Discussion of Legbar Standard of Perfection for -Alternative- Legbars - SOP discussion

[sol2go]

Interesting and pretty rooster Sol2go --

but he wasn't sold to you as a CL or part CL was he? I see slate or white legs, red earlobes - really nice solid red - I am breeding for red earlobesin my Isbars.-- and no hint of Legbar coloration.

Your pictured hen could pass for a Legbar - does she have a crest? Perhaps that is what a true gold legbar looks like? I can't wait to see the real ones...rather than the ones that lay blue eggs, have crests - were sold as CLs and get christened as golds.

I am thinking the real tell would be a very russet/burnt orange set of back and wing feathers -- and this one looks a bit more brown, albeit a warm color as opposed to the gray that should be there----but there is a lot of brown body plumage in CLs.

No, not a CL or CL mix; actually he was sold to me as a "she"… and so began my early and unplanned introduction to roosters. He has been awesome.

Ok, maybe your guy is more partridge than double laced, but there is still something that reminds me of my guys.



Do any of his offspring look like this?

No barnvelder-esque offspring. I had hopes he was a BCM mix, or a Welsummer mix. A Barnvelder mix would have been handy when I had Barnvelder hens =)
He's just a very diligent flock protector and great all around personality (except I moved his flock as far from the house as possible…very early morning crower).

While Crow Wing males can look very simmilar to BBR(Black Breasted Reds) they are not called that way, because they have all black wings(except for shoulders) the correct term would be Brown Red, google Brown Red rooster and you will see they are crow winged

Thank you.

 

[ChicKat]

There is a lot of information that I got at the show I recently took some Legbars to---

It will take a couple of posts -- and these things I believe apply to all our Legbars -

The judge at the show I attended was James Cooper for those of you who have APA 2014 Yearbooks if you want to look up.

He said these things:
1. He was expecting more color, this is also what the Judge, Sam Brush, said in Dallas at the Texas State Fair about the 30-Cream Legbars that were there...specifically he said that he wanted to see more 'cream'. I think if you take a look at a Cream light brown Dutch bantam you will see the color that is being searched for in the cream hackles. Due to barring the Cream Legbar would be lighter but it should still be a definite cream - and not a gray or gray-and-white look IMO
2. He was expecting to see the Leghorn type -- and I think we have gone around on this a bit. The Leghorn type in the UK in the 1940s was what Punnett developed and he said in this quote:
"It may be described as a Brown Leghorn on a cream basis, to which has been added the barring factor causing it to be autosexing. It is also crested and lays a blue egg" R.C.Punnett 1957 So although our Legbars are perhaps more Andalusian like or more even Minorca type right now -- we may either need to breed more toward the Legbar type or examine how Legbar type in the USA in 2014 is different from the Legbar in UK in 1957 and adjust accordingly. Probably the former.
3. He said he would like to see more of a crest...I am thinking this applies more to males than females - as a number of people are certain in crested breeds to NOT have the type of crest a Polish has - and that the SOP refers to not blocking vision with the female crest. He discussed with me that the interference of the crest with the comb - may require us to breed for smaller combs... which I would find more appealing in our cockerels anyway.


Very similar to the comments made by Sam Brush in the evaluation done for the 4H kids.


I will post some pictures in awhile...
Came across this image of Minorca and wondered if some of our Legbars look more Minorca like in type and will post picture of Andalusian.....
No, I am not suggesting revsions to the type portion of the SOP -- no no no no -- Just wanting to get things very clear visually what our type portion would look like in PICTURES> ;O)


Image from an old discussion awhile back in another thread...Just saw it when I was cleaning up some files -- so is a Minorca a Leghorn type? Reason I think we are more like Minorca is because our birds re more upright than the typical Leghorn type which is moe Horizontal.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I have had discussions with a few members about the type and my views. From the beginning, I envisioned a cream light brown with barring (in a sense more golden) and I always wanted more of a leghorn type because they are mostly leghorn as far as percentage of parent breeds. When they overall type was being discussed, it came across as more of a minorca/andalusian just because of the lack of a sweep on the back. I look forward to seeing other folks input on this issue.

 

[ChicKat]

I have had discussions with a few members about the type and my views. From the beginning, I envisioned a cream light brown with barring (in a sense more golden) and I always wanted more of a leghorn type because they are mostly leghorn as far as percentage of parent breeds. When they overall type was being discussed, it came across as more of a minorca/andalusian just because of the lack of a sweep on the back. I look forward to seeing other folks input on this issue.

Thanks! I appreciate your expertise with Leghorn insight that is for sure. Has the Leghorn changed since Punnet's day - and irregardless - that is the direction we need to go most likely - so we have a lot of back length to breed in, I guess.

 

[dretd]

I have had discussions with a few members about the type and my views. From the beginning, I envisioned a cream light brown with barring (in a sense more golden) and I always wanted more of a leghorn type because they are mostly leghorn as far as percentage of parent breeds. When they overall type was being discussed, it came across as more of a minorca/andalusian just because of the lack of a sweep on the back. I look forward to seeing other folks input on this issue.

I would like to give everyone a gentle reminder that the Leghorn that was used in the recipe for the Legbar was Dutch, not American.

