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

[GaryDean26]

That appears to be a typo. Krys got her Cream Legbars from David Francis. David Francis was one of the first people to get Cream Legbars from David Applegarth.

In the UK they DO have a "cream" Leghorn. Their standard calls it a Yellow Partidge Leghorn, but as far as I know neither Francis nor Applegarth had them.

 

[ChicKat]

That appears to be a typo. Krys got her Cream Legbars from David Francis. David Francis was one of the first people to get Cream Legbars from David Applegarth.

In the UK they DO have a "cream" Leghorn. Their standard calls it a Yellow Partidge Leghorn, but as far as I know neither Francis nor Applegarth had them.

Thanks for clearing it up...makes a big difference doesn't it. :O)

 

[ChicKat]

in the Brabanter/Spitzhauben thread, Percheron chick made this set of excellent points in reference to the importance of a standard:

You need to be able to methodically go top to bottom and front to back in your evaluation process. Don't leave anything open to interpretation. If everyone is using one set of standards and are all trying to breed to that ideal, the breed will advance much faster than if we are all out there doing our own thing. I would also like to see traits that are faults (minor and major) that need to be corrected. What can we live with to increase the gene pool and what needs to be culled immediately. The thing I like about April's approach is it's like she is looking at a bird and judging it right in front of you. She also addresses points that the British and Dutch do not (shanks and feet and tail angle off the top of my head). Again, pictures would help.

Percheron chick is referring to a standard that April Howington had put together for Brabanters.

The full post and a response from Walt Leonard is here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-the-differences-pic-heavy/1640#post_14522073 It is post 1647.

 

[ChicKat]

There is a short announcement about this thread, (and a link here I believe) in the 4th Quarter Cream Legbar Club's newsletter. It was written a while ago now -- Off the top of my head, I don't remember all that was included.

Hopefully if anyone else wants to weigh in, they will before too much time goes past -- but I will wait for the summary until after the newsletter has gone out - just incase someone in the Cream Legbar Club wants to share insights.

 

[ChicKat]

Some observations as I took my picks: The ones with blacker crests (which I don't like as much), seem to have less brown to their body. Wondering if this is due to melanizers, or???, or are they just different (this is comparing cream hackles to cream hackles, not gold to cream).

Also, I noticed the roosters from this Rees group (I will get pics of them later, it's 14 degrees and blizzarding this AM) are very nice colored. No red to be seen. But I don't like the coloringon their sisters as much (too many melanizers for my tastes). I am wondering if the genetics that produce good colored boys don't necessarily lead to the best colored girls? Are we selecting for colorations that will require two different rooster vs hen lines?

Here are girls:
My second favorite color wise. You can seen the crest is definitely darker, but she has no brown in her body.

My favorite color-wise, lighter crest than above, but still darker than the hackles. She has quite a bit of barring in her body though. I've never noticed that on others. What does that mean?


50 Shades of Grey...or 3. The one on the left is moderately melaized, middle heavily melanized, right the least. Like the one on the right the best, but her creast is currently darker than I like. We'll see how she finishes out. I guess this shoots my melanized = less brown theory, I just noticed how much brown there is on the middle bird. I will have to go look at her in person....


One of my original girls who is more gold. But a much lighter crest. I wonder if the lack of melanizers allows the red to show through more.


Two creams with moderate melanin. The bigger one is actually lighter, but the lighting is awkward here (see note about blizzard).


Kind of shows how the darker melainzed ones don't show brown on the body.

My favorite of my original girls. Her body has more brown, but she is definitely cream in the hackles.


My lightest of all


Just kidding, she is some random silkie cross, but she likes to pretend she is a legbar But she is a good example of how you can have a very melanized crest and still have very light hackles.

The lightest one...the lightest one....

okay -- picking up your joke about the silky cross and bringing it forward.

Just doing some reviews of this thread, and seeing that your favorite from your originals IMO has a lot of Cream Legbar qualities -- that say from across the room -- "that's a cream Legbar.".

