Opinions on my leghorn? Just curious/for fun

[black_cat]

This is my white leghorn Tillie. It is very unlikely that she is a show quality bird, but I am just curious: If I was breeding white leghorns, what traits would I want to breed out and which would I want to reinforce and keep?

Any darkness on her feathers is either dirt or camera weirdness, not actual dark feathers. Her comb is now a bit larger, droopier, and redder.

 

[black_cat]

@The Moonshiner I know that you have leghorns, thoughts?

 

[MadamPoofyBrow]

I don't know much about leghorns, but I do have a few and I'm posting to follow because I'm curious to learn!

 

[Painted Calls]

@The Moonshiner

 

[black_cat]

If there are no thoughts on my leghorn, I am still wondering about showing and breeding birds in general (how do you go about picking a bird to show, how do you breed for certain traits, etc)

 

[nicalandia]

The most important trait in Leghorns specially White ones is Egg laying, if they are not prolific they are not worth breeding for.

The one on the pic is pet Quality but shoud be very good layer

 

[Ruthster55]

The old-timers trap-nested their Leghorn hens to select in favor of the hens with the best egg laying. You would need several Leghorn hens and a record-keeping system to do this.

Same goes for Minorcas and other Mediterranean breeds.

How is Tillie in the breakfast department? If she’s worth breeding, she should be laying almost daily.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I don't know much buy I think tails should be at 40 degrees

 

[Ruthster55]

I don't know much buy I think tails should be at 40 degrees

With Leghorns, I wouldn’t go by appearance so much as egg-laying. There are other breeds where I would count tail angle as important, but not Leghorns. The whole point of Mediterranean breeds is their consistent egg-laying and that they DON’T go broody....

The old-timers kept a lot of Leghorn hens and selected them using trap-nesting.

Selecting for egg-laying is a bit difficult and expensive compared to selecting heavier dual-purpose breeds for size, early maturation, and the like which can be done at 8-16 weeks.

With Leghorns, probably all the pullets are allowed to mature, and the selection is done based on egg-laying (or at least laying in the nest boxes...). Trap-nesting was a big thing in 1915....

As far as Leghorn cockerels, I think the old-timers just ate them....

 

[JacinLarkwell]

With Leghorns, I wouldn’t go by appearance so much as egg-laying. There are other breeds where I would count tail angle as important, but not Leghorns. The whole point of Mediterranean breeds is their consistent egg-laying and that they DON’T go broody....

The old-timers kept a lot of Leghorn hens and selected them using trap-nesting.

Selecting for egg-laying is a bit difficult and expensive compared to selecting heavier dual-purpose breeds for size, early maturation, and the like which can be done at 8-16 weeks.

With Leghorns, probably all the pullets are allowed to mature, and the selection is done based on egg-laying (or at least laying in the nest boxes...). Trap-nesting was a big thing in 1915....

As far as Leghorn cockerels, I think the old-timers just ate them....

Show judges don't go by how many eggs a year they lay. They alwere asking if theory think their hen was show quality and why or why not