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

[enola]

Legbars come in "varieties" not types. I thought some one stated that silver legbars are extinct.

 

[KPenley]

Legbars come in 3 recognized types by BPA Gold, Silver and Cream 

From what I understand
The Cream originated by Gold Legbar being Bred to White Leghorn. the off white color pullets being bred back to Gold Legbar and the cream colored chicks then bred to the Aracunas (cream colored again) and selective breeding resulted in the recognized Standard for Cream by the BPA.

So in short much of the coloration and patterning we see in this breed has to do with its Gold Legbar ancestry. 
The same root Gold Legbar genetics are at  the root of the Silver Legbar 

This is similar to how New Hampshires are a selective breeding program of RIR birds.

Is the alternative another Legbar or a selective breeding program of less than standard Cream. The Crele appears to be something discarded in  the breeding leading up to Cream and as such is probably still latent in all Legbars as well as some other color and pattern variations so I question where in the Legbar tree is the split going to be.

Close. The Gold Legbar is definitely an integral part of the creation of the cream variety of Legbar. The Gold Legbar is simply the offspring of a series of crosses between Dutch Brown Leghorns and PBR. But the Cream Legbar came about by later experiments performed by professors Punnett and Pease.
Punnett experimented with Chilean hens from C. Elliott, at least one of whom was cream, and many different breeds . Those experiments did include different colored leghorns as well, and after a few generations he ended up with a crested cream blue egg laying bird. The first blue eggs were barely tinted. This was not a Legbar. No barring.
Meanwhile, Pease was doing his own experiments with Gold Legbars and an inbred white Leghorn from Reeseheath that carried cream from somewhere back in his geneology. Pease ended up with cream colored Legbars (no crests, white egg laying).
The two professors bred their birds together to see if they had stumbled upon the same gene, cream. All of the offspring were cream, proving that it was the same cream gene. Many pairings and generations were made that resulted in the crested, cream, barred, blue/green egg layer bird we know today as the Cream Legbar.
About 30 years ago Araucana was brought into the mix to reinvigorate the cream Legbar. There may have been other crosses done at the same time, but not all of it is documented. The history committee will hopefully be releasing this new chapter of our breed's history this year.
Hope that helps!

 

[KPenley]

Legbars come in "varieties" not types. I thought some one stated that silver legbars are extinct.

There still some in random parts of the world, and they are literally the brothers and sisters of F1-F3 Gold Legbars. The first were discarded as failures when Punnett was working on the Gold Legbar variety. Perhaps it was even Pease who thought the Silver birds were pretty and saved them LOL!

 

[ChicKat]

**waving frantically from the sidelines** I am definately interested in the Alternative SOP for Cream Legbars. I think Cream Legbars are pretty, but I LOVE the 'Crele' Alternative....

Thanks enola,

What my thought is -- is that the Crele and the Cream are the same. I think that the winner of this year's UK Nationals is the same thing that I was calling Crele at the beginning of this thread:






Or very close to it....

Prior to that -- what was being named as the only Cream Legbar was like the one pictured here:

This is the upper left picture from the Club's website under 'History of the Cream Legbar in the USA"

Since in someways the Cream Legbar gene pool was down to just a couple of individuals by the time they came to Applegarth Late 1980's) - and he worked with/knew Punnett -- I think we have to take this as our best depiction of the look:


so because these examples are so close to what was called 'crele' at the beginning of the thread -- my view was that our "colorful" Cream Legbars are not a different variety. Among the advantages of being inclusive is that people who have had Cream Legbars from the start had Cream Legbars all along. Were we to designate this look as a different variety, then I suppose that the clock would start ticking in 2014 instead of 2012.....or whenever the new variety was named.

In examining the SOP draft, I haven't seen yet where the male is outside of the SOP using the two "colorful" examples.

 

[ChicKat]

I agree, I prefer the medium to lighter crest look, though I have both types. One of my favorite girls

I like this chicken~

 

[ChicKat]

Legbars come in 3 recognized types by BPA Gold, Silver and Cream

From what I understand
The Cream originated by Gold Legbar being Bred to White Leghorn. the off white color pullets being bred back to Gold Legbar and the cream colored chicks then bred to the Aracunas (cream colored again) and selective breeding resulted in the recognized Standard for Cream by the BPA.

So in short much of the coloration and patterning we see in this breed has to do with its Gold Legbar ancestry.
The same root Gold Legbar genetics are at the root of the Silver Legbar

This is similar to how New Hampshires are a selective breeding program of RIR birds.

Is the alternative another Legbar or a selective breeding program of less than standard Cream. The Crele appears to be something discarded in the breeding leading up to Cream and as such is probably still latent in all Legbars as well as some other color and pattern variations so I question where in the Legbar tree is the split going to be.

