Crested Cream Legbar Genotype vs. Phenotype

[dretd]

Quote: The original poster of the color perception test was Habib's Hens on another thread: http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test-challenge

I decided long ago that since the SOP calls for Blue or Green, either of those and anything in between is just peachy. There are going to be so many challenges to getting the Cream Legbar right I am not going to sweat the small stuff and tweak things later down the road. My first goal is to get everything matching the SOP so we can get the Cream Legbars into the official book!

Enola, if you are interested in Blue egg layers, there are project birds from the U of Arkansas under development. They have one BBS line they have released (reportedly to FFA/4H only and no shipping) and are working on one based one the Light Brown Leghorn which may still be under development (but could be used to outcross with the Legbars down the road if that was genetically desirable). Someone posted photos of their eggs on page 79. Here is a link to the thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/624359/blue-egg-layers-from-unversity-of-arkansas/780

 

[dretd]

Does anyone have enough Cream and non-Cream (Gold) Cream Legbar hens to tell by a side-by-side comparison, if there is a perceptible difference in their body color?

As a reminder, the SOP calls for:
Wings: Fronts, Bows and Coverts—silver-gray, faintly barred.
Primaries—gray, peppered.
Secondaries—gray, very faintly barred.
Back: Gray, softly barred.
Tail: Main Tail and Coverts—silver-gray, faintly barred.
Breast: Salmon, well defined in outline.
Body and Fluff: Silver-gray, indistinctly barred.
ie: silver and grey, no mention of warmer tones, taupe or browns.
I have 2 gold girls and one I think is Cream but am on the fence about her until I do test hatches. They all have an undertone of taupe--that is to say that in bright light from afar, they all generally look greyish/silvery, but when I get up close in direct sun or in some other lighting the grey really looks warm and has a taupe undertone. I really see no significant difference between the probable Cream and Non-Cream, although one of the Golds looks 'golder' in her face and hackles and her body is warmer too. They are all significantly greyer than my brown Welsummer--no question there--and the tone of the areas that are the in between ground to the barring are also more grey.
I am asking becasue I am trying to figure out:
1)if the body tone is one way to tell the difference between Cream and non-Cream, or
2)if the difference in tone is simply due to each individual's inherent gold-ness (much like you will see some Buff Orpingtons are very dark gold and some are very pale buff--its a matter of the underlying genetics not so much whether they carry the Buff gene).

 

[ChicKat]

Hi dretd,

In a couple of days, I will try to get some photos up here of the base/body color and hackles of a couple. I also have some babies that are soooo funny. The little (not biggish-juveniles) have some pale salmon in their breast feathers - and I gotta grab that coloration. It will be a while - but I will get it and try for some side-by-side of two hens one golder and one creamer. :O)

 

[KPenley]

It is total theory, of course, but I'm testing this color issue myself this year. So far, all of my cream girls have the gray tone body, the golden girls have the warm brown undertones to the gray ie. "taupe", and the girls with grey bodies and golden and mottled gold/cream hackles are carriers of one copy of cream. Hopefully I can give you some better results by the end of the year!

 

[nicalandia]

It is total theory, of course, but I'm testing this color issue myself this year. So far, all of my cream girls have the gray tone body, the golden girls have the warm brown undertones to the gray ie. "taupe", and the girls with grey bodies and golden and mottled gold/cream hackles are carriers of one copy of cream. Hopefully I can give you some better results by the end of the year!

I think you could be onto something

 

[KPenley]

There is another group I'm curious about though...and those are the girls with taupe bodies and cream hackles, but gold around the head/ crest area. I'm wondering if they could also be carriers of one copy of cream, with the Ar giving them the brown tones, but in my small hatches I've only hatched gold from them so far.

 

[blackbirds13]

There is another group I'm curious about though...and those are the girls with taupe bodies and cream hackles, but gold around the head/ crest area. I'm wondering if they could also be carriers of one copy of cream, with the Ar giving them the brown tones, but in my small hatches I've only hatched gold from them so far.

I do have a lot of cream girls. I have about 22 Legbar females with about 18 that are cream. I will be taking photos and making notes on their coloration for pen set ups this spring.

