Cream Legbars

[Chick-N-Fun]

Congratulations! Such beauties, too! Enjoy!!!!

 

[WVduckchick]

I did get 2 today!
They are so pretty! My first blue eggs. My call duck eggs have a blue hue, but these are so beautiful!

 

[OneMountainAcres]

I did get 2 today!
They are so pretty! My first blue eggs. My call duck eggs have a blue hue, but these are so beautiful!
View attachment 1539506

Congratulations on your new layers!

 

[Bantambird]

Yay!!

 

[GaryDean26]

O got some photos of my 2018 Cream Legbar Pullets yesterday. I got 80% with cream crests and 20% with the slate black crests last year so I though I about had the cream crests that I was working towards fixed in place but this year we got 100% slate black crest. The dark crests are dominant so I am expecting to get cream crests again in the spring but we will see.

I like the shape on some of these (i.e. the one at the top left of the first photo looks pretty good to me).

I love the eggs on all of these birds. The egg color, texture, and size are becoming very consistent in the flock.

 

[WVduckchick]

Pretty girls Gary.

Mine aren’t the greatest, but I’m happy enough with them. I actually got 5 eggs yesterday from the 5 girls, for the first time.

 

[aart]

got some photos of my 2018 Cream Legbar Pullets yesterday

They laying yet? How's the egg color?
Am a bit disappointed with the 'weak' blue on mine,
my expectations may be misapplied tho.

 

[duluthralphie]

They laying yet? How's the egg color?
Am a bit disappointed with the 'weak' blue on mine,
my expectations may be misapplied tho.

I have worked hard to get real blue eggs...BUT as I breed more towards the SOP (proposed) I find the color of the eggs changing. It seems when I work towards one thing, I get another. I might actually start another pen of breeders to see if I can retain the deep blue eggs....Provided the lazy worthless birds ever lay an egg again!

 

[GaryDean26]

They laying yet? How's the egg color?
Am a bit disappointed with the 'weak' blue on mine,
my expectations may be misapplied tho.

A few of these stated laying in September but they all stopped when the day light dropped and we were hit with some crazy winter storms. We get a few eggs through the winter but our laying season is from February to September with our star layers starting to laying around the first week of January and laying through the end of October while the slacker don't come into the laying season until February and start their molt in September. We favor hen that lay in January and October for breeders and those that don't are often given to friends for their pet flocks.

Our first year with Legbars we breed three pullets in 2012. One laid a really big egg that tended to have a green tint to then and had a chalky texture. The other two laid eggs that were power blue but were really small. One of them had the chalky texture and the egg color faded with laying to were the eggs were almost white after a few months. The other has a smooth texture and kept a fairly consistent color to the end of the laying season. Our goal was to get big eggs, powder blue color, smooth texture, and to not have the eggs fade to almost white. We got a lot of variation and very little consistency the first few years. We started to get control over the breeding after that and have been making progress for the past four years on the egg traits. Last year get over 80% of the pullets laying the smooth texture eggs, power blue color, and no fading to the nearly white color with two thirds laying big eggs (i.e. over 70 grams).

A note on egg color. I think that it is possible that the hens that have egg color fade only are carrying one copy of the blue eggs gene. Four years ago we culled all the cockerel from hens that had fading eggs and toe punch all the pullets from those hens. None of the pullets from the fading eggs mother got fading eggs, but the following year were were getting one out of seven hens with fading eggs color. We culled all of those hens. We have created some cream legbar crosses. Their eggs are never as blue as our pure Legbars. My wife can line up the Legbar Crosses and the Pure Legbar eggs without telling me which are what and I can sort them correctly into the pure Legbar and the Crosses. When we started with the breed the pure Legbar eggs all looked like the cross eggs that we now get, so our egg color is improving. They will never be a Robin's blue though. They are a very light blue. They are defiantly blue though. We have a friend over to the house once and from across the room 30 feet away so saw the eggs sitting on the counter and exclaimed "Those eggs are blue!" She almost ran across the room to inspect them closer. She didn't know that chickens could lay blue eggs and was totally stunned. I love that type of feed back. I can barely see a difference from year to year and sometimes wonder if I am making any progress at all, but feed back like that lets me know that I am.

I only found one photo of the egg color we get. There is only one Legbar egg for contrast to the Olive Eggs of a Marans/Legbar Cross. That is what all out ours look like though in color.

 

[duluthralphie]

They will never be a Robin's blue though.

I read an interesting article on this some time ago. It had to do with our (human) limitations of color perception with blue and the way we interpret it.

We do not all see blue in the same way was the jist of the article. While some of us would see the blue others would see the greenish blue. In addition the light source makes a large difference on how we see blue.

I have had some that are "robin" blue while in the nest or on the right background, only to be a more powder blue when brought to another light source and background.

Not really on the point of the conversation, but interesting to me when we are discussing blue eggs.