may source a cockerel in 3-4 years for a side project, but for now we are cutting back and sticking to the one breed plan.

Does this single breed project mean that you are no longer doing Blue Breda? I think your single breed project is an intelligent choice but I was wondering if you canned your Blue project as well?

 

[Sylvester017]

Perhaps we should start or find a Pavlovskaya thread here. LOL I recently purchased 4 Pavie eggs from the same friend who has the whites. She has the beautiful orange/brown birds as well. Those eggs were more white/cream and shaped more pointy on one end like the Sultan eggs. They are a little larger though.

If you are interested in some hatching eggs from the Orange/browns let me know. Her white pavies won't be ready to lay for quite a while now.

Since I don't have Pavies I don't feel qualified to start a thread on them. I am still researching them. Knowing they are rare and beautiful is a plus. I need to get feedback on their production - it doesn't have to be prolific but I heard they lay only around 50-60 eggs/year. I can only have 5 hens and am waiting until next year or whenever AI is contained before I order birds. Wish I could hatch eggs but I'm only zoned for 5 and would have trouble finding homes for surplus chicks. The golden/black variety is gorgeous. I stay away from white birds that don't do well to stay pretty in our free-range yard. Thank you for the info!

 

[GaryDean26]

Does this single breed project mean that you are no longer doing Blue Breda? I think your single breed project is an intelligent choice but I was wondering if you canned your Blue project as well?

Along with the 35 Cream Legbars and 8 Black Copper Marans Pullets we have two Blue Breda and 3 Splash Breda. At this point I am guessing we have one Blue Cockerel and the rest are all pullets. They may all turn out to be cockerels though. The Breda keep me guessing until they are over 3 months old. The Breda are all full sibling and all the offspring of full siblings so they are not a sustainable line. We just threw them in because we were banking all the future of our flock on one hatch and should all the Cream Legbars not hatch we wanted other options.
I say that but the truth is that Blue Breda are just the cutest chicks we have ever seen and we wanted one more group of cute chicks.

We may end up with our favorite pair of Marans hens as pets and our favorite pair of Breda Hens as pets. We didn't keep any of the Baque Hens though. We hatch 17 basque and they all went to a new home where they will be working into the breeding program of a man in South Texas that is building a laying flock of Baque hens. We also got rid of our Cream Leghorn Project. We had a sport Cream Brown Leghorn Cockerel that was picked up as a chicks from Tractor Supply. We were going to use him this spring to work on some Cream Light Brown Leghorns so that we could understand the color better. We also had our own Frankenstein chicken that was a mix of Cochin, Siklie, Leghorn, and Breda that we were selecting to looked similar to a Burmese Hen less the dwarf legs. Everyone that came to our farm wanted to leave with some of those project birds but we never let any leave the farm. That project too has been dropped. We were spreed too thin in too many different directions. Breeding chickens is a numbers game. To improve a breed you have to grow out hundreds if not thousands of chicks. At the rate were were going it was going to take us 25 years to get to thousands of chicks in any one project. By going to just one breed we can cut the years in half. We also can cut our grow out groups in half with one breed that will allow us to better care for them too. As it was there was always something that we were neglecting.

 

[Sylvester017]

Along with the 35 Cream Legbars and 8 Black Copper Marans Pullets we have two Blue Breda and 3 Splash Breda. At this point I am guessing we have one Blue Cockerel and the rest are all pullets. They may all turn out to be cockerels though. The Breda keep me guessing until they are over 3 months old. The Breda are all full sibling and all the offspring of full siblings so they are not a sustainable line. We just threw them in because we were banking all the future of our flock on one hatch and should all the Cream Legbars not hatch we wanted other options.
I say that but the truth is that Blue Breda are just the cutest chicks we have ever seen and we wanted one more group of cute chicks.

We may end up with our favorite pair of Marans hens as pets and our favorite pair of Breda Hens as pets. We didn't keep any of the Baque Hens though. We hatch 17 basque and they all went to a new home where they will be working into the breeding program of a man in South Texas that is building a laying flock of Baque hens. We also got rid of our Cream Leghorn Project. We had a sport Cream Brown Leghorn Cockerel that was picked up as a chicks from Tractor Supply. We were going to use him this spring to work on some Cream Light Brown Leghorns so that we could understand the color better. We also had our own Frankenstein chicken that was a mix of Cochin, Siklie, Leghorn, and Breda that we were selecting to looked similar to a Burmese Hen less the dwarf legs. Everyone that came to our farm wanted to leave with some of those project birds but we never let any leave the farm. That project too has been dropped. We were spreed too thin in too many different directions. Breeding chickens is a numbers game. To improve a breed you have to grow out hundreds if not thousands of chicks. At the rate were were going it was going to take us 25 years to get to thousands of chicks in any one project. By going to just one breed we can cut the years in half. We also can cut our grow out groups in half with one breed that will allow us to better care for them too. As it was there was always something that we were neglecting.