I have questions on this also but am thinking more in terms of melanizers such as Aph, Mh, the eumelanin but also the effect of ig or other diluters like barring on these areas. I have one hen that I was on the fence on last year for being cream or not due to her hackle and she has molted out and I have no doubt now she is a very pale gold but gold all the same, so I have 4 gold girls. I hatched very few gold chicks last year and plan on not hatching any this year.

My golds all seem to have an overall body of warm edge lacing to the feathers on their back, cushion and shoulders, all the eumelanic areas. Some of the cream girls do have some warm tones to them here and there, and may have some warm edging on some of their feathers and some warm lacing to some of the same areas but it is not all over and more spotty so there overall tone is more gray but not totally gray. I have some that are mainly lacking any real show of warm tones in their feathering and appear just gray in tone. There has been no co-relation to the 'spotty' warm tones and the birds cream hackle as they all have the same basic cream hackle and no co-relation to whether there is the warm tone to the areas surrounding their face, crest or the front neck hackle area. I have a few that do have some golden tones to areas of their body feathering atop the gray and their hackle looks just as cream as the others and with very little warm areas surrounding their face and they have been proven through breeding to be double cream with no gold offspring, male or female hatchlings. In my breeding I do not see any co-relation thus far between some warm tones to the bird not being double cream if the hackle is clearly so despite the surrounding areas of the face being redder or not. If there is any tone to the hackles general color, not just the top or edges then this will may be an ig issue. I think in clearly cream colored hackle females back, cushion and shoulder that this may be more linked to other color issues so I am leaning to this being an issue beyond cream but do not have enough experience breeding the birds to state so with any real confidence. I think this is an area we will need to pursue through breeding forward.
I have 2 creams that may still grow out the black markings on the breast as they seem to be lessening but will have to see, the rest I have to go through as I have other issues to mull over like type and ear lobes and yahdah, yahdah, yahdah. One theory I am wondering about is if the remnants of color I have on the shoulder of the males is the Aph without the mahogany and if the darker more closely barred males eumelanic structure leads towards a grayer female and the less distinctly barred males having less of a eumelanic effect on females therefore allowing the Aph to show up more on the girls giving them those warmer overtones on their backs and wings and since mahogany relies on Aph if this is also a factor.

The problem I find is that there is a lot that is not known and written about a lot of the genes we may be looking at like Mh and Di to include the ig gene. In much of the research I have been doing the authors will specifically state that such and such is not an area of much research and specifically that ig is not a genetic area that encompasses a large amount of breeds or varieties or knowledgeable research. There appear to be more than single forms of modifiers like Di (diluters) and Mh (Mahogany) that still need research. Reeder says that the term Autosomal Red that is so commonly used is a combination of both Autosomal Phemelanin (Aph)and Mahogany expression and that how they are expressed is reliant on the presence of diluters and the suppression or not of the Aph, and Aph can have a strong expression if dilute is not present and the double barring also causes a diluting effect and ig expression seems to have a variant from what I read and am told.... so many questions in my head about this.

 

[dretd]

It is total theory, of course, but I'm testing this color issue myself this year. So far, all of my cream girls have the gray tone body, the golden girls have the warm brown undertones to the gray ie. "taupe", and the girls with grey bodies and golden and mottled gold/cream hackles are carriers of one copy of cream. Hopefully I can give you some better results by the end of the year!

I hope that over time we will be able to get this figured out. In theory, if a color is recessive you will not see that color expressed. So in Dogs and Horses, black is dominant to red so an animal carrying one copy of red and one of black will look black--the red is hidden underneath the black. I have found that in certain lighting I can see the recessive red as the shaft has an undertone of warmth to it where the B/B will look a solid cold black. Since the Cream is really an inhibitor of a color rather than the color itself, it further complicates things as I am not studied in inhibition of color just common recessive/dominant/incompletely dominant genetics.

Could you post a photo of one of the Cream-Yet-Gold hens? I have found that the gold will fade rather rapidly in the sun so that after several months what looked gold, will bleach to a far paler straw color.

