Cream Legbars

[stake]

Just a thought....its seems folks are focused on culling bad traits and not focused on promoting good traits.....I am a rookie, so, bear with me...but, if you exclude a bird with ten good traits to breed one bad one out,,,,it seems tough to breed to standards...my two cents...

 

[KPenley]

Just a thought....its seems folks are focused on culling bad traits and not focused on promoting good traits.....I am a rookie, so, bear with me...but, if you exclude a bird with ten good traits to breed one bad one out,,,,it seems tough to breed to standards...my two cents...

Solid advice

@enola, we don't know if the birds Mr. Elliott brought over were Aracaunas or not. We just know that the Chilean hens made it through their journey, and they were eventually given to Prof. Punnett.

 

[enola]

Thanks! Just curious. I was looking at a white crested and tailed pullet on another thread that reminded me of a wuite sport.

 

[chicken pickin]

Just a thought....its seems folks are focused on culling bad traits and not focused on promoting good traits.....I am a rookie, so, bear with me...but, if you exclude a bird with ten good traits to breed one bad one out,,,,it seems tough to breed to standards...my two cents...

This is a great thought and one we all need to remember. Trying to eliminate too many of the bad traits too early on can inevitably make us lose some good traits too and in the end possibly not have CL that meet the standard. Its all a balancing act.

From all the reading I have done on all the Legbar threads it seems to me though that everyone is trying to find that balance. New CL owners are encourage by more experienced CL owners to move forward with CL that may not be the best but they do still have good traits to work with. In some cases others are encouraged to still use those gold Cream Legbar in their flocks because of other good traits they may possess.

I find that most of us are trying to balance it all out. At this point because CL are so new and it is so early on in the breeding proccess for all of us, most of us do need to keep some unwanted flaws in our flocks so that we can try to lockdown the other good traits those birds may have. Its when you get to the point of having a decent CL flock and are concerned you might start locking down the bad traits also that you need to start to select them out.

I know me for one I have been hanging on to a cockerel that I go back and forth on keeping. He is not the best, his crest is large and wild and his comb is pretty messy also his color doesn't seem right, the reason I hold on to him is because every time I look at him I am in love with the length of his back and his low tail angle its like nothing I have seen in my males yet. So even with his flaws I think Im going to use him for a little while to help with those great traits. Eventually he will be culled but I cant let his good traits pass by with out trying to utilize them first.

And to go back to the specific quote above and maybe I started this when I asked earlier about what people would automatically cull for on an otherwise decent CL. I know for me there are some traits I do not want in my CL. One for instance is yellow or red leakage earlobes. For me personally this is when I would cull an otherwise good CL in my program. So far I have been lucky enough to have some nice white earlobes in my flock. I started with a great original Cock bird that had good qualities as well as bad and he passed his beautiful earlobes on. That is a trait I want to lock in if I can. So yes I personally for my flock am willing to cull otherwise good birds if they have yellow or red leakage in the earlobes.

We need to remember also while all our flocks are Cream Legbar, many of our flocks are still so very different. We are all working on different things to move our birds forward. What works for me might not work someone else and vice versa.

edited for typos

 

[ChicKat]

Aloha kākou,

I was just looking at a picture of an Australian Araucana, which is the same as British Araucanas(?), and it had a crested head(and a tail). The cream legbar has a crested head and Punnet and Pease were British, so when they say the cream legbar descends from the araucana, theyʻre talking about the British style Araucana and not the American Araucana. Is that correct?

Thanks, Puhi

Hey there Puhi! How is life in Hawaii?

Yes, the 'Chilean Hen' from the 1930's is where Punnett got the blue egg genetics to build the CL - and although I don't recall him specifically referencing the Chilean hen's crest - Chilean hen is the probably source for the CL's crest--- Also if you look at the varieties of Araucana heads on the above card... you can see that we seem to have CLs that resemble the crest on the far right and the crest on the left side - and -- I prefer the one that is less pouffey - How about other folks -- ??

In addition to learning that larger crest promotes more irregular comb in the males, I guess it is partly a matter of aesthetics.