We tried a Cuckoo Marans and our friends had a couple BCMs and weren't impressed with their personalities - kinda bossy in a mixed breeds flock - probably ok in a flock of larger dual purpose breeds but not good around our Silkie bantams. We were disappointed in our eggs being lighter than the chocolate shown in photos - sometimes an egg was layed spotted, sometimes half brown/half light brown, sometimes solid color, sometimes huge spots - really weird all from the same hen.

We were mis-sent a Breda cockerel, long story, but we found him a good home with friends on a farm. He was instantly friendly toward us from day one, outgoing, curious, unafraid. We used another breeder within our State to get a pullet because we liked the cockerel so-o-o-o much and she is every bit as friendly and immediately outgoing and curious - not the spooky jitteryness like Ameraucanas tend to be. I thought Ameraucanas were the sweetest, which they are in spite of their kooky spooky jittery alert wariness, but Bredas are ideal in the calm yet outgoing friendly dispositions. They will walk up to you almost instantly to take treats from you where it takes the wary Ameraucana longer to warm up - Amers are not very active in flock politics but they make great sentinels/guardians always watching and reacting to noises or aerial predators. Not sure how predator-savvy the Breda will be since she has a few weeks of quarantine yet.

Your soundness to choose one breed as a project will definitely payoff - the hard part is choosing which breed to devote attention to. The Cream Leghorn sounded interesting to me since I really like Legs. I had to re-home my Buff Leg and White Leg since they became too assertive to one being very aggressive toward her flockmates. My folks raised Legs so it's hard for me to leave them out of my backyard flock - the most prolific breed I've ever had. We've opted for the non-combative non-aggressive breeds - less eggs, but more peace in the backyard.

 

[GaryDean26]

I still can't believe the Breeder didn't send you and the people that got your Breda Pullet free replacements (they pay the shipping) since they mixed up the order and send you the cockerel and the people that wanted the cockerel your pullet.

Yes...the hard part was choosing which breed to keep. The decision took almost 2 years. It really just came down to which breed I thought I could do the most with. We got really lucky to get a Sport Cream Leghorn cockerel and it seemed a waste to let that project go, but it was really just to support the Cream Legbar knowledge so we decided to keep the main thing the main thing. The Marans were the breed that we had been working with longest and we were just starting to see success in that breed after 4 years, but we had multiple bloodlines for that breed which made it as much work as multiple breeds so we stuck with the Cream Legbars that were well set up with a three pen system of our own developing bloodline that will work perfectly with a single breed plan.

 

[sol2go]

I still can't believe the Breeder didn't send you and the people that got your Breda Pullet free replacements (they pay the shipping) since they mixed up the order and send you the cockerel and the people that wanted the cockerel your pullet.

Yes...the hard part was choosing which breed to keep. The decision took almost 2 years. It really just came down to which breed I thought I could do the most with. We got really lucky to get a Sport Cream Leghorn cockerel and it seemed a waste to let that project go, but it was really just to support the Cream Legbar knowledge so we decided to keep the main thing the main thing. The Marans were the breed that we had been working with longest and we were just starting to see success in that breed after 4 years, but we had multiple bloodlines for that breed which made it as much work as multiple breeds so we stuck with the Cream Legbars that were well set up with a three pen system of our own developing bloodline that will work perfectly with a single breed plan.

would you mind elaborating on the sport cream leghorn cockerel?
Any pics?

 

[GaryDean26]

would you mind elaborating on the sport cream leghorn cockerel?
Any pics?

These are the only two photos I have access to of him at the moment.

I had a non-crested Cream colored Cream Legbar Pullet that I wanted to cross with Brown Leghorns. I wanted to Isolate the cream color in a non-barred line so that I could see how it varied from individual to individual on non-barred birds. I ordered some show line Single Combed Light Brown Leghorns eggs for my birthday present the fall of 2013. We only got one to hatch and it was a pullet that we lost as a juvenile. In the Spring of 2014 we were at the Tractor Supply and they just got in a batch of Straight Run Single Combed Light Brown Leghorns so we took 6 of them home with us. We ended up with two cockerels and four pullets. One of the cockerels came out Cream. I couldn't have been more excited with my luck.