The one girl I am on the fence about really came in as a non-white rich cream color in her hackles from the get-go. I still see warmth to her body (although I see warmth to most of the hens shown including Lillian) even though from a distance it is grey. When I look at the thumbnails of the hens, she is slightly more grey than Agatha, and much more grey than Beatrix. Though both A and B are gold, B has much more gold everywhere making her body much warmer. If she were cream, I think she would still have more warmth becasue the underlying autosomal red would enhance the color.

Here is a picture of the probably cream but need to test Clara:

And here are the two gold pullets at about the same age (around 5 months) Agatha the more grey on the left, Beatrix the more taupe on the right:

 

[blackbirds13]

Here is a picture of the probably cream but need to test Clara:

My cream girls do not have the dark gray blacks that are demonstrated on the hens posted above and the salmon is not so dark.
All of my creams resemble the ones I am posting here. Their crests have a mix of cream, dark gray and some chestnut at times or they are more cream & gray. The hackles have the black stripe but are overall more -palecream in color so they appear much lighter with not so much dark gray overall.

This is what my juvenile female pullets look like for the most part




These following photos are about a month old now.
I got 2 pullet sized eggs this week so someone new is laying. The hackles look whiter in these photos than they are to the natural eye but the overall look is paler from the crest to the edge of the hackle than the females with the dark crests. I do not think I have any creams with that type of dark crest and hackle look.



if you look you can see the one on the right does have some warm tones on her body but her overall tone is still more gray than my gold girls.


This is probably close to what the majority of my girls look like.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

To the tune of Heartbreak Hotel. Everyone all together, please:

I've got a Cream Legbar problem
Don't know what I'm goin' to do,
My eggs are green, I want them blue
Ameraucana blue

It makes me so lonely baby,
I get so lonely
I want that B-1 color -- I could dye.

Haha love it!

Does anyone have enough Cream and non-Cream (Gold) Cream Legbar hens to tell by a side-by-side comparison, if there is a perceptible difference in their body color?

As a reminder, the SOP calls for:
Wings: Fronts, Bows and Coverts—silver-gray, faintly barred.
Primaries—gray, peppered.
Secondaries—gray, very faintly barred.
Back: Gray, softly barred.
Tail: Main Tail and Coverts—silver-gray, faintly barred.
Breast: Salmon, well defined in outline.
Body and Fluff: Silver-gray, indistinctly barred.
ie: silver and grey, no mention of warmer tones, taupe or browns.
I have 2 gold girls and one I think is Cream but am on the fence about her until I do test hatches. They all have an undertone of taupe--that is to say that in bright light from afar, they all generally look greyish/silvery, but when I get up close in direct sun or in some other lighting the grey really looks warm and has a taupe undertone. I really see no significant difference between the probable Cream and Non-Cream, although one of the Golds looks 'golder' in her face and hackles and her body is warmer too. They are all significantly greyer than my brown Welsummer--no question there--and the tone of the areas that are the in between ground to the barring are also more grey.
I am asking becasue I am trying to figure out:
1)if the body tone is one way to tell the difference between Cream and non-Cream, or
2)if the difference in tone is simply due to each individual's inherent gold-ness (much like you will see some Buff Orpingtons are very dark gold and some are very pale buff--its a matter of the underlying genetics not so much whether they carry the Buff gene).

It is total theory, of course, but I'm testing this color issue myself this year. So far, all of my cream girls have the gray tone body, the golden girls have the warm brown undertones to the gray ie. "taupe", and the girls with grey bodies and golden and mottled gold/cream hackles are carriers of one copy of cream. Hopefully I can give you some better results by the end of the year!

I do not see much of a difference in body tone in the females between gold and cream. Maybe very very slight. I look at the hackles for cream. Once it warms up I want to do some photos of my girls as I weigh each of them. Need to see how far I am from target weight which is the perfect time to look the bird over and photograph her.

There is another group I'm curious about though...and those are the girls with taupe bodies and cream hackles, but gold around the head/ crest area. I'm wondering if they could also be carriers of one copy of cream, with the Ar giving them the brown tones, but in my small hatches I've only hatched gold from them so far.

