The Legbar Thread!

[GaryDean26]

I feel like we have just taken a huge step backwards with the Cream Legbars. Last year people in the U.S. were comparing their Cream Legbars with the top lines in the UK and wondering if their flock would ever match their quality. Then they started hatching and many around the country were presently supprised to see good things come out of the brooder. I am not sure why people are again saying we can't improove our stock. I didn't listen to them last year and I am not going to listen to them this year either.

 

[dretd]

EGG TRANSMISSION - There isn't 'vertical transmission' of Marek's Disease to my knowledge, however, somehow resistant mom will be more likely to pass resistance on to her chicks as I understand it .... so a resistant hen is a very good thing.

You beat me to the reply.

Marek's is a worldwide disease but not every flock has Marek's. It really depends on your unique environment and management practices. So far I personally have not had Marek's in my flock (knock wood), although I am well aware of the risks and I know that it could surface. Recently I was talking with a vet friend and neither of us vaccinate but were debating this very thing. Remember that it is spread through dander from the feathers and skin so that it can be wind-blown onto your property or easily carried on your cloths or shoes, or infect a chicken you bring to a show or poultry swap even if the chicken doesn't have direct contact with any other chickens. So I recommend maintaining strict bio-security if you so not otherwise have Marek's in your flock. If you intend to show, or have flocks upwind it would probably be smart to vaccinate.

Its all about minimizing risk. Your risk is higher under certain circumstances and lower in others.
-If you are in a high flock density area, and especially of you are down wind from other flocks your risk is higher.
-If you go to poultry swaps your risk is higher.
-if you buy chicks or chickens from outside sources (even with quarantine) your risk is higher.

Maintain strict bio-security and a closed flock if you want to minimize your risk. This means:
-never bring outside birds onto your premises (with the exception of day olds purchased from a hatchery that practices good biosecurity measures. Remember it does not transmit through the egg but workers that own their own flocks can track in the disease into the hatchery and conditions where the hatchery does not sanitize the hatching area and eggs are potential sources for virus transmission. Know the biosecurity measures of the hatchery before you import live chicks.)
-If you visit a show, poultry swap, or farm, strip off your cloths and wash them, take a shower and most importantly clean and sanitize your footwear before you even think about checking on your flock.
-Buy hatching eggs and hatch your own eggs, at the very least wiping off your eggs to remove any dander or (controversially) sanitizing the eggs prior to setting.
-Do not bring any chickens back home after taking them off your farm. This one is the hardest. If you show, what to do with the ones you took to the show? You can quarantine them well away from your regular flock but there is a risk they have contracted the virus and become a carrier of the disease although they do not show outward signs of the disease. A Marek's version of Typhoid Mary, if you will.

ChicKat, the link in the Marek's Disease fact site for the First State Vet site is off. I could not find info to the article referenced although it is available on another thread on BYC: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/343173/can-you-vaccinate-5-week-old-chicks-for-mereks . This reference contains some good information and some information that is not quite right. For instance, it states that "Mareks vaccine is unique in that it does not stop a bird from becoming infected with the virus,but it stops the formation of the Tumors that are caused by the Mareks virus." This is a bit of a mischaracterization. Vaccines work by giving an animal a dose of a modified/killed/similar virus where the vaccine itself does no significant harm to the animal, but teaches the animals immune system what the bad-guy looks like so that when and if the animal encounters the bad guy in the future, the immune system remembers it and can quickly mount an immune response before the virus takes hold. The memory fades over time for many viruses which is why some vaccines require boosters down the road. In that regard, vaccines do not prevent infection, rather they prevent active disease. Semantics I guess but it needs to be clarified. He also has some information about Oxine and Anthrax that shows incomplete knowledge about sanitation procedures.

 

[KPenley]

LaBella, Thanks for your comments! Cream is an interesting color. While it is diluted gold, when you combine it with double barring it comes out looking close to silver or at least off white. Without the extra dilution it would look more like the cream you were describing. So why can't we call it silver or gray?
We can't call it silver or gray because it isn't genetically. A true cream bird, when bred to a gold bird, produces all gold offspring. A true silver will not (silver cock to gold hen would produce all silver offspring, other way around would produce sex linked chicks).
Why do we want to breed Cream Legbars to look cream/offwhite/silverish? Because it's the standard, not a preference. Quite simply that's the way it is. Punnett was most likely the president of the Poultry Club of Great Britain when the standard was written and approved. He may have written it himself, but he definitely approved it.