Hi caychris -
Exactly right - there used to be a site in RareBreeds UK - that subsequently got taken down to improve it -- and I don't think it ever got back up ?? I will google it later and see if it is there. It listed Legbars Gold, Silver and Cream. In Punnett's writing he actually gives the 'formula' to create a Gold Legbar. It was a brown Leghorn male (gold on the S-Locus) crossed with a Barred Plymouth Rock female (silver on the S-locus) -- The female gave barring to her sons - but they only had one barring gene --


Here is his entire article in the genetics journal
http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jgenet/41/1.pdf


So, as KPenley said -- his 1935, 1936 and 1937 breeding program resulted in the Gold Legbars -- He was part of the way to his Silver Legbars with the ones that he calles "silver grays" above -- however they couldn't have been autosexing, because they only had one barring gene at that point. We surmise that his process would have been the same using brothers and sisters from the 1936 hatch of silver grays to get Silver Legbars. The only place I know where there was interest in Silver Legbars is Australia - and I have quoted some things on those findings and put articles and links in the Cream Legbar Club's Club house.... everything was clear to that point.

The next chapter gets a little muddy - because the 'chilean hen' - was more or less an unknown. It is the source of the blue egg gene and it is the source of the crest... In the UK Araucanas have both crests and rumps - so it was probably a chicken very similar to the British version of the Araucana -

As I understand it, Punnett had Leghorn like chickens that had blue eggs and crests and Pease had barred chickens - both different lines of chickens homozygous with the presumed recessive cream gene. The Pease line was from the "Gold Legbar and a white leghorn along with a smattering of other genetics - and the Punnett line from the gold Legbar and the mysterious "Chilean Hen" . Punnett's weren't barred. (KPenley I'm relying on you to correct me if I got it mixed up) and Pease line were not crested nor were they blue egg laying. There are some missing pieces to the puzzle at this point to my mind. (Especially if the chickens from Punnett weren't barred...but that's another tangent) - The result of this was the Cream Legbar that was presented at the London Dairy Show in 1947. It was nearly a decade before the breed was accepted by the BPA. However, by the time that 1987 rolled around, there were so few Cream Legbars left, and they were so inbred - as I understand it - that David Applegarth needed to recreate the breed - by bringing in other breeds to strengthen the genetics. The two females that Applegarth obtained were not able to produce fertile eggs with the Cream Legbar cockerel that he got - so he outcrossed to a Gold Legbar. Of course doing this would mess up the homozygous cresting gene and the homozygous blue-egg laying gene since the Gold Legbar has neither. And Applegarths' work with the breed was nearly 30 years ago. I have heard of other people doing out-crosses to improve egg production or size - or to increase the size of the Cream Legbar -- and these crosses are not particularly well documented or done by folks with really a lot of in-depth gentic knowledge as I hear the story. This is one reason that there are some CLs that may not have the basic E-locus as Wildtype (e+) And some of these outcrosses are evidenced by the fact that some owners have Cream Legbars that don't have a crest, and some owners have Cream Legbars that have two copies of recessive white genes.

ETA - since there seem to be no color pictures from the days of Punnett (although I do have the color plate from the journal article referenced above that shows the various colors of chicks from Legbars; Got it on an eBay auction in the UK where someone had taken the color plates out of the journal) - It would sure have been nice to get other color pictures from those olden days-- To my mind - the closest we may have to the true appearance is the pictures from Fancy Fowl Magazine, credited to David Applegarth. Other breeds of chickens that are Cream have a range of colors of cream, I believe that the Cream Legbar does also. I also believe that the BPA SOP for the Cream Legbar could have been written better. (Numerous SOPs come under criticism from some very astute people who know a lot about genetics so it isn't only this one that could be a little off the mark)--- The tre4nd to narrow the acceptable appearance to exclude a large number of the Cream Legbars seems to have subsided to a degree.

So back to the point that caychris brings up -- is the crele a miss for a cream? Technically a crele according to David Scrivener is a wild type (e+ on the E-Locus) with barring. In that case the Cream is a Crele. -- Then the question becomes is a super pale chicken the only accepted crele? If it is not - as I believe the case, the more colorful crele, and the paler crele are both acceptable. To bring things full circle - the darker - brunette-looking crest on the female, the chestnut crest on the female and the cream crest on the female...are they all Cream Legbars?

 

[ChicKat]

Chambers94
Absolutely right!! We need to make our nomenclature more crisp, so long time chicken folk take us seriously. Type should reflect the entire breed, and you wouldn't know it from most discussion, but type is far more important than color.

Varieties are the differences within a breed.

Here's the wording that I screw up the most often....I call a crest a comb and vice versa. I perfectly well know the difference....in my brain that set of wiring must be loose. Can't think of any other explanation. I'm just catching up on this thread, and things are different in tablet land when you are used to seeing it through the PC.