YES I see this in a few of my girls, too. I don't think it is indicative of single cream carriers as my known gold girls were definitely cream carriers given the offspring they produced, and they had definite all gold hackles. I think the ring of gold up around the face means something else. Not sure what yet. Maybe one of the modifiers that blackbirds posted about... As I posted in the Cream Legbar thread, I am growing out 7 baby girls and we will see how they turn out. I only have 1 gold hen left in my breeding pen of 10 hens so they have a very good chance of all being cream. They are each banded a different color and I am going to try to do weekly photo progression. I will probably post updates in the Cream Legbar thread as that is the thread I visit most often.

I do have a lot of cream girls. I have about 22 Legbar females with about 18 that are cream. I will be taking photos and making notes on their coloration for pen set ups this spring.

I have questions on this also but am thinking more in terms of melanizers such as Aph, Mh, the eumelanin but also the effect of ig or other diluters like barring on these areas. I have one hen that I was on the fence on last year for being cream or not due to her hackle and she has molted out and I have no doubt now she is a very pale gold but gold all the same, so I have 4 gold girls. I hatched very few gold chicks last year and plan on not hatching any this year.

My golds all seem to have an overall body of warm edge lacing to the feathers on their back, cushion and shoulders, all the eumelanic areas. Some of the cream girls do have some warm tones to them here and there, and may have some warm edging on some of their feathers and some warm lacing to some of the same areas but it is not all over and more spotty so there overall tone is more gray but not totally gray. I have some that are mainly lacking any real show of warm tones in their feathering and appear just gray in tone. There has been no co-relation to the 'spotty' warm tones and the birds cream hackle as they all have the same basic cream hackle and no co-relation to whether there is the warm tone to the areas surrounding their face, crest or the front neck hackle area. I have a few that do have some golden tones to areas of their body feathering atop the gray and their hackle looks just as cream as the others and with very little warm areas surrounding their face and they have been proven through breeding to be double cream with no gold offspring, male or female hatchlings. In my breeding I do not see any co-relation thus far between some warm tones to the bird not being double cream if the hackle is clearly so despite the surrounding areas of the face being redder or not. If there is any tone to the hackles general color, not just the top or edges then this will may be an ig issue. I think in clearly cream colored hackle females back, cushion and shoulder that this may be more linked to other color issues so I am leaning to this being an issue beyond cream but do not have enough experience breeding the birds to state so with any real confidence. I think this is an area we will need to pursue through breeding forward.
I have 2 creams that may still grow out the black markings on the breast as they seem to be lessening but will have to see, the rest I have to go through as I have other issues to mull over like type and ear lobes and yahdah, yahdah, yahdah. One theory I am wondering about is if the remnants of color I have on the shoulder of the males is the Aph without the mahogany and if the darker more closely barred males eumelanic structure leads towards a grayer female and the less distinctly barred males having less of a eumelanic effect on females therefore allowing the Aph to show up more on the girls giving them those warmer overtones on their backs and wings and since mahogany relies on Aph if this is also a factor.

The problem I find is that there is a lot that is not known and written about a lot of the genes we may be looking at like Mh and Di to include the ig gene. In much of the research I have been doing the authors will specifically state that such and such is not an area of much research and specifically that ig is not a genetic area that encompasses a large amount of breeds or varieties or knowledgeable research. There appear to be more than single forms of modifiers like Di (diluters) and Mh (Mahogany) that still need research. Reeder says that the term Autosomal Red that is so commonly used is a combination of both Autosomal Phemelanin (Aph)and Mahogany expression and that how they are expressed is reliant on the presence of diluters and the suppression or not of the Aph, and Aph can have a strong expression if dilute is not present and the double barring also causes a diluting effect and ig expression seems to have a variant from what I read and am told.... so many questions in my head about this.

Very good read, thank you! I too wonder of the coloring around the face is related to these problem color modifiers in the roosters. SOMETHING is giving us too much color and I suspect something in the hens, I just can't pin down yet what clues the hens are giving us...