The Legbar Thread!

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jeremy

CA Royal Blues
13 Years
Mar 23, 2008
8,123
183
396
Oakland, CA
It looks like Greenfire has officially imported these unique birds to the states!
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Who will be ordering a pair?

If I had room for another rooster I certainly would but in the city I just couldn't stretch it.

So for those of you who do plan on ordering birds... make sure to put me on your egg list!
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My general thoughts.

Most of us would agree, this is a breed specific site where what we want to hear and learn about is basically the same. We might also learn a bit of each others' life and styles. No one has to possess a resume to post here. Few, if any of us have any resume on cream legbars anyhow. What’s valid is our thoughts and how they are put together. This along with some social sharing of hatched baby chicks, lost chickens, laughed hard, or the almost cried today, kind of stuff.

In terms of best discussion, we all have a place, character, and style that is part of our own experience and intelligence. How direct or indirect, polite, or otherwise with our language can be based on experiences that include cultural, religion, education and training, and (yes, I’ll say it) gender. Where you were raised on this planet, and in what community, is going to affect how and even why you say things. Think New York City, Malibu, Oxford, or Sydney and not only do different speaking styles come to mind, but also associated types of people.

Here’s the way my reality works. Let’s say there’s a smart old curmudgeonly guy that’s got something you want to know. If you’re smart and you think he’s smart, you’ll take some crustiness to learn what you need to learn. It’s the same here. We all are interpreting each other’s voices. We get to sift through what we think is valuable. What I’d beg everyone to do is recognize you can skip what you think is not of value in a person’s voice. The content could still have value to you or someone else.

It’s my choice and your choice whether we independently think any person’s voice is valuable. Value to me is not always depth of expertise. I am thrilled that contributors to this site talk to others in USA, UK, Central America, etc. The greatest value we have and can give to each other is allowing ourselves to share ideas and potential knowledge (new, better, different, confirming the same) with each other. That we’ve talked with so and so, is the longest tradition to humans, oral communication. That we found this article or this site, or only know this much also has importance. I may never get a chance to talk to some of the wonderful people here or elsewhere, or find a site, or know about an article on my own, so give me a chance to learn from everyone’s experience. Maybe a voice sounds too smart, too smug, too rude, or too inexperienced to you, but we all get to think about it. I’m pretty sure we can figure out the value for ourselves.

It’s great to know where things come from. Published literature source, word of mouth, self-taught or personal observation, written communication, etc., all factor. Ultimately in this forum, we get to walk away from the computer as an individual and decide, yea I believe that, or that was important, or not. If it’s something we don’t get, is misinformation, or plain out of line, we can inquire for more information, address it by adding better or different information, or skip it.

Enjoy hearing it all. Have a good day, everyone!
 
with all due respect to everyone's preference

but this is the whole point of the cream Legbar breeders group

to get the Cream Legbar to be as close as possible to what it was first bred as

and dark bar was not what was meant to be for the Cream Legbar

don't get me wrong if you want dark bar then you go for it

but then it wont be a true Cream Legbar

Just as the Araucana is a breed that is referred to as Araucana, True Araucana and the Ameraucana (all being different variations)

if you choose to breed a Dark Cream Legbar the first thing is it wont be classed as cream colour second you would have to submit it into the APA for consideration and even then it would prob be recognised as a different breed variety rather than a Cream Legbar brining in the New name for Real Cream Legbars to True Cream Legbars

So in the spirit of correction of this breed I think its in the best interest if all breeders to strive to create the correct Legbar not a personal preference one (not that im saying you cant, yes you can, but it wont be a CLB)
(now to see how many people rip into this post)
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With all due respect, I am not intending to 'rip' in to your post, but rather present a second point of view for you to consider--please be patient there are several parts.

What I have heard you say is that what the Americans are working with is not a 'Real' Cream Legbar and anything that does not meet your understanding of English breed standards is not 'real'. You have also said that the eggs should be blue (even though your own standard is for blue, green or olive) so I have to admit I am a little confused. You have politely suggested that 'we' discard everything we have and start over with 'quality' stock and were disappointed when we pushed back at you and did not want to take your advice as you are just trying to be helpful. From my point of view, the most helpful thing you could do is to volunteer to approach breeders of quality stock and convince them they need to go through all of the hoops and expense on their end to get their flock acceptable as an exporter. That is the hard part for us and if there was a readily available source or list of breeders that is able to ship to 'Joe-Shmo' in the US, 'we' could pool our resources and ship direct. Perhaps when your lovely eggies hatch and grow out next year you will be kind enough to volunteer to do this for us as we clearly need help.

What I really wanted to point our is that any breed, when imported in to a new country, will by necessity go through some adaptive change:

- One influence is breeder preference--what they think is pretty or useful. Use Marans as an example. The French standard (and they are a French breed) calls for feathered shanks yet the English version calls for clean shanks. Why the difference? Not sure. But I suspect that the Majority of English Marans breeders would take offense if a frenchman told them that they don't have 'real' Marans. There are other expamples I could go in to detail on (Brahmas and Wyandottes are American but have undergone changes in the UK and look different from the 'real' breed standard and then there are the Heritage vs German New Hampshires to look at). Now one could take a postition of all of those foreign exports as being not 'real' examples of the breed, or I suggest another approach and look at them as beautiful examples of the English or German or whatever version of the certain breed in question.