ETA oops I think it was enola that said that -- see -- tablet -- it all looks different and those little teeny screen keys -- target-rich-opportunity for me to make errors.

 

[ChicKat]

I agree

It would be interesting to note if Gold Legbars have some of these same issues when trying to reach their same standard. And since the Cream are diluted with White Leghorn and from what I can tell essentially not common results of the cross(Kind of like how Delawares started as breeding the sports from that cross) it might be of note to look a little deeper into the genetics of the Gold Legbar and how many problems that bird has on reaching standard.

My issue is what is the parentage for this version. The cross that produced Cream were lighter pullets from a Gold Legbar over White Leghorn bred back to the Gold Legbar.

The question then is where do we get the Crele version is it off the same tree as the Cream or is it a selective breeding of non SOP Cream. Or is it selective breeding from non SOP Gold or Silver

(When i mention SOP im referring to the British standards for the breeds)

Since the 2 alternate breeds have the same roots and are the result of selective breeding after Gold was established we would have to know what tree these are coming from.

Here are some areas that I think caychris - you have got near the heart of the dilemma....

First, it's a bit unfortunate that there isn't a pedigree for chickens. Other purebred livestock have things like a registry of their animals, and horses have studbooks. When we raised registered Beefmaster cattle -we knew the lineage of our animals and there were certain herdsires that were very desirable to have in your bloodlines. Okay-- fast forward to chickens -- the TWO most IMPORTANT traits of Cream Legbars are 1. autosexing and 2. blue-egg genetics. and the third is the crest IMO. Since neither autosexing nor blue eggs are a part of the Poultry show process -- some of the birds - in the UK 'slipped' out of being autosexing, and some folks - (when I was talking about genes that had crept into the breed that shouldn't be there IMO I should have added these two problems) - were getting white not blue eggs. The Cream Legbar was developed for industry - just before autosexing sex-linked breeds replaced others...and Punnett intended, as I understand it, that these birds would be great egg layers......and some ARE. - But in theory what appears in the poultry show cage is the sum total of the breed-- parentage doesn't apply. ETA chick down doesn't apply and eggshell color doesn't apply. Showing also is one way that dual mating became popular (a specific set of pairings to get the best male chickens and a different set of pairings to get the best female chickens) dual mating -- maybe not so good for the homesteader, backyard flock raiser or person with a smaller capacity to raise numbers of chickens. This is one reason that a lot of us don't want to go down the road of dual mating -- because we want to have Cream Legbars a bird that everyone can own - and can know what they own is a quality example of the breed.

Second, not to be too repetitive, I think that the Crele and the Cream version are one and the same...so the family tree would be the same. I think in a lot of ways it is the degree of expression that is the difference. The very pale looking CL - may have really strong expression of the ig gold inhibitor - and the more colorful may have really weak expression - of the ig - yet, I believe still have two copies of the recessive. Increasingly I don't think we have two varieties going on with that differentation in plumage coloration in the males. That said, I think if a male were to resemble the Gold Crele Leghorn that I put in the grid. (i.e. light orange neck hackles, and darker orange saddle feathers --) or resemble the female in that image (i.e. burnt orange back and wing feathers and true orange neck hackles) then it would not have the gold-supressor. and Could be we have varieties based on female crest - (I don't really think that - but I think I would seek APA advice on that one...and here is where it could be that people like myself are just plain mistaken and the crest should be lighter than the crests I have on females....

Now, referencing the other breeds you mention, caychris, - and their genetic derivation are completely lost on me - because I'm totally unfamiliar with them.

Third, we had said that the wing triangle was the 'tell' on the cream or non-cream legbar. I think that this may only be an indicator of perhaps the stronger expression of gold inhibitor....especially since someone very observant pointed out that the photo from Fancy Fowl magazine the male has some coloration other than gray and white in his wing triangle. It could be that the wing-triangle showing only gray and white is a better match to the SOP in the wing triangle than the Fancy Fowl picture, but I no longer think that other coloration in the wing triangle means non-Cream Legbar.

It's tough, I've only worked with the breed since 2012- so coming up to 3-years....but I don't think that there are two varieties as originally proposed at the beginning of this thread.

To be a Gold Legbar - I think that the coloration would have to look something like this:

I haven't seen that in birds that people have been told are gold legbars. Especially note that the wing triangle of that bird is brown (gold in chicken language).

 

[enola]

So, if I understand you correctly, there is no crele, they are all the same?

 

[chicken pickin]

@ChicKat In my opinion I do not believe the female crest light vs dark would be a differentiating quality enough to consider it a different variety. When I look at my females both light crested and dark crested the only difference I am noting is that the darker crested females have the same dark gray crest feathers only they are lacking the cream edging, also these dark crest females have darker hackles (more gray mixed in with the cream). To me that is something that should be worked on maybe even potentially culled since to me it seems to be a quality issue not a different variety.