Your second favorite in the top picture - doesn't show a lot of salmon in the breast. -- has she gotten more rosy looking as she has gotten a few weeks older? (It's probably still really cold outside up there -- so -- hopefully you get a nice 'warm' day to check her out. LOL

Also you brought up - does a line need to be kept for each sex to be 'correct'. There are some breeds that really require this...and I think Sigrid van Dort in some of her writing points out that there is one Dutch standard that sets up an impossibility genetically for the male and female to come from the same parents. Here is a big dilemma for people rearing chickens. Especially with the differences in the sexes that our Breed has...to have 'perfection' - may require what they call overseas a cockerel-breeding line and a pullet-breeding line.

Most people that I know don't want to have to do that. -- One writer of an old tirade in a poultry publication from 1919 or so -- states that in his opinion if you need a different line of birds for each gender -- then it is actually two different varities. Interesting viewpoint.

There is a link to the article under 'articles' in the Cream Legbar Club's clubhouse -- and here is a link -- you need to go to page 118 - the article is in google books ... OH I said 1919 - it was 1916

http://books.google.com/books?id=BM...6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q=C.S.Th. van Gink&f=false

oops ETA wrote breeds changed to varieties.

 

[dretd]

Here is a view of the other side of the winning Cockerel in the UK's nationals: Here is the article: http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/inside-britains-national-poultry-show-2014/ Seems like we are focusing in a lot of shows - to the omission of other traits...but it is nice to see the results from the UK (country of origin) shows.

Thanks for providing the link to the article. It was a very good read! I wandered down the images from the show and found three images of a bantam Welbar. Much if our discussions seem to circle back to speculation about what cream and gold look like using pictures of non-barred and sometimes non wild type based birds, which makes my head hurt trying to extrapolate the results. The Welbars are very useful as comparisons for the Legbar as they are essentially a non-dilute Crele and I think that the 'alternative' Legbars we are talking about should end up looking very similar to them, with some differences such as crest and white ears, of course:

...and I do see gold peeking from behind the grey barring on his wing triangles, so he is being consistent with the proposed 'tell' that if the cock has gold there he is indeed non-diluted.

 

[ChicKat]

Cool looking hackles! You'll have to re-post an update when he is all the way done with his molt.

Barnaby is nearly done with his molt. If you recall he had faded to white and grey over the summer and had very little chestnut left on him at all. The new feathers coming in once again have the chestnut, although it may be more patchy than it was before. The hackles and saddle so have Cream again instead of just off-white. So in my flock, I am seeing cream fading to white. I also have had Silver males and the white definitely gets brassy by the end of the summer. Perhaps this is one difference between Cream and Silver. Cream fades to white, silver fades to yellow?

His Hackles have completely re-grown in as the white-looking color he originally had. It is cold, dark and raining out -- but I do have a picture of him from when he was younger. So this is last year after molt....

So I was thinking about what dr. etd said, and wondering if my rooster could be silver. Or, could he be spilt for silver S/s+
If the behavior under the sun in the Rockies makes cream lighter as Dr. e experienced, and the behavior of the hackles on this rooster turns them yellow as happened here, then perhaps there is a difference between silver and cream and that would be the distinction.

At one point, I had thought that Silver in a CL would completely ruin the breed, because silver is dominant. A test for s+/s+ rooster would be to pair with a silver hen S/- and all the female chicks would be gold and all the male chicks silver (as in the red sex-links) -- A test for a rooster split for S/s+ would be?? ( paired with a known gold hen and check the results to see what % would be that of a silver rooster x gold hen, and then paired with a silver hen to see if the results would be that of a gold rooster with a silver hen...A lot of chicks - and probably a lot of time spent on Henk's chicken calculator to see exactly how many would need to be hatched and what numbers to expect, to prove the split on that Locus.

Here is a question I have not seen in the past few years. Should a rooster be S/s+ it could still have the ig/ig genetics. In theory - it would lighten the gold - his 1 s+ (gold) and have no effect on the S/ (siilver) correct?


And rather than completely dominant, Silver is as Ki4got pointed out from her research a few posts back --> quote
Silver (S) - sex-linked incompletely dominant, turns red to white in roosters and turns brown to grey and lightens the salmon breast (when present) in hens.

end quote

Then I happened to re-read Punnetts article on Cream after thinking that Krys had Cream Leghorns - (rather than her post containing a typo as Curtis pointed out - that she had meant that she got Cream Legbars (not Leghorns) from Francis.)

http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jgenet/41/1.pdf

I thought that this could shed some insight to my detection of my roosters true S-locus. Here is something interesting Punnett did.

