Green Legbar eggs

[pinewoodacres]

Sooo I have one single olive egger pullet from my cross (of course) and I found a green egg last week. It’s not olive but lighter green, and I assumed it was my F1 girl so I was disappointed.

Couple days ago I found one of my Cream Legbar pullets in the nest box. Thought I would find a blue egg later but nope! It was the same color green. Found her and that green egg again today. I have three Legbar pullets and one OE pullet and I’ve not found more than one of these in a day so I’m assuming it’s just the one Legbar. But wow! I know green is acceptable (even if not preferable from a marketing standpoint) and I’m fine with this since I’m working on olive eggers anyway, but has anyone seen one this green? It’s very clearly green.

I’ll post some pics. The little ones are all hers, the larger one is from my older Legbars and it almost looks white compared with this green.

 

[DarJones]

That looks very much like eggs I get from a cross of Silver Laced Wyandotte X Brown Leghorn. The genes involved are Oocyanin (chromosome 1), zinc white, and the porphyrin biopath. A single copy of zinc white produces that unique color of green. Breed the hen to a rooster from a good blue egg line homozygous for oocyanin and homozygous for zinc white and you should get hens that all produce blue eggs though 1/2 of them will produce the tiniest tint of tan on the eggs. That "tiniest tint" can be seen best by wiping the eggs with a damp cloth and comparing with other eggs that are bright blue.

 

[Iluveggers]

Very pretty even if green!

Where did you get your first legbars thst lay blue & your second set (with a green layer?)

I’m hatching legbars from Meyer this May.

 

[Tonyroo]

I never heard of CL's laying green eggs. That's weird.

 

[pinewoodacres]

That looks very much like eggs I get from a cross of Silver Laced Wyandotte X Brown Leghorn. The genes involved are Oocyanin (chromosome 1), zinc white, and the porphyrin biopath. A single copy of zinc white produces that unique color of green. Breed the hen to a rooster from a good blue egg line homozygous for oocyanin and homozygous for zinc white and you should get hens that all produce blue eggs though 1/2 of them will produce the tiniest tint of tan on the eggs. That "tiniest tint" can be seen best by wiping the eggs with a damp cloth and comparing with other eggs that are bright blue.

I was sort of afraid of this! I know in the original Legbar lineage there’s likely some zinc white bc of the Leghorns used. But are you saying this is actually a good thing for them to have? Doesn’t it lighten the blue?

Very pretty even if green!

Where did you get your first legbars thst lay blue & your second set (with a green layer?)

I’m hatching legbars from Meyer this May.

They are pretty still, yes. I’m not complaining, I was just surprised! My first Legbars were from My Pet Chicken which uses Meyer so you should be good. My other older Legbar (I only got two from there) has a little darker and very slightly greener egg, but still considered blue IMO. I only see the green tint when I compare to this lighter blue egg.

My second set was hatching eggs locally and she mentioned she was combining two lines. My fear when I realized this green belongs to the Legbar was bc she also has a Silverrudd’s Blue pen. But none of the chicks I hatched have any of the phenotype of those so I have to assume they’re pure.

I never heard of CL's laying green eggs. That's weird.

Yes, blue to green is acceptable in the U.S. SOP. I just didn’t think it would be *this* green.

 

[nicalandia]

Green shade of shell color is accepted in the SOP for Cream Legbars

CREAM LEGBAR SOP (STANDARD OF PERFECTION)​

https://creamlegbarclub.com/breed-1/

 

[pinewoodacres]

Green shade of shell color is accepted in the SOP for Cream Legbars

CREAM LEGBAR SOP (STANDARD OF PERFECTION)​

https://creamlegbarclub.com/breed-1/

Yep, I know and stated this a couple times. I have never seen any this dark when people have posted pics in the past.

 

[pinewoodacres]

Got another egg from a different one of my young Legbars today. Same exact color. So I have to assume the third girl will lay this color and my male is carrying the same. The left egg is the left girl’s and the right egg is the new one and belongs to the right girl. We can’t really tell them apart so they are “the twins” and will likely always wear leg bands.

Again, this works for my project and I know green is acceptable, but this is really the final nail in the coffin in my choice to not breed Legbars to SOP.

There are just too many issues as a breed due to the way the SOP was made - the double mating aspect, disagreement on what cream even is, if they should be “double crested” or not (technically they should all be homozygous for Cr), and too much variation in the egg color. I absolutely love them, but no way do I want to tackle all the various “flaws” in these birds to get them to SOP, and I haven’t even touched on type yet! And yeah, these two girls are way hypermelanated to boot. That said, I am NOT a fan of Ameraucanas due to the pea comb and the beard, so I’ll have to figure out something for breeding blue layers now. Or down the road anyway…I have too many project ideas already. Lol But, I’m bummed.

 

[gimmie birdies]

If you really like blue try Bluebell eggers...they have blue feathers...

her egg is the large blue to the right.

 

[GaryDean26]

I have not seen any legbars eggs from my flock that were that green, but know that others have. My foundation stock were from the two imports done in 2010. Two of my foundation hens laid a bluer egg and one laid a greener egg, but not that that green. When we started out with the breed we got a half dozen different shades of egg color. In the second year we had three pens set up and the pullets from that year's hatch only produced three shades of egg colors. I suspected that the three groupings could trace back to the three males we bred that year and that the male had a big influence on the egg color in the progeny. We had our 2-3 hens every year who laid our favorite eggs. When collecting eggs to set we would first set all the eggs from those two or three hens and if there was room for more eggs (often there wasn't) we set eggs from the other hens. After doing that for a few years we got one year where 100% of the pullets were laying that egg color we liked. Just one shade of eggs from the flock, the shade we liked best. It didn't last because when I rotated out cockerels we started to get other shades again (supporting my theory that the male had a big influence on egg color). Our egg color is pretty consistent and we don't see any of the greener eggs from out first year anymore.