Awhile back I did a pretty thorough study of the American, British and Dutch Leghorns as well as the Andalusian, Minorca and Ancona and they are distinctly different while all being very Mediterranean in their overall look. I felt the Andalusian was overall the best SOP fit with the Minorca coming in second. This is not looking at pictures (except for the Dutch where I could not access ab SOP), but when I compared what the SOPs call for type-wise between the different Med breeds, the American Leghorn was definitely not the best match to use as a reference for the Legbars. I would prefer to stay with the spirit of the bird's SOP as it was imported from Britain and that is for a heavier bird with a comb that is not flyaway, that has a longer straighter (not U) back etc. Otherwise the question/comment-- how is the Legbar different from a Crele Leghorn?--- that Sam Brush asked (at least I think it was him) is very valid and may make it harder to brand the Legbar as a unique breed/type in and of itself if we try to Americanize the Leghorn influence to the breed.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I think it was Curtis that mentioned the tails being different in leghorns. To do a little leghorn history to help understand legbars- the leghorns came from Italy to the US first then over to the UK. The show leghorns look much like the original Livorno/Italianer fowl that came here way back when. The leghorns everywhere but the UK look similar. In the UK however, they breed for pinched tails these days but back in tje time of the legbar creation, the pictures I have found of leghorns in the UK still look similar to ours. It seems that in the 40's is when more and more people started to breed for a pinched tail and I think I read somewhere that they equate it with better production.
I will try to get pictures once the rain stops of my legbars that look more like a leghorn. The main difference that stands out to people that I have talked to is the sweep. If you look at famous 'Lillian' there is no sweep from her back to the tail, it is more angled. If you look at her tail junction and picture it with a nice curve from the back to the tail tip, that is what I would prefer.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I take back what I said about the dutch leghorns, the pictures show more of a closed tail.

 

[ChicKat]

I would like to give everyone a gentle reminder that the Leghorn that was used in the recipe for the Legbar was Dutch, not American.

Awhile back I did a pretty thorough study of the American, British and Dutch Leghorns as well as the Andalusian, Minorca and Ancona and they are distinctly different while all being very Mediterranean in their overall look. I felt the Andalusian was overall the best SOP fit with the Minorca coming in second. This is not looking at pictures (except for the Dutch where I could not access ab SOP), but when I compared what the SOPs call for type-wise between the different Med breeds, the American Leghorn was definitely not the best match to use as a reference for the Legbars. I would prefer to stay with the spirit of the bird's SOP as it was imported from Britain and that is for a heavier bird with a comb that is not flyaway, that has a longer straighter (not U) back etc. Otherwise the question/comment-- how is the Legbar different from a Crele Leghorn?--- that Sam Brush asked (at least I think it was him) is very valid and may make it harder to brand the Legbar as a unique breed/type in and of itself if we try to Americanize the Leghorn influence to the breed.

wasn't it the Danish Leghorn in the Punnett development?

ETA: from the Club's website:
Chapter 3:
The Creation of the GOLD Legbar

Although the auto-sexing feature of the Cambar was advantageous in some ways, the original strains of the breed were not productive layers and therefore did not offer the economical advantage needed by the farmers of that time. Thus Punnett’s second auto-sexing breed replaced the Gold Campine with a Brown Leghorn to create a new breed that was both productive in laying and auto-sexing.

In 1935 he imported a Barred Plymouth Rock Hen from Canada and mated it with a Brown Leghorn cock. In 1936 a cockerel from that crossing was mated with three Brown Leghorns that had been hatched in 1935 from eggs imported from Denmark. The Danish line was imported because they were more productive and hardier than the Brown Leghorn lines available in the UK. Silver, Black, and nonbarred birds were culled from that crossing and from the remaining brown-barred birds, a cockerel and three hens were selected and mated in 1937. The pullets and double barred cockerels from that cross made the first generation of true Legbars.

It wasn't Sam Brush, he said that the CL looked Andalusian like -- It was Pat Malone at the Fancy Feathers in Dripping Springs, TX last spring.
How does changing the Punnett comment that it is Leghorn-like square with the perception that many of us have that it is Andalusian-Like? Don't we need a way to get this differentiation to the judges so they aren't going to be typing the Legbars to be Leghorn-like?

Oh yeah - and a note to everyone -- the Cream Legbar Club determined that for the 'style sheet' of our publications we would not use hyphen in autosexing...so I need to go clean up that history page on the website. It would just make us look like we know what we are talking about more. And I think that the dictionary lists both as acceptable -- just to make it more confusing. We said our writing (the Club) would not use the hypenated....

 

[chicken pickin]

I like the look of the CL when they are slightly beefier and sturdier looking than a Leghorn. I do think they all need to retain length though in the leg/thigh, the backs and the neck to help keep the lean sleek look to an otherwise beefier build if that makes sense.

I like @flyingmonkeypoop also prefer the swept look of when the back has a flowing sweep like flow through the tail angle to the tip of tail (though not too U shaped).

Here is my CL with a tail angle that just angles from back to tail, not ideal. It seems most of the CL we see have a sharp angle and not a flow.


This is @KPenley s male who in my opinion has a very nice sweeping tail flow. This is more of what I would like to see in my flock.

 

[ChicKat]

Does anyone have a 1950's (almost the 60's) image of a Leghorn from UK?


Punnett quote from 1957:

" it may be described as a Brown Leghorn on a cream basis, to which has been added the barring factor causing it to be autosexing. It is also creasted and lays a blue egg"