You are of course correct that breeders can do whatever they want with their birds!!! I actually hope that some breeders keep the golden colors going, whether it become a variety or not, just because they are beautiful birds.

BTW offtopic, but I wrote in the tail angle at 45 degrees above horizontal based on the APA Leghorn and Plymouth Barred Rock Standards. If specified in the standard as above horizontal, then it is above horizontal. If not specified, the angle is measured in respect to the angle of the back. This is open to discussion, but perhaps we should move it to the SOP thread

 

[GaryDean26]

I'm on the Facebook Cream Legbar page. You guys are pups and very polite on critiques compared to what I've seen on there.

I agree we are pups.. After two years of trying to figure out how to breed Cream Legbars, I am just reaching the point where I think I am starting to understand the visions of what the Cream Legbar is supposed to be. I spent a year learning the history and genetics of the breed, then as I started breeding them I spend time trying to learn to select for good vigor, good production, and worked on breeding plans to keep all my favorite traits from each of my flock members while breeding out defects, etc.. In just the last month I have had some light bulb moments when I have made sense of things about the breed that were a mystery to me.

I too participate in the FB group. While they are experts at distinguishing cream birds from gold birds, hybrids from pure birds, at spotting non-crested birds, at spotting pale yellow legs from bright colored one, at evaluating tail angles, and critiquing combs (although they always give cockerels with bad combs a free pass) no one on that group has every been able to give me insight into some of the major point of the SOP like the shape of the body, the length of the legs, the slope of the back, the width of the bird, the length of the neck, etc. In many regards I feel that the Face Book group in the UK are young pups too. Each group has a different focus and I learn different things there than here. While some critiques can be instructive I don't feel that a harsh critique of every chicken in every photo posted is always necessary (especially when the photo is posted to show a new coop design or the like and some chicken just happen to be in the background with no intention for the birds to even be seen much less critiqued). I can learn just as much from polite group as I do from a cut throat one. and they say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I noticed something this morning about my 2 single comb cockerels I kept over. One of them got the tips of his comb frozen off back in October and the rest of his comb is near black since we've gotten below 0 with 20 mph winds this week (and getting colder this weekend). I figured I'll cull him soon because he just isn't as thrifty as I'd like to see in my birds. That cockerel is from my original rooster on a Jordan Farm's hen I got from a friend. The cockerel out of my original pair has a slightly shorter comb but same width and such and has no frost bite. They are kept in a pen with 2 faverolles and my 2 rose combed cockerels, the house they have is just a little cube with an opening so they all have the same base environment if that makes sense. We're supposed to get to -15 by Sunday, then next week will have highs in the single digits. If the single combed cockerel can avoid frost bite in that weather, I plan to make him my main breeder.
Also, just an update on the pullets- none of my single combed pullets have laid since the end of October which I expected anyway. The rose combed pullets have all started laying like crazy in the last couple weeks. None of my other hens (wyandottes, marans, faverolles) are laying right now, just the legbar ladies. It's little things like going out to the coop to find nothing but beautiful blue eggs that make this project worth it

 

[madamwlf]

They are here and made it this time!! My Jill Rees Legbars are finally here. I'm looking forward to watching these guys grow up. When they settle in, I'll try to get pictures of them.

 

[ChicKat]

II started raising chickens in April of this year. For my first hatch, with my first broody hen, I ordered Legbar hatching eggs. Out of 7 eggs, 4 didn't develop at all, 1 died at 10wks and 2 hatched(both roosters)

. These handsome little roosters are REALLY timid. They also don't seem to have a very strong instinct to follow mama when she calls. She keeps trying to take them out in the yard, calls and calls, but they just want to stay close to the original nest. Today I finally kicked them out and shut the door. When my broody came over for some treats with the flock, the chicks didn't follow her and just stayed by the fence under a dead weed.

