Cream Legbars

[Fire Ant Farm]

http://www.jillscreamlegbars.co.uk/#

I went to Jill Rees website. The pictures of her eggs are all blue,...

Mine are hatchery stock, pre-Rees I believe, so I don't know what to expect.

 

[Red Banks]

Mine are hatchery stock, pre-Rees I believe, so I don't know what to expect.

Smiling..... right there with ya!

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Smiling..... right there with ya!

Egg Watch 2015 continues...

 

[MeepBeep]

I went to Jill Rees website.  The pictures of her eggs are all blue,... 

Yes, I agree on Jill's website they appear quite blue, but that color does not appear to hold true in the US with her lines, at least not in the prevailing public offerings yet...

 

[Red Banks]

Egg Watch 2015 continues...

For me it will be egg watch 2016!

 

[Red Banks]

Yes, I agree on Jill's website they appear quite blue, but that color does not appear to hold true in the US with her lines, at least not in the prevailing public offerings yet...

So is it something we are doing wrong with her lines?

 

[ChicKat]

Well, this will only be the case if people are sure to work to preserve good auto sexing features. Unfortunately, there seems to be an increasing number of flocks producing poorer auto sexing features - which makes me suspect that it is easily lost (takes extra work). I think it would be tragedy if this is lost, as it was one of the key purposes of the original development of the breed.

I'm waiting for my girls to lay, fingers crossed for pretty blue eggs from at least one of them.

- Ant Farm

Glad that you brought this up FAF --

(Charlotte is still being a slacker)

Autosexing is the combination of Wild Type plus barring (double factor barring on male to get the head spot)----

Somehow or other someone in Merrie Olde England has messed up the autosexing by - sadly outcrossing (thinking that they were going to improve something such as color -- and introducing something on the E-Locus other than Wild Type -- is my theory of how it is messed up in certain lines. -- Whoever did this knowingly or unknowingly -- to get lighter colored plumage, or bigger eggs or larger birds -- didn't have the knowledge needed - or the skill and tenacity to then breed out the genes that they had introduced. There ARE USA CLs that are perfect for autosexing and lay blue eggs. It is unfortunate that many people are propagating trouble-prone birds.

So is it something we are doing wrong with her lines?

Years ago, I interviewed Jill for the CL Club's newsletter, and she told me that over there they aren't quite as particular about the egg color as we are here. (There are several things that they aren't as particular about as we are.) -- If you are a Club member it is in the Clubhouse archives of old newsletters. PM me if you would like more info and you have trouble accessing it.

There is nothing we are doing wrong RedBanks -- and if one has sadly gotten green egg-layers when they wanted blue -- or most disasterous of all IMO -- ambiguous autosexing chickens -- the remedy would be to try to breed back to what a CL was designed to be -- or/and keep careful track of people who DO have stock that is true to Punnett's objectives and get hatching eggs, chicks or chickens from them. I'm not sure that there is any other way to get where the breed should be.

 

[MeepBeep]

So is it something we are doing wrong with her lines?

I would not say 'wrong' Greenfire imported two pairs of Rees birds, and Greenfire claims they were getting green and blue eggs from day one, meaning the Rees line isn't 'pure' for blue eggs, or there is a remote possibility that the birds Greenfire imported had a new mutant gene...

http://www.creamlegbarclub.com/22-history-of-the-cream-legbar-in-the-usa

Given time I'm sure the blue eggs will be isolated by some breeders and promoted, but that takes years of culling and selective breeding...

 

[Dorthia]

I really agree, good auto-sexing, and egg color will be the only focus of my breeding program. I want to produce olive, blue, green, and someday maybe chocolate eggs all with auto-sexing hatchlings. I don't know how difficult/expensive this will be. I want to start with 12 hens and 3 roosters. Which is 4 hens to 1 rooster of each kind. Just a small flock with good genetics maybe not too hard for a beginner to manage and quality control.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Glad that you brought this up FAF --

(Charlotte is still being a slacker)

Autosexing is the combination of Wild Type plus barring (double factor barring on male to get the head spot)----

Somehow or other someone in Merrie Olde England has messed up the autosexing by - sadly outcrossing (thinking that they were going to improve something such as color -- and introducing something on the E-Locus other than Wild Type -- is my theory of how it is messed up in certain lines. -- Whoever did this knowingly or unknowingly -- to get lighter colored plumage, or bigger eggs or larger birds -- didn't have the knowledge needed - or the skill and tenacity to then breed out the genes that they had introduced. There ARE USA CLs that are perfect for autosexing and lay blue eggs. It is unfortunate that many people are propagating trouble-prone birds.

This is an excellent explanation - thank you!!!

Paula is waiting for Charlotte to lay first. I'm sure Charlotte is still waiting for Paula. Lissa will probably beat them both. Heck, at this point maybe Dumbledore will lay before they do!

- Ant Farm