"...By happy chance a silver Light Sussex [female] was found which on mating with a cream [male] gave only silver [males] and cream [females]. Such [males] must be silver on cream, and one of them mated back to cream [females] gave silvers and creams of both sexes. A silver hen from this mating (i.e. silver on cream) was mated with a gold Rhode Island Red [male]. If silver, gold and cream form an alleomorphic series in the sex chromosome the [males] from this mating should receive silver from their mother and gold from their father, i.e. cream from neither parent. Hence such [males] mated to cream [females] should give silvers and golds of both sexes but no creams. Actually this mating gave 13 silvers, 9 golds and 8 creams, both sexes being represented in each colour class. Clearly this disproves the hypothesis of an alleomorphoc series in the sex chromosome. But the figures accord reasonably well with the assumption of two independent alleomorphic pairs where expectations would be silvers, golds, and creams in the ratio 2:1:1. * "

Punnett's asterisk pertains to this:
"* While this experiment was in progress I learned from Mr. M.S.Pease that he had obtained the following evidence telling against the supposition of a multiple alleomorphic series. A gold hen hen mated with a cream cock gave golds and creams of both sexes. On the supposition of multiple alleomorphs one would have expected all the male chicks to be gold and the females to be cream. "

It is interesting that his "silver on cream" hen paired with the gold RIR gave cream offspring -- wouldn't you say? Haven't we been thinking that the genetic requirement would be two gold-inhibitor genes to produce a cream chicken. His silver-on-cream hen could have passed one cream gene, but his RIR would not be likely to pass a cream (Gold inhibitor) gene to offspring - would it?

So what would be the pairings and how many chicks grown to adulthood and bred for how many generations would be required to determine a S/s+ male with cream genes? And as there are some dominant that are incompletely dominant, could cream be "incompletely recessive"? How else would RIR X silver cream produce cream offspring?

In Punnett's statement about Pease work, that a gold hen mated with a cream cock gave golds and creams of both sexes -- would indicate that the gold hen must have carried a recessive cream gene.

Did I miss something? His article goes on - but these pairings are very explicit and specific.


ETA - oh yeah, I just re-read what I wrote quoting Punnett...and if his first pairing -- Silver Light Sussex hen paired with Cream male produced cream offspring - how could the offspring have been ig/ig ????

ETA - Kestlyn correctly cites the Cream Paper in the next post - the link I put in above doesn't go to the Cream Paper where the quotes reside - unless the cream paper is in your cookies -- go figure -- this is the correct location of Punnett's Cream Plumage paper:

http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jgenet/48/327.pdf

 

[KPenley]

Let's see if I can muddy the waters a bit A S/s+ rooster with ig/ig will just look silver, but yes they could pass the ig on.

Is this the link for the article you mentioned, http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jgenet/48/327.pdf ?

Who knows LOL? Punnett made some mistakes in his writings as he was learning. I mean he thought originally that cream was a color in and of itself like silver and gold. What kind of birds was he using? And what on earth is a Silver Light Sussex? Most likely he was trying to keep his idea of a bird's coloring straight with his use of cream, gold, and silver. So a cream on silver bird meant that to his eye their parents had been cream and silver, and he believed that they carried both genes. We know a bit more now. I mean a ig/ig pullet with barring could have even looked silver to Punnett, who at this time referred to light gold as cream ( my best guess as to the offspring of the Sussex x cream whatever he used rooster).

He could have been using RIRs who had been crossed with Buff. He could have been using RIR who had been earlier crossed with cream (experiments mentioned above the one you referred to). Maybe he was seeing barred gold as cream, since barring does lighten. Or even early looks at autosomal red on silver (my best guess at the Sussex x Cream, and S/s+ x RIR, or perhaps the birds did carry ig). Punnett may have even seen and labeled double barred cream as silver at this point. And perhaps this just gives insight to the possibility that ig can lighten with one copy. But honestly it is all a guess since we don't have more info.

Pease's birds were a result of Gold Legbar hen carrying cream, left out of your quote above, x a Cream Legbar Rooster. They resulted in both gold and cream offspring as we would expect from an Ig/ig x ig/ig pairing. So test breeding does work, when you know what you're working with. And there is precedent both then and now as to test mating to produce cream offspring.