Since you brought it up, perhaps we could have a discussion sometime when you have a few days about all the variations of Araucanas--its not as simple and starighforward as you may think.

-Another change is the necessary physical adaptations that have to take place for a bird that comes from one environment and has to adapt to another. It could be that birds that are of the best type did not hatch or die in transit because they are not as hardy as a more wild-type bird ( I won't even go in to the possibility of epigenetics).

Lets compare and contrast England vs just my state in the US. England is a Goldilocks Utopia. Its climate is relatively even and that is what the Cream Legbars have been bred for/raised in. I live in Colorado (CO) on the front range. The lowest elevation in CO is about 3300ft. At 5100 feet, my home is about 1000 ft higher than the highest point in the UK. Last year my highest temp was 103 F (40 C) and my lowest was -29F (-34C) and our average annual precipitation is 15 inches total (yes its very dry here with accompanying low humidity) and we are very sunny with around 300 sunny days a year. My point is that in my location I have to have chickens that will survive and thrive in very hot and very cold weather at a higher altitude and a dry climate. If the ideal breed standard for CL can't make it in my climate, then I will have to make due with whatever hardy facsimily can survive. If what lives strays too far from breed standard it will not be a CL. But if what survives here is a darker pigmented (dark-barred) chicken that still has two copies of the cream gene and reasonably fits the breed standard, I fail to understand why it is not a CL anymore given that a clean shanked Marans is still considered a Marans.

I kindly suggest that you may want to set a spell and try to put my moccasins on, walk around and think what my point of view might be. How hard is it to import birds? How hard is it to breed birds that are not adapted to my climate? Are there examples of other breeds that have small changes and thrived in a new country with modifications from the original breed? I have always found it helpful to consider the point of view of other folks and to seek what their reality is insetad of simply cleaving to my own point of view. I appreciate you presenting your thoughts and point of view for consideration and I hope that you are willing to consider my points and perspective as well.
 
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I found a copy of Morley A Jull's Poultry Breeding, Third Edition from 1952 - it is my summer reading book (wish it were on my Kindle Fire). I am trying to learn about breeding and genes in poultry.

This is what he states
" Warren and Conrad (1942) showed that, although some pigment is deposited on the shell the entire time the egg is in the uterus, from 50 to 74 per cent of the pigment is deposited the last 5 hours before oviposition, or laying of the egg. It was also shown that the amount of pigment in the shells of eggs is roughly proportional to the amount of time the eggs have spent in the uterus. The Araucana's blue-tinted eggs vary from the lightest to the darkest tints. Even among the white-shelled eggs of Leghorns, tinted shells sometimes appear." ....

"Genes for darkest-colored shells exhibited dominance over genes for lightest-colored eggs..." - good to know if you breed Marans like I want to.

"The blue shell color of the Araucana proved to be dominant to white shells in tests conducted by Punnett (1933)"

"The heads of Silkies, Houdans and Polish fowl are adorned with crests. There is considerable variation in size of crest, those on Polish being much larger than those on Silkies. The crest develops in the frontal region of the skull, is present in the chick, and is inherited. The crested conditions results from the fact that the frontal bones of the skull are raised into a dome-shaped protuberance, giving rise to a condition know as cerebral hernia.
The results secured by various workers, from Hurst (1905) to Dunn and Jull (1927), led to the general conclusion that the development of the crest is due to an autosomal dominant gene, Cr. Variation in crest size is apparently due to multiple genes. From the results secured by Warren and Hutt (1936), it was concluded that cerebral hernia is in reality homozygous crest, although hernia may not be evident in quite a high proportion of the Cr Cr birds, but is sometimes present in a proportion of the Cr cr birds."

He also says that cream plumage gene is autosomal (so not sex linked) and a diluter of gold.

There is also a section on Autosomal Barring where he talks about Campines - silver and gold and how the silver variety is dominant to the gold and I wonder if this has any bearing on the white chicks we are seeing. He points out how the white and golden-bay bars and the black and golden-bay bars are" different due to a single gene, ab, suggested by Hutt (1949)". My two legbar girls have different hackle colors - my layer has a darker more tan/gold tint while the youngers hackles are whiter, more cream/silver. I wonder if this is gene related and helps to account for the white sports? Maybe not exactly like the campines (i am not gene expert)

"The Silver variety has black and white bars, the Golder variety black and golden-bay bars and the Chamois variety has white and golden-bay bars. Since the plumage of the Silver variety is dominant to that of the Golden variety, Punnett (1923) pointed out that the white bars of the Silver variety are due to the action of agene which inhibits the development of golden bay. Punnet then pointed out that the plumage of the Chamois is dominant to the plumage of the Golden variety, the difference between white and golden-bay bars and black and golden-bay bars being due to a single gene, ab, ...It is apparent, then that the golden-bay bars of the Chamois variety correspond to the golden-bay bars of the Golden variety, and that the Chamois variety contains a gene which inhibits the development of the melanic pigment contained in the black bars of the Golden variety. Chamois variety contains a gene which inhibits the development of melanic pigment contained in the black bars of the Golden variety. Therefore, a cross between the Silver and Chamois varieties should produce white birds, which Punnett found in the case."