. Is this normal for this breed?

Interestingly I remember now that my first CLs and some of my later ones DID hang out inside the coop for the longest time. Where I was living then the wind was sometimes horrific - (think wide open prairie with no buildings or anything to block the wind)--- and I thought perhaps like some people they were really sensitive to the wind. My EE wouldn't go inside in the same weather but CLs having been developed in the UK where the weather is milder...maybe the USA is harsh to their tender little ear drums.

That being said -- they were happy because they had this trill or purr that they kept sounding when they were happy and cozy. As adults - they have no more or less inside time than my other chickens......

Regarding those with bad hatch rates and high mortality, I would also be very suspicious of 'inbreeding' -- so many people got CLs that were hatching eggs -- very possibly from the SAME bird and then subsequently bred those together. As someone said - they are rare, and I think that there may be more inbred CLs than people may realize.
Here is something from the Web that may be of interest:

Too much inbreeding leads to inbreeding depression. Basically, this is the opposite of hybrid vigor. Inbred animals are homozygous on too many alleles. They are less healthy and less productive.3 For example, Shoffner (1948, in F. M. Lancaster’s Genetic and Quantitative Aspects of Genealogy) found that, for every 10% increase in the inbreeding coefficient, chickens lost an average of 4.36% in egg hatchability and the capacity to produce 9.26 eggs per year. Even small increases in inbreeding can affect fertility, hatchability, and delay sexual maturation (Sewalem et al. in British Poultry Science, 1999, 40: 203–208).

From “Inbreeding in a Closed Flock” Hays & Talmadge 1948
(Click for link to full-text article)​

Inbreeding has an even heavier impact on the immune system. Because MHC genes are responsible for identifying foreign invaders, we need a variety to catch all of the possible pathogens that can invade a body. Inbreeding reduces the diversity of MHC genes and, thus, directly affects our immune system’s ability to defend the body.4
from the same posting:
In a great post on the Backyard Chickens Forum, Allen W. Miller provided this list of inbreeding coefficients. (You can see the original post which includes great summaries of breeding systems as well.) If the parents aren’t already inbred (having a common ancestor), you can use the coefficients in the chart below.
Here is the link to the article:
http://scratchcradle.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/gms12-inbreeding-coefficients/
It sounds like a lot of what you are experiencing -- even the possibility of infection/bacteria are possibly due to very closely related genetics.

Bear in mind that most of the people who are raising CLs are not experienced professionals - but back yard beginners.... I would make an effort to reduce the inbreeding coefficient to see if it has an effect on your results. Especially since your other chickens in the same incubator conditions are successful.

Blue Isbars are very inbred. One thing that results from this is that mine, and my friends are very UNIFORM which is a good thing in a line of chickens. We are making HUGE efforts to get Isbars from very different locations, as unrelated to each other as possible and have seen significant impovement in these same attributes (hatch rate and viability of chicks)..but I haven't kept statistics of the results. It is important for the health of the breed to have different genetics. I think that it's possible that there have been a lot of brother & sister pairings in the Legbars since they came to the USA and since they were so rare and expensive. JMO.

One other thing that I think is especially important with this breed is the age of the egg (time since it was layed) when it is set. I would not think an egg older than a week would have the same chance as a fresher egg.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Figured I'd pop in for an update. So far even under 2 months old I have culled based on combs and crest size quite a bit. My rose comb grow outs are doing great and just had a huge batch hatch this weekend. Lots of autosexing EE chicks and some other legbar related project birds are hatching. And forthe first time since getting legbars, I have decided to introduce new bloodlines. I have eggs from a fellow member to add more cream and better body to mine and also did a swap with another breeder who is working on her own line of rose combed legbars. My goal is to hatch about 40 obvious defect free legbars to select my breeders from.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Just a quick picture of my oldest rose combed cockerel. Not sure if I'll keep him because his tail is high and he has a huge comb. I have one more RC cockerel that I hope turns out good. Otherwise, the rose combed ladies are looking decent so they may just go with a cream rooster in the spring

 

[GaryDean26]

I got some photos today. These two are on the short list to show at the Southern Regional Cream Legbar Meet next month. Any thoughts on them?