 

[ChicKat]

Let's see if I can muddy the waters a bit

A S/s+ rooster with ig/ig will just look silver, but yes they could pass the ig on.

Is this the link for the article you mentioned, http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jgenet/48/327.pdf ?

Who knows LOL? Punnett made some mistakes in his writings as he was learning. I mean he thought originally that cream was a color in and of itself like silver and gold. What kind of birds was he using? And what on earth is a Silver Light Sussex? Most likely he was trying to keep his idea of a bird's coloring straight with his use of cream, gold, and silver. So a cream on silver bird meant that to his eye their parents had been cream and silver, and he believed that they carried both genes. We know a bit more now. I mean a ig/ig pullet with barring could have even looked silver to Punnett, who at this time referred to light gold as cream ( my best guess as to the offspring of the Sussex x cream whatever he used rooster).

He could have been using RIRs who had been crossed with Buff. He could have been using RIR who had been earlier crossed with cream (experiments mentioned above the one you referred to). Maybe he was seeing barred gold as cream, since barring does lighten. Or even early looks at autosomal red on silver (my best guess at the Sussex x Cream, and S/s+ x RIR, or perhaps the birds did carry ig). Punnett may have even seen and labeled double barred cream as silver at this point. And perhaps this just gives insight to the possibility that ig can lighten with one copy. But honestly it is all a guess since we don't have more info.

Pease's birds were a result of Gold Legbar hen carrying cream, left out of your quote above, x a Cream Legbar Rooster. They resulted in both gold and cream offspring as we would expect from an Ig/ig x ig/ig pairing. So test breeding does work, when you know what you're working with. And there is precedent both then and now as to test mating to produce cream offspring.

Yes, your link does lead to the same article that my link leads to in the above.

The addition to Punnett's quote - as you said "left out of your quote above", however, doesn't appear to me to be in either link. ? So I am guessing that you weren't referring to Punnett's article in genetic research publication but rather some of Pease's work elsewhere? Please let me know if I am mistaken on that one.

It is interesting that you say that 'test breeding does work when you know what you're working with ' - and then imply that Punnett didn't know what he was working with. ;O) Which I'm sure is possible. The pertinent and present-time question in some ways, is how many pairings would be needed with how many different chickens to detect the multiples that are within any given present-day Cream Legbar - such as my rooster to see if his hackles truly are silver... I guess it would almost be a question for Henk's level of expertise. Partially because you are right that 'test breeding does work when yo know what you are working with'. In the case of the rooster one wouldn't truly know what they were working with.

 

[KPenley]

Your link brought me to Punnett's Genetic Studies in the Legbar paper ( the Gold Legbar paper), so I linked the Punnett's Plumage paper since you had quoted it ...of course you know me...could have totally been my mad computer skills :/

This is the quote I thought might have had a few words left out.

"Genetic Studies in Poultry, X. Cream Plumage", footnote on page 330 by R.C. Punnett

The more I've learned about Punnett from this last part of his life, that was involved with poultry testing and discovery, the more I've come to wonder how much he was actually involved. I think he loved genetics and loved studying poultry. His wife hated it and the time he was away and wouldn't even let people call Reginald "Professor Punnett" in her presence. At some point, we don't know when, students and associates did almost all the pairings and Prof Punnett wrote papers based on their results. I think it is very possible that mistakes could have been made with so many hands and so many experiments available to work with. But maybe not too.

Perhaps Henk would be a good person to contact to figure out your genetics question. If it were me, I would test my rooster to a Brown Leghorn or some other easy to find basic gold bird and see what happens. If the offspring turn out all gold, then your bird is gold based and there is nothing further to question. If the offspring result in all silver looking males and females, then your rooster is S/S. If your offspring result in silver and gold chicks of both sexes, the rooster is most likely S/s+. I guess I don't see questioning the results if they turn out the way they should, but that is my two cents, and I hear you that there can be hidden recessives mixing up results. And you, as is everyone, are more than welcome to your opinion. I hope Henk can give you a breeding test plan that answers your question thoroughly. I'm sure you are right that some serious tight line breeding will be involved. Please share your results! And please let me know if I can help