Cream Legbars

[dikbiscuit]

Can someone please tell me why they are called 'legbars'? I'm just curious as to the origin/reason behind breed names.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

Can someone please tell me why they are called 'legbars'? I'm just curious as to the origin/reason behind breed names.

"Cream" is the recessive color gene that looks whitish, some birds lack this so the Gold base color shows through.

"leg" is harkening back to their brown leghorn ancestry.

"bar" is because they have the barring gene, someone can correct me if I'm wrong I'm remembering from Barred Plymouth Rocks in their ancestry.

 

[KPenley]

Can someone please tell me why they are called 'legbars'? I'm just curious as to the origin/reason behind breed names.

Sure. Autosexing, chickens to help farmers save money by identifying cockerels from pullets at hatch, were created in the early 1900's. The first Legbars , Gold and Silver-though the Silver were originally discarded, created by Punnett in the UK were the result of Brown Leghorns bred to Plymouth Barred Rocks. Once the line was stabilized he called them Leg from Leghorns and Bar from PBRs, Legbars.

*You beat me to it R

 

[dikbiscuit]

Thanks for the info guys. I thought it had something to do with some barred marking I just wasn't seeing on the legs.

 

[KPenley]

Thanks for the info guys. I thought it had something to do with some barred marking I just wasn't seeing on the legs.

The legs won't be barred. Do you mean the fluff and thighs? Maybe this will help???

I grabbed this pic from a few posts back. Have you had a chance to read the standard yet? Cream Legbars don't gave clear barring like a PBR since they have two copies of barring.

 

[GaryDean26]

 

[dretd]

I hatched my first home-bred set of chicks. Yay! I put both my cream cockerels in with the lot of hens so I do not know fathers but I can tell the hens with egg shape. Most of the eggs are from my two gold hens since (my maybe) cream girl kept sneaking off out of the yard to have her own private nest. Hers are due to hatch this weekend.

Experiment 1: Coincidentally, my Faverolles went broody just after I put the eggs in the incubator. So at lockdown I put 4 eggs under her from the incubator and one hatched out. At the end of the hatch, I put all 6 boys under Soleil and took back the one she hatched out which was a girl. This is the first time I have let her hatch any eggs. I want to see if the boys are more gentlemanly when raised as chickens. One of the roos is starting to stalk me and rush from behind. Not acceptable.



The 5 girls are in a brooder so I can handle them and hopefully tame them down a bit. They are so cute at this age

Now just the start of Experiment 2: does the weather have any influence on chick sex (stress is a known influence in the female's production of male vs female eggs)?

Observations:
-I hatched 5 girls and 6 boys from 21 eggs.
-I dated and numbered the eggs from oldest to freshest and kept track of which egg hatched out a boy or girl (laid from 4/27 to 5/10, set 5/09--popped one in a day late--, hatched 5/30)
- 5 girls eggs were laid 5/1-5/4 (5/1,5/2,5/3,5/3,5/4)
- 6 boys eggs were laid 5/3-5/9 (5/3,5/4,5/5,5/6,5/6,5/8,5/9) note: this includes one boy that pipped into a blood vessel and died in shell
Why the difference? It could be random. I did not eggtopsy the eggs that did not hatch becasue I was too busy and maybe that accounts for the apparent boy/girl clusters.

I looked back at the weather history and during the first part of collection there was a high pressure front moving in with winds 13-30mph. On 5/1 the weather stabilized, the temp was warmer and the winds were down to 3-9 mph. On 5/4 the wind picked up and the pressure started going down. On and off clouds and some rain. So there is a subtle change in weather--less wind, warmer, slightly higher barometric pressure, during the period of time when the girl eggs were laid.

I will continue to chart sex ratios and note weather patterns to see if there is any kind of trend. This hatch was too small to make any correlations at this time. I did think it interesting, though.

Has anyone else seen any relationship to weather at the time the eggs are laid to the sex ratios of chicks hatched? Incidentally, within a week of setting the eggs three hens decided to go broody and I do think that the unsettled rainy weather we experienced triggered them.

 

[DCchicken]

I hatched my first home-bred set of chicks. Yay! I put both my cream cockerels in with the lot of hens so I do not know fathers but I can tell the hens with egg shape. Most of the eggs are from my two gold hens since (my maybe) cream girl kept sneaking off out of the yard to have her own private nest. Hers are due to hatch this weekend.

Experiment 1: Coincidentally, my Faverolles went broody just after I put the eggs in the incubator. So at lockdown I put 4 eggs under her from the incubator and one hatched out. At the end of the hatch, I put all 6 boys under Soleil and took back the one she hatched out which was a girl. This is the first time I have let her hatch any eggs. I want to see if the boys are more gentlemanly when raised as chickens. One of the roos is starting to stalk me and rush from behind. Not acceptable.



The 5 girls are in a brooder so I can handle them and hopefully tame them down a bit. They are so cute at this age

Now just the start of Experiment 2: does the weather have any influence on chick sex (stress is a known influence in the female's production of male vs female eggs)?

