The Legbar Thread!

[GaryDean26]

I showed 9 Legbars last week at the county fair. This was our first showing on this year's grow out group. We are going to take what we learned to start prepping for the Southern Regional Legbar Club meet November 4th in Norman, OK. The big winners last week were the 4-1/2 months old pullets. I though that 6-1/2 month old cockerels that we showed would do better. They had awesome build and are really filling out well. The Pullets were still on the small side but they took Best of Breed, Reserve of Breed, and 3rd place breed trophies.

 

[ChickenGrass]

I was recently at a poultry show and my 5 month old Legbar got 2nd place!
Here's some photos.

 

[The Sheriff]

To all those concerned about stolen pictures, there is a Photoshop plugin that put s a digital watermark on your pictures. When someone tries to right click and steal it they get a message that tells them it is protected matieril. If they use it anyway you can find out because you can do a search for your images based on your Digimarc ID. It will find your pictures on the web. I put out the $99 for the professional version for a year because it made me sick to see someone accepting compliments for how "gorgeous" my Isbars were. I didn't want her maiking money off my birds!

 

[blackbirds13]

https://sites.google.com/site/creamlegbarsonline/home

this was a site recommended to me on Thepoultrykeeper.

Think my younger boy may be out.

 

[Phage]

interesting pic from 1938

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1938-FEATHE...090?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51a11b5952

I hope it is OK to reproduce it here (please let me know if it is not)



Also the dark female chick on the bottom left has a small light head spot.

 

[GaryDean26]

Can anyone direct me to info on the genetics of crests and blue egg color?

1) Below is the link to the post on this form for cresting. You also can search for R.C. Punnett's 1958 publication on Recessive Black. In that study he crossed Cream Legbars with his recessive black birds and comments on the inheritance of the cresting.


2) Here is how to breed for blue eggs http://scratchcradle.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/gms2-breeding-for-blue-eggs/. This page references R.C. Punnett's 1933 paper on Blue Eggs. I don't think many studies have been done on Blue Egg inheritance since Punnett's Studies.


Basically, if you cross out a true Cream Legbar to Brown Leghorns you
1) Split the recessive cream genes so the offspring all show gold plumage
2) You add autosomal red to the birds
3) You split the dominate Blue Egg gene
4) You split the dominant Cresting gene
5) You split the sex-linked Barring genes in males and lose the autosexing

Heritage Breeds are breeds that have accepted breed standards more than 50 years old. They are slow growing, self sustaining breeds that are typically hardier, more disease resistant, and live longer than hybrids and non-heritage breed. If you cross out a Heritage breed to any other breed then it is no longer a heritage line.

You can get back Cream Plumage, get back to double barring in the males, test mate to ensure your breeders are complete for cresting and blue egg genes, and even though autosomal red may be hard to get rid it is already in the GFF (as is Gold plumage) so that isn't a loss, but you can never get back to a heritage line status after you out cross your birds. If you don't care about that, then there are not a lot of draw backs.

I personally am a big fan of preserving long establish lines and don't have any plans to cross out my birds. If I were looking to start out with Cream Legbars would not buy them from a line that had been crossed out to Brown Leghorns. I would want the real thing (or at least the best that I could find).

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I know a few of you don't care about my rose combed legbar project but some do so figured I'd post an update. My girls all turned 6 months old yesterday and I got an egg out of them. It is a nice clean blue color compared to the green eggs my line C hen lays. My line C hen also didn't lay until well after 8 months old so this is a big improvement. As soon as the snow melts some, all of the pullets will go in with a legbar rooster and produce all rose combed legbar chicks with better egg color and much better cold hardiness (the rose combed ladies are kept in an outdoor coop with protection from wind but nothing else, we've been getting below 0 at nights too) so it looks like my own personal legbar project is well on its way.

 

[dretd]

I have been studying to try to get up to speed on chicken genetics especially with regard to blue eggshell color, recessive white and color dilution since these are very relevant in Cream Legbars.

I came across a publication out of Beijing from January 2013 regarding blue egg color genetics: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3554524/pdf/pgen.1003183.pdf

It was quite interesting because it talks about the origins of the blue egg gene in chickens. They looked at Araucanas and two different blue-egg laying breeds of Chinese origin. The blue egg gene is inserted in different parts of the genome supporting parallel mutations in different chicken breeds.