I just found it interesting and may or may not have anything relevant to the Legbars but thought I would share. Hope I have not bored anyone.
 


I wanted to share the result from my Cream Legbar Hatch a few days ago.

Background: All of the eggs were home grown from our three Cream Legbar Flocks. Liam and Ice were both hatched on Greenfire Farm from their 2011 flocks (B & C respectivly). Blaze is our 2013 breeding cockerel that was breed on Pollo Poco Farm in Oklahoma from stock from Greenfire Farms. Blaze was paired with hens from Greenfire Farm's 2011 flock "A" as well as three pullets that were offspring from one hen paired with Liam and one hen paired with Ice.

Results: - 100% of the pullets from Blaze were the light down color. We only got one cockerel that was the light down color (shown in photo). We got 3 dark downed cockerels (not shown).
- Large head patches were visible on the pullets from Ice. Both cockerels and pullets had the dark down type.
- We only got pullet in this hatch from Liam. They also were the dark down type, but I was able to distinguish them from the pullets from Ice because the stripes were more a tan color from Liam and more a white color from Ice. Liam's chicks also seamed to have more a brown tone to the dark down than Ice's chicks.

Conclusion: The fact that 100% of the pullets and only 1/4 of the cockerels from Blaze were the light color seems to support the theory that the down type is a result of the sex-linked barring type. It also is telling me that at least one of the hens is that pen is carrying the light type. :)

Follow-up: I already know one hen that is carrying the light type because I did a test hatch with three eggs from each of the two foundation hens just a week after they were moved to the 2013 breeding pen with Blaze. I hatched the eggs in separate compartments in the incubator and one hen produced a light and dark colored cockered (The light surely sired by Blaze and the Dark possible by Blaze or Ice) and the other produced two dark Pullets (Both pullets I am guessing sired by Liam) and a darck cockerel (which could be sired by Liam or Blaze). Below is a photos of the cockerel from the test hatch with a pullet from the other hen next to it.



Every hatch is a new lesson to be learned!!!
 
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Here is an updated pic of my oldest rose combed legbar cockerel. He has the highest tail of all the males so far but I'm thinking it will get lower as it fills in. Not a perfect comb but I have some better looking pullets to balance it out
 
I think you're right with the heat! They finally did lay yesterday (82 degrees) and not today (91!). I did peruse around in the bushes though, too, for good measure. They are penned full time, in a 600 sq ft run
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I've had my birds cut way back on laying before and seen a quick turn around after being wormed. If you haven't wormed them in a while it's not a bad idea (especially since they aren't laying well anyway so if you have to discard the eggs depending on what you use for worming at least it won't be many eggs).
 
I wonder how much effort has been made to keep egg laying as an important selection trait - as opposed to just looks
I know the Legbars of Broadway have a flock of 200 pure Cream Legbars that they use to create their Old Cotswold Legbar hybrids. The photos of their Cream Legbar show lots of gold plumage (but lots of cream too) twisted combs (good combs too), and other things that are insignificant in production, but big deals in show birds. My thoughts are that you can really only focus on one thing at a time in any breeding. If you are breeding for fancy point (show birds) then your production is going to drop. Like wise if you are breeding for production, your sow qualities are going to drop. So...it doen't take much effort to determine which lines are breed for what. :)


Wondering how the broodiness fits the eggs per year equation, -- Ideally have some other hen raise the chicks? Hope that she only goes broody once per year or twice? -- (and that would cut her egg average down to 180 as being good; and 200 as being outstanding...right? )
I guess I would almost rather have fewer eggs per year...and a hen that will raise chicks for me. Here is where everyone will choose their own preferences for their flock --

Yep, another example of how what you select for effect what you get in your line. If you cull broody hens you will get higher production. If you breed for a self sufficient breed, then you trade off less egg for hens that raise the young and teach them how to forage.
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I just finished the first year laying chart on one of our Marans. She went broody on us at least 4 times, and one time we let her sit on eggs. I was surprised that she came in with 182 eggs for the years. I noticed that when she wasn't thinking about going broody she would lay for 2-3 days in a row then take 1-2 days off, but when she was getting ready to go broody she would lay an average of 10 days in a row with out any days off (then sit on the nest and we would have to break her which would mean no eggs for 2-3 weeks). So...the months she went broody weren't too much lower production than the months she didn't go broody. Still 182 egg is not that good compared to the 317 eggs from one of our White Leghorn.
 
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