Observations:
-I hatched 5 girls and 6 boys from 21 eggs.
-I dated and numbered the eggs from oldest to freshest and kept track of which egg hatched out a boy or girl (laid from 4/27 to 5/10, set 5/09--popped one in a day late--, hatched 5/30)
- 5 girls eggs were laid 5/1-5/4 (5/1,5/2,5/3,5/3,5/4)
- 6 boys eggs were laid 5/3-5/9 (5/3,5/4,5/5,5/6,5/6,5/8,5/9) note: this includes one boy that pipped into a blood vessel and died in shell
Why the difference? It could be random. I did not eggtopsy the eggs that did not hatch becasue I was too busy and maybe that accounts for the apparent boy/girl clusters.

I looked back at the weather history and during the first part of collection there was a high pressure front moving in with winds 13-30mph. On 5/1 the weather stabilized, the temp was warmer and the winds were down to 3-9 mph. On 5/4 the wind picked up and the pressure started going down. On and off clouds and some rain. So there is a subtle change in weather--less wind, warmer, slightly higher barometric pressure, during the period of time when the girl eggs were laid.

I will continue to chart sex ratios and note weather patterns to see if there is any kind of trend. This hatch was too small to make any correlations at this time. I did think it interesting, though.

Has anyone else seen any relationship to weather at the time the eggs are laid to the sex ratios of chicks hatched? Incidentally, within a week of setting the eggs three hens decided to go broody and I do think that the unsettled rainy weather we experienced triggered them.

With the exception of reptiles, DNA determines the sex of an animal, not environmental conditions. There are a couple of vetted papers in scholarly journals that explore this for the commercial poultry industry. What can possibly influence is both the viability of the sperm (too hot/too cold) and/or the roosters ability/willingness to mate.

Sex is determined by the hen's DNA. Some hens produce more males and some produce more females. A good scientific study would be to separate each hen and rotate in each male for each hatch. You will need to hatch hundred of chicks using the same hens and roosters for valid data. If you log all of the data, it should be a good paper to write.

 

[dretd]

Yep. I kinda am pretty well versed on sciency stuff. I must have not communicated very well. I am not talking about temperature-dependent sex selection in reptiles, I am talking about the hen producing eggs that are either male or female and possible environmental influences that will cause the expected even ratio of males: females to be skewed one way or another.

You can see some of the hypotheses as to why this documented phenomenon might occur here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2606724/ (I can dig up more papers if you are interested)

Here is a summary of a study from 2011 http://www.thepoultrysite.com/artic...offspring-sex-ratio-in-white-leghorn-chickens :
"Treatment of hens with a high dose of corticosterone five hours prior to ovulation resulted in the production of 83 per cent male offspring. This result is the opposite of that expected, because work in other avian species has shown that long-term treatment stimulates a female-bias. The Georgia researchers explained, however, that their experiment differed from previous work in that they provided a single, higher short-term dose, which could explain why the results differed in direction..."

So to sum up previous research: chronic low but increased levels of the stress hormone corticosterone appears to increase the production of female (W-) eggs and lead to a pullet-heavy hatch, whereas a higher level of corticosterone given as a pulse 5 hours before ovulation resulted in more male (Z-) eggs to be produced and a cockerel-heavy hatch.

I am wondering if I can identify any environmental factors that will influence the sex ratio of the hatch. If I knew, for instance, that a low pressure front moving through would spike corticosterone in my hens high enough to cause them to release more male eggs, then I would avoid setting eggs laid under those conditions. If I knew that moving the hens to a 'ladies retreat' (advocated by WHMarans) caused a low-level increase in corticosterone and that the hens produce more female eggs for a few days until they settle in (it worked for her) then I might be inclined to move my hens to an auxiliary pens once a month and collect eggs from them for that week only.

Looking at my hatch, it had an overall ratio of 5:6, so it had the expected evenly split girl:boy ratio. It wasn't until I looked further and saw that there appeared to be a cluster of females at the start and males at the end that I thought I should investigate the findings in additional hatches, and also was wondering if any other breeders note the lay order of their chicks and their sexes to see if they have noted any clusters around dates within the collection period.

The one thing to keep in mind is that the egg was ovulated about 22 hours (give or take) before it is laid and thus events need to be looked at on the day before the egg ends up in the nest as there is a lag.

 

[sol2go]

Hoping have landed in the proper spot... already posted once in the wrong spot -

I have a crazy request... I raise Jersey Giants and am a sucker for Blue Eggs...
I have a broody hen and an incubator full of what seem to be dud Blue Giant eggs -we are 3 days past what should be hatch date and this is not my first time hatching so I think the shipment went bad

I am am searching for chicks to give my Jersey Giant Hen to raise and want blue egg layers. See I told you this was a crazy request!

Anyone - any place near Antioch, CA with Cream Legbar chicks for sale? My husband dis-likes the Americauna's voices so I thought I would perhaps give Cream Legbars a try! I have a friend with one or 2 Cream Leg bars and they do have some lovely blue eggs. I won't be raising them (Legbars... we raise Giants!), just want the blue eggs for personal use and my egg customers love the blues too!

To clarify, would like chicks 4 or 5 females for egg laying only. Let me know if you can help bail out my poor broody hen! Thanks!

Try juststruttin here on BYC. She's just north of the Golden Gate bridge, and it seems like she may have put some CL's in the incubator recently. Otherwise, ryeranch or Phage, both BYC in San Diego usually have eggs and chicks. I also have CL hatching eggs, and some are in the incubator but I'm north of Long Beach and it will be more than 2 weeks.