They state in the article that the gene responsible for the blue egg color is inserted by a Retrovirus. The interesting thing is that retroviruses can cause disease in chickens but are associated with other mutations as well as the blue egg color. They listed some (pgs4,7) in the discussion session excerpt: "The effect of endogenous retrovirus (ERV) on hosts is extensive. It can unfavorably influence certain production traits, i.e. egg production, egg weight and body weight...and cause some phenotype variants, i.e. dilute coat color mutation [36] and hairless mutation in mice [37], recessive white [38], henny-feathering mutation [39], and the sex-linked late-feathering mutation [40] in chickens and outheld wing mutation in Drosophila melanogaster[41]. ERV could alter splicing patterns of transcript to produce variants such as the recessive white mutation in the chickens [38].

I need to cogitate on this a bit more and re-read, but I am interested in the potential linkage between the blue egg gene and the recessive white mutation. I have not read the references yet, but wanted to throw this out to the science geeks among us to see if they have a different take on what I read.

eta: One reference paper (French) talking about recessive white http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1373650/pdf/1471-2164-7-19.pdf states: "Finally, a rapid diagnostic genotyping test is now available to breeders, in order to identify heterozygous carriers of the mutation, which could be otherwise identified only by a tedious progeny-test." (pg 10) I will investigate if this test is available in the US.

 

[RyeRanch]

About the white gene and it's expression. Here is my experience with it. I had a white rooster and a hen who was a carrier. I was expecting to get 50% white offspring from this pairing. However, much to my surprise only about 10% of the offspring were white. This perplexed me that I was not seeing more white birds.

Then the white rooster was eaten by a coyote. Unfortunately, I did not have enough hatches to have any sort of statistically significant numbers or come to any conclusions. I thought there was maybe a higher mortality that may be associated with the whites. Or, I thought maybe I just sucked at counting.

So, I have a white hen and a white rooster who are about 1 month away from laying/ maturing so I can continue this experiment.

But, I do have a suspicion based on very limited experience that the a white legbar may be the result of a combination of genes or something more complex that just a dominant/recessive straight forward relationship.

Anyone else have anything similar? Anyway, very interesting that someone else has a much lower than expected appearance of whites.

I will update as the whites mature.

 

[ChicKat]

Yes, my Whites lay such a beautiful sky blue egg

Only problem is so far they are terrible layers

Out of 2 White girls I'm getting 1-2 eggs a week (total). My 2 Cream girls are giving me almost 2 eggs a day! Eggs are blue to greenish though...

So interesting. I have heard that the blue-egg layers in the USA, Araucanas and Ameraucanas are often low-volume egg layers. Also, that it is 'expensive' to the birds anatomy to lay blue eggs. The pigments required 'take more out of the hen'.

Some research with sea birds, noted a more saturated pigment in their eggs with increases in beta carotene in their diet. I have purchased beta carotene capsules, tried feeding carrots, and sweet potatoes to my hooligans..etc...to see for myself. My birds aren't big on their veggies..... They will turn up their nose if they don't like something. Perhaps supplying more beat carotene to the birds will give them what they need to produce more eggs? Just a thought..if their diet were to be altered, they would have more raw materials.

If green in the blue produces a greater number of eggs in a year, it is likely that there will be more birds hatched with genetic combinations that give that greenish blue. So -- maybe at some point we decide "what do I want?--- many eggs, or pure-blue eggs". Maybe some of each? I remember reading on a UK website, I think it was Emily de Gray's that they were hoping for 180 eggs per year....as kind of a standard. (an egg every-other-day). My pullet is laying at an amazing rate...her eggs are still small 1.6 to 1.7 ounces thus far. Yesterday afternoon - a high pressure flew through and the temps were 99-degrees with high humidity-- so the chickens were all panting -- so my egg production may go down due to the stresses now mounting on the chickens...but I do like those plentiful eggs. However, if she were to continue at her current rate she would exceed 180/yr by a lot, unless she were to go broody.

Seems to me like those of you who are observing these things and doing the research have noted that 1. pure-blue eggs will probably be less frequent than the bluish-green...so continuing the counts is going to be very informative. 2. Just because of the statistical rarety thus far from lonnyandrinda's and RyeRanch's flocks, there is a more complex genetic combination that simply recessive white producing the white chickens.

Thanks for contributing your insights --

ETA, if the white CLs are a marker for the pure blue - that could generate a market by itself. They are definitely very pretty birds - and if people wanted guaranteed blue-- then a white CL could be a good choice for them.