 

[Peep_Show]

I apologize in advance for not reading through 500+ pages to find the answer (if the question has already been asked), but I thought I'd query the folks most likely to know.

Is the sex-link trait viable to both sexes? In other words, I know that a CCL hen produces sex-link chicks when bred to a non-CCL roo. But does a CCL roo pass on the "white head dot for males" trait when bred to a non-CCL hen?

I've got a batch of CCL eggs hatching and wondering if keeping a male would render sex-linked chicks when bred to Wheaten Marans (for olive eggers) and Leghorns (for SBEL).

Thank you for your indulgence in my question!

 

[chicken pickin]

I apologize in advance for not reading through 500+ pages to find the answer (if the question has already been asked), but I thought I'd query the folks most likely to know.

Is the sex-link trait viable to both sexes? In other words, I know that a CCL hen produces sex-link chicks when bred to a non-CCL roo. But does a CCL roo pass on the "white head dot for males" trait when bred to a non-CCL hen?

I've got a batch of CCL eggs hatching and wondering if keeping a male would render sex-linked chicks when bred to Wheaten Marans (for olive eggers) and Leghorns (for SBEL).

Thank you for your indulgence in my question!

The male can be used to make sexlinks when crossed to the correct hen. In this case it has nothing to do with the head spot since the head spot is linked to barring. The male will pass on one barring gene to both sons and daughters making it impossible to tell gender by the head spots.

Because the CL is gold based you can use the males crossed to silver based hens to create Red Sexlinks. In the past I have crossed my CL male to Silver Laced Wyandottes and Silver Laced Cochins and they are sex link and produce wonderful offspring. Doing this type of cross you can tell gender by the down color on the chick.

Here is a link to the Sexlink breeding chart, post 1 has great info and a chart you can look at.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/261208/sex-linked-information

 

[Peep_Show]

Thank you!

 

[chicken pickin]

Thank you!

Your Welcome!

 

[GaryDean26]

Aloha kākou,

I was just looking at a picture of an Australian Araucana, which is the same as British Araucanas(?), and it had a crested head(and a tail). The cream legbar has a crested head and Punnet and Pease were British, so when they say the cream legbar descends from the araucana, theyʻre talking about the British style Araucana and not the American Araucana. Is that correct?

Thanks, Puhi

@enola, we don't know if the birds Mr. Elliott brought over were Aracaunas or not. We just know that the Chilean hens made it through their journey, and they were eventually given to Prof. Punnett.

Yes, the 'Chilean Hen' from the 1930's is where Punnett got the blue egg genetics to build the CL - and although I don't recall him specifically referencing the Chilean hen's crest - Chilean hen is the probably source for the CL's crest--- Also if you look at the varieties of Araucana heads on the above card... you can see that we seem to have CLs that resemble the crest on the far right and the crest on the left side - and -- I prefer the one that is less pouffey - How about other folks -- ??

In addition to learning that larger crest promotes more irregular comb in the males, I guess it is partly a matter of aesthetics.

There is a book titled La Auracana That I read parts of in my survey of Latin American literature class written by Alonso de Ercilla in 1569. It describes the customs of the Pre-Colombian Auracana Indian Tribe of Chile. The name Auracana first came to Europe from that book. I don't think any of the section in that book talk about blue egg laying chickens but 300 years later they did have blue egg laying chickens.

When people say that the Cream Legbar descended from the Auracana they are only correct in so saying if they mean that the origins go back to the blue egg laying fowl of the indigenous tribes of Chile. The Cream Legbar was created from a yellow non-descript mongrel hen from Chile. It was NOT a standard breed "Auracana Breed" and when studied proved on only have one copy of the blue egg gene.

The Brishish Auracana were brought to England much later by ships from the spice trade returning from South American which were shipwrecked and their cargo ended up in the UK where blue egg laying chickens were kept for eggs and developed into the UK Auracana Breed. The Australian Auracana I believe was a distinct group of fowl from South American and not related in any way to the English birds. These birds had lots of diversity (rumples/non-rumples, single combs/pea combs, beards/clean faces, muffs/muflless, ear tufts/tuftless, crests/non-crested). With no standard every country ended up with a different version of